Invocation Array is an epic story-driven electronic music duo consisting of extraterrestrial musicians, Cerys and Kailani. After studying Earth from afar and developing an interest, they dived into what would be the most progressive medium in order to assist and learn from the species they’re passionate about. Combining elements of fantasy and technology, reflecting on human endeavors, Invocation Array uses curiosity and fearlessness to discover and present truths, inspiring and evoking progressive action, evolving through communication and diversity. The duo both took some time to talk of their latest release and the plans ahead.
1. Can you give those of us who aren’t familiar with Invocation Array a brief history of the band
and can you please describe your sound for those who have yet to hear your music?
Kaia had The Luna Sequence (TLS), as a solo project, working on instrumentals and remixes. She moved to CA, and put out an ad for a singer. Adrianne had media projects, working on music and acting, moved to NorCal from SoCal, and wanted to collab on a music project. She found Kaia’s ad via her friend pointing her to it. After some discussion, it expanded beyond TLS+vocals into a whole new project. This lead to the creation of Invocation Array and the leading characters, Kailani and Cerys. The idea behind the characters is that the project comes from the minds and voices of two entities that are watching everything unfold on this planet. We’re not just speaking for ourselves, we’re speaking for everyone, and to everyone, trying to connect and reveal.
2. How did you guys come up with your band name?
We wanted to combine different elements from the overall themes. Technology, Magic, Spirituality, Communication, Evolution, and Progress.
3. What bands have influenced your band and its sound?
Kate Bush, Prodigy, Nightwish, Queen, Comaduster, Tori Amos, Jethro Tull, Enigma
4. What lyrical theme do you guys use in your music? What message do you want to send?
We call out the global issues in our present time, what they can lead to, and how to become empowered and find hope.
5. Are you guys signed or unsigned?
Unsigned, everything has been independent so far.
6. If you aren't signed to a label, do you hope to get signed on someday?
If we find one that is a good fit. We have a lot of ideas that are bigger than just the two of us can pull off, but it’s essential that any team is fully behind the creative vision.
7. If you don't hope to get signed on, why do you prefer the DIY approach to releasing and handling all of your music affairs?
If we don’t get signed, we’ll continue to do everything ourselves. We’ve gotten a lot of support from fans, so we know people are interested, even if labels aren’t. As a DIY operation currently, we are better able to maintain or evolve the message, image, expression, and budget. We can also provide a more consistently intimate, social connection with our fans. However, we can also be limited in time and resources by our small budget. That’s why fan support matters even more in our situation we
can deliver more, or more accurately deliver, concepts with their support.
8. Why did you want this band to be a two piece act instead of a full fledged group? Do you prefer
things to be this way instead of that way?
We work together very well and have a very balanced dynamic. We can execute our vision ourselves and don’t want to unnecessarily dilute things. We may bring people on in the short term to fulfill specific roles for a period of time, but we’re happy as a duo, and don’t see that changing.
9. Why did you see there was a point in releasing two versions of your songs for your release "A
Color for Fiction". You released the regular versions of the tracks with the added addition of
instrumental versions as well. How come?
Kaia was previously known for doing instrumental music, so there are people interested in the instrumentals. Some people like them for writing/coding/gaming/other things when vocals may be a distraction. Both K and A also love creating and listening to instrumentals, so it was an easy choice.10. You shot video that was a live in studio performance for the song "Hypogeum". Why was this song picked out and made into the video it has become?
“With Me” was actually the first one. There are a number of reasons why we choose to make live studio versions of songs and in what order. We like to explore different musical styles and vibes, work with what’s currently relevant and inspiring to us, and we like to play with concepts visually this also leads to us performing live on stage eventually. We also have plans for bigger budget videos for some of our other songs, so we wanted to highlight the others with live vids.
11. Which other songs will you be picking out to be made into videos, do you have an idea as to how they will be made, like in the studio style as "Hypogeum" or doing it a whole other way? Would you say that making videos is a process that you enjoy?
We’ll be doing a studio video for “Protocol” next and are in the planning process for a full music video for “Little Dark Star”. We’re also talking about “All Souls Day” (it’s our Halloween song). We do enjoy doing the videos, but it is a lot of work with just 2 people! We are both pretty exhausted at the end of the day.
12. Can you discuss the two songs you released "With Me" and "Hypogeum"? What does each
one mean and why were they picked out to be the standing out tracks?
