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Interview: Identical twin brothers, Soft Skies Inc, return with first new single in six years

 

By Neil Shumate, OOTB Publications

After six years, identical twin brothers Ryan and Martin Rex have returned to release a new song: “Sooner Or Later;” the first track released since Oct. 2018’s “The Corpse Writes Home.”


The Philadelphia duo started writing and recording  indie-alt styled singles together in 2017 and have been in the music scene since the late ‘90s as part of Boston spacey rock band Lockgroove and mid-2000’s alt rock band Ghost Box Orchestra. Their love for music and involvement in local bands dates back to their teens.


In this OOTB interview, Martin Rex goes deep into the duo’s return, the writing process, their music endeavors history, and what’s next for them.


Listen To “Sooner Or Later”


https://softskiesinc.bandcamp.com/track/sooner-or-later


Thanks so much for your time with this interview!


No worries, thank you for keeping the torch lit and the porchlight on!


The new single “Sooner Or Later” is your first release in six years. What prevented you from continuing to collaborate so long or why/how was the decision made to wait this long for a new release?


I think the gap is for a few reasons. When Soft Skies Inc started Ryan and I were for the first time separated physically and even emotionally. 


We’re identical twins, so we had been together since the womb until a few years after our band Lockgroove broke up. Soft Skies is really the rebirth of our songwriting relationship, and we wrote the first round of singles finding time when he could travel to me in Boston or I could travel to him in North Carolina, and he was even in Australia for a year or so, which made things even tougher to connect. 


We were also building out a rehearsal/studio space for about a year and just chipping away at the songs as we could. 


We now live close to each other again outside Philly, which is great, but then there’s the inevitable delay from perfectionism, which, it’s bad. [laughs]


We are really not prepared or willing to put out a song until we feel we’ve absolutely squeezed out every amount of inspiration and effort and talent we can bring to each recording. 


We’re always talking percentages: “I think that round of mixes added another 6% or 7%, don’t you think?” By the end it’s like “I think we squeezed another final 1% improvement there, right?” [laughs] So, yeah, it’s a slow moving stream but for us it’s worth it, because the songs live on, you know?


How would you say “Sooner Or Later” compares to your previous releases in 2017 and 2018—as far as style, approach, lyrically, recording process?


This is going to be a pretty boring answer because it’s very similar—we’ve just refined and elevated our songwriting and collaboration with Chris McLaughlin, who has been our engineer for years, a friend, and we also very much consider Chris a periodic co-producer as he’s brought a lot of sonic revelations or ideas for approach to recording a song over the years that go beyond engineering. 


So the approach is the same, I think we’re just improving all the time, and the new round of singles including “Sooner or Later” reflects that. 


Given your experience and past involvements in Lockgroove and Ghost Box Orchestra, what have you found to be the biggest struggle to overcome in the music industry and how have you persevered?


The biggest struggle even going back to the Lockgroove and Ghost Box Orchestra days was the digitization of music; the fading ritual of listening to a full album, in order, as an experience that a band curated for you; the no-effort availability; the fact that anyone can make music with the tools that are now available. 


Music is free, so there can be a devaluing of the “product” and the experience that comes along with that. I just heard a stat that there are 75,000 songs uploaded to Spotify daily. 


And as far as persevering? That’s a good question. I think by caring less about anything that’s external to the music itself, the songs themselves, and caring more about the bonding/spiritual experience we get in crafting the songs together and bringing them to life in the studio. 


As twin brothers, how old were you when you first ever collaborated and how did that emerge?


I think it all started when we heard The Sex Pistols when we were 14 or 15, which just lit a damn fire. We have home videos of us and our neighborhood friends performing “God Save the Queen” in our parents’ basement… I think I was playing drums on pillows and cardboard boxes and can’t remember if Ryan even had a real guitar. 


Then my dad bought me a drum set, then at the time it was R.E.M., the Cure, then The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Depeche Mode, New Order incandescence… more embarrassing videos of us performing at a neighborhood block party covering “Cemetery Gates.”


Then it was recording on old school cassettes between boomboxes, taping over the hole (for those who remember) and then a TASCAM porta studio… getting kinda-sorta good at our instruments. 


Then Jane's Addiction, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins poured more gas on the inferno and we were playing live in our high school band called The Influence, playing battle of the bands, playing some local clubs in West Chester and even Philly while we were still in high school… learning the craft of recording. 


Then Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Girls Against Boys propelled the energy swarm and we formed Lockgroove in Boston playing clubs in the city and around the country for over a decade… then things fell apart.


And now it’s Soft Skies Inc, which is really a rebirth and the culmination of all those fires burning over the years, and that experience, the light and the dark. 


I just blacked out for a second, what was the question? [laughs] We were sixteen when we first ever collaborated musically.


As for what’s next, what are your immediate and extended future goals for the project?


Immediate plans are that our first video for “Your Small Army” comes out in October, then we’ll release a few more singles either later this year or early next year to culminate in an EP (or possible LP) coming out in 2025. 


Is there anything else you’d like to add?


I’d just like to thank you for having interesting questions.


Listen To “Your Small Army” 


https://softskiesinc.bandcamp.com/track/your-small-army


Follow Soft Skies Inc


https://linktr.ee/soft_skies_inc


https://softskiesinc.bandcamp.com/ 


https://m.facebook.com/SoftSkiesInc/


https://www.instagram.com/soft_skies_inc/

 

Photo: Chris McLaughlin
 

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