Interview with Meteor
4/10/2016 at 9:00 p.m
“No matter where you go, there you are’, says the mysterious musician Meteor. Hailing from Medellin, Colombia, Meteor is the alter ego of Jorge Reyes. With guitars, synths and and whole lot of 80s nostalgia he creates diesel powered retro-techno. This new sound of music is gaining a decent following online. Using the sounds and styles of popular synth music of the 80s and combining it with the far superior technology of the modern era, I believe this is the way the musicians of the 80s had intended their music to sound. However they were limited by computing technology, not by creative ideas. Reyes, is in the new crop of talented young musicians who are breaking those technological chains and in the process creating some very very ear grabbing beats. Oh, and his guitar work isn’t half bad either for all those instrumentalist naysayers out there too.
*Conversations have been translated from Reyes native tongue, but we have done our very best to preserve the artists’ original intent.
Slickster: Do you have any albums coming up?
Jorge/Meteor: Hi Chris, thanks for having me.
Well, my recent full length album Parallel Lives was released just a few weeks ago [March 14th], it took me around five months to produce it. So I think a new next album won’t be released at least for the next eight months. Before this last release, I learned a lot about my own sound, hardware, and the genre in general, so there are some ideas surrounding my head that I know it will take me a long time to consolidate.
Anyway, I think it’s a fact that I will be releasing some sporadic single tracks. I can’t stop making music and sharing with my fans.
Do you play the guitar on your albums? What kind of guitar do you play?
Yes, I do, actually. I’m a guitar player, not a keyboard player, so that’s why everyone finds a lot of guitar riffs and rock styled songs. Anyway, that’s my nature and I have a large group of rock fans that expect to hear some of that.
I have an Epi Les Paul Standar PlusTop Pro with ProBucker pickups and coil-splitting. A very good instrument for music production due to the sound versatility combined with a Line 6 POD HD 500.
Who are your major influences for your music?
I’m a huge fan of futuristic/sci-fi movies, therefore a technological scenario is the best for my songs. Also I love futuristic and sci-fi FPS games like Half-Life, Doom, Deus Ex, etc. What inspires Meteor are a bunch of imaginary worlds. I just make the soundtracks of my imaginary movie; I’d like everyone can be inside my head to watch it! [laughs]
Talking about artists, I came into synthwave thanks to modern artists like Kavinsky, Lazerhawk, Carpenter Brut, and the classic 80’s movies’ and TV series’ soundtracks, and composers like John Carpenter, Vangelis, and the big master Sylvester Levay. But in the rock side, I’ve been a rock guy for over 20 years so my influences are too many, anyway. With Meteor I feel I have found a good balance between these two genres.
Have you ever done a live concert with Meteor?
No, I didn’t until now. But it’s my big dream. To be honest, I’ve done many live shows during the last 13 years with my main rock band but never with synthsizers, midi controllers, and laptops, and this excites me very much. It’s music on another platform, and I love the new experiences. Currently I’m trying to reach the budget with the sales of my album to buy the necessary gear to play live shows (and flight tickets, too).
Do you have any collaborations planned with other musicians?
Yeah! This is another good experience. At the moment I just started making some collabs and featurings with some friends like The Encounter, Stilz, Victor Love, Vincent Nuit, but all this is in progress. I had been very busy with Parallel Lives. I can’t tell you more about this, but I’m so excited to work with people who saw me being born as an artist.
Have you ever written music for videos or movies?
Currently Meteor is part of the upcoming game Blast Brawl 2: Bloody Boogaloo. This is an amazing game (and synthwave showcase platform) made by Christopher Molini, Meteor also was featured in the game trailer.
Meteor also will be the soundtrack of: a Mexican movie titled Hubiera by Antonio Freyre, a French short/movie, an Italian 2D video game for 2017, and an audio/visual release of a well-known pixel artist [for his one Meteor appearance as collaborator for another main artist]. All this is production phase, and I can’t tell you more until it be announced by the producers, directors, or devs.
How has YouTube help to grow your fan base?
It helps me a lot! There are three main channels with official Meteor releases like “NewRetroWave” (25,000 plays of Parallel Lives in two weeks), “Drive Radio,” and “Karate King Music.” Also, there are many unofficial uploads of my music on different YT channels, but I’m very grateful to all of them; they have conveyed my music to many people.
Copyright 2016©
Check out Meteor on Band Camp.
https://meteormusic.bandcamp.com/album/parallel-lives