“With Me” is a song that transfers well to the intimacy of a live performance or first meeting, and it’s one of our favorites. In the creation of it, the vocals were made very fluid and haunting, reaching out to connect to a potential victim, and it’s an unusual piece in the scheme of things, which made us chose it as our first live studio piece to share.
We knew that it wouldn’t be hard to conceptualize it for visual media with whatever budget we had. The song can be seen as romantic or twisted, a longing or a warning, a reality or dream shared. There’s much more to it, but like with most of our songs, we can always get more in-depth into explaining them with a focused piece. “Hypogeum” was chosen because it was a different energy from the previous video/song, and again, another song that we felt we could translate to visual media smoothly.
The song is about people and messages hidden underground in a sense, communication flowing inconsistently and without clear source, often altered for power or used as a shield to hide behind. It tells people that true power and happiness is in the revelation of truth, and that fears are often insubstantial, hindering, or crippling. There’s a lot of recording and production work that goes into composing the new instrumental versions and vocals for these live studio versions before we even make a set, figure out costumes, and shoot. Doing the lyrical video for “Perpetual Memory” didn’t require that as much, being that a new musical version wasn’t created, but a lot of work went into getting homemade film captures, visual references, and editing. One by one, we aim to put visuals to all or most of our sound pieces.
13. Do you see yourselves on releasing another double dose of a release with the regular version of songs and the instrumental versions of songs for future releases?
People responded to it positively, so we’ll definitely consider it.
14. Are you in the process of writing any new material for a follow-up release to "A Color for Fiction"?
We are currently in the demo stages of new material. No release date is set yet.
15. What's your take on "A Color for Fiction" as a whole?
Our album song’s have one or more intricate and powerful stories incorporated, all nested within, or reflecting, the themes we focus on. Overall, it could be seen as one big audible journal or speech, though it’s meant to carry as much truth and hope as it does records of the past. It’s meant to be a productive tool kit for our audience as well.
16. Is it important for you to paint visual pictures with the songs?
If a song doesn’t endeavor to inspire a mental visual, it may lose an important tool to expressing relevance to its audience. It’s not required though, and often times, music is made just to inspire an emotion and not a mental visual. One usually comes with the other though, whether or not lyrics are present. What the visual is can be created by the artists or the audience, and we’re open to hearing interpretations beyond our own, and beyond what we originally laid out. However, what we’re able to do visually in a physical manner, with regards to expressing our own initial thoughts within a piece, comes down to our budget. If the audience sees more from what we’re able to present, that’s not
necessarily a bad thing and we always invite them to ask us questions.
17. What would be the cinematic equivalent of "A Color for Fiction"?
We don’t focus on one media piece in particular for the overall album, but you can find nods in our work to aspects of movies, games, music, and books we like. It’s possible there’s a desire for the band or album to create its own unique cinematic equivalent in the future.18. What's your favorite song on the album right now?
Kaia: All Souls Day.
Adrianne: I haven’t decided. I love to sing With Me. All Souls Day is the most fun to do. I’m very attached in a sickly, sad way to Sirens Call. I sometimes cry from my heart while singing Protocol. There’s a scream inside my chest with every song. They’re all important.
19. What are your expectations for the CD?
We plan to keep our media in digital format to make distribution easier to do, receive, and afford. In the future, we might do a small run of CD's or a special media project on disc, but we’d likely offer those at our live performances only.
20. Do you play live as well? Describe your live performance for those who have never seen
you live?
We can, though we haven’t yet with this band. Our live studio music videos are the closest we’ve gotten so far, and those are helping us prepare by letting us experiment with equipment and presentation. We’re planning on adding more visual elements to a live show of course, likely additional musicians and performers, more characterization, as well as more tech. Both of us have a lot of experience performing live with previous projects, so we know what goes into a show.
21. What are your current show/tour plans, if any?
We’re getting an idea of where our fans are located and where they can travel to. We don’t want to go where they aren’t, so planning the tour to be efficient and relevant is important and thus it takes time. As to when we would perform live, that will depend on available funding and getting the info we need in order to make a schedule. Hopefully, it won’t take more than a year to do so. We’re creating more content and music to grow our project and fan base our fans help in our promotion and funding majorly.
22. What does the next year hold for you and your band?
Lots of recording, making videos, and harvesting souls. Baking cupcakes, eating spicy taquitos, and consuming lots of lychee jelly cups.
23. Any final words for our readers?
We have t-shirts and more media content coming up as requested by our fans. We can never say thank you enough. We are incredibly grateful for the support we’ve received and we’ll endeavor to continue entertaining and sharing with our fans.
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