By Benjamin Joe
“Dream Dream,” a three-piece hybrid of two of the members of Buffalo’s “Aircraft” and lead vocalist of “The Tins,” released two songs in the last quarter of 2021: “Blissin’” and “Chill Vibes.”
The songs were worked out of Mammoth Recording Studio, located in Buffalo, where the band, Justin Smith, Matt Cossman and Mike Santillo, kept a steady correspondence, due to Smith’s and Santillo’s ownership of the space, and its use as a rehearsal venue for “Aircraft.”
The band was a in a jovial, holiday spirits at the recording studio on Dec. 26, discussing the pandemic project’s sound, genre and cultural roots, as well, as whether it should really be called a “pandemic project” at all.
“I guess Dream Dream is just – there’s no rules. It’s just the three of us are working on it, but it can be any combination of us and it’s really loose,” Santillo said.
“It’s an ongoing thing. There’s not a lot of pressure – we haven’t played any shows – it’s sort of just coming at its own pace and because of that I think it has a lot of room to go on for a long time, because there’s no – y’know? It’s just when we want to get together, when we want to write something, we do.”
Each of the two songs evolved differently. “Chill Vibes” started out as a jam that Cossman and Smith practiced pre-pandemic – to the tune of three or four years ago – whose lyrics were penned by Cossman, and what Santillo added keyboard tracks to after it was recorded.
“We often will just a jam,” Smith said. “A lot of times Matt will be here, I’ll be here and we’ll just play and I will record with my phone. Sometimes cool ideas will come out and sometimes we’ll work on those ideas a little bit.
“We usually won’t turn them into full songs, so, there’s all these fragments of songs. One time we took a fragment, that we jammed on, and we remembered it. It changes a lot as you jam each time – it’s much more fun when you, improv jam, like free – but then Mike joined us on that particular riff one time and I recorded it.”
Smith said that the song was later fully developed after listening to that recording.
Fun fact: Cossman played percussion on a tuned guitar to imitate a hammer dulcimer as “the highlight of the solo,” on that “Chill Vibes” track.
“Blissin’” was more fleshed out, said Santillo, by the time it was introduced to the rest of Dream Dream.
“For me, I come to writing “Dream Dream” songs the way that I would write any song that I’m writing, whether it’s with “The Tins” or anything,” he said. “It’s largely melody and chord change based. I come up with a progression that I like then come up a with a melody I put over it. …
“I’m not thinking of who it’s for or what it’s supposed to sound like, it just comes out the way (it is). Based on my influences and what I like, it just channels through me, in a way, but I’m not thinking about how it comes out, it just does.”
It’s through this “organic” process that took Santillo’s process and then added lyrics to it making for the final product.
“It was more of three-part collaboration,” Smith added.
Cossman commented that the songs can be considered “emo” because of the sadness discussed in each of them.
“I wrote the lyrics to the song and it’s about a breakup, so it’s an emo song,” Cossman said. “If emo is short for emotion, then it is an emo song. … It’s a sad song, it’s an emo song.”
Before leaving, Cossman gave a last quote, having spent 45 minutes in the interview.
“I think we make songs for ourselves,” he said. “I don’t care of anyone else likes it at all.”
More info can be found at https://dreamdreammusic.bandcamp.com/releases.
Buffalo Music Players 