Video Interview: Meg Castellanos & Tony Aguilar of All Souls on Streaming, Writing, the End of the World and More
On June 18, All Souls will oversee the airing of their ‘Virtual Volumes’ livestream. I know, we all miss shows and streams aren’t the same. Save it. They took the time to make the thing, even went so far as to make it their first gig with new guitarist Matt Price (Behold! the Monolith), and it’s awesome and not five hours long, so yeah, you can squeeze it into your busy life, trust me. They split the digital bill with Fatso Jetson, with whom they just so happen to share drummer Tony Tornay.
All Souls was founded by guitarist/vocalist Tony Aguilar and bassist/backing vocalist Meg Castellanos years after the putting to rest of their prior outfit together, Totimoshi, and with the acoustic-and-dance duo Alma Sangre between. Aguilar counts Alma Sangre, in which he sung in Spanish and in Mexican folk traditional styles, as pivotal to the development of All Souls, which indeed brings more melodic nuance to the heavy rock foundation that one otherwise might call carried over from Totimoshi. The bottom line, it all ties together.
The band have the bulk of a third album finished — also the owners of Eastside Rehearsal in Los Angeles, they spent lockdown in otherwise unoccupied rehearsal rooms writing with Tornay when they might’ve been on tour; Price had yet to join but is adding to what was done as a trio — and are hoping to record before the end of the year. I’m also hoping that happens, because 2020’s Songs for the End of the World (review here) and their 2018 self-titled debut (review here) are resonant joys and emotive to such a degree that I was somewhat surprised when Aguilar talked about the process of recording the live stream as being more of an analog to live shows, since he tends to lose himself in the music more than feed off audience energy anyway. For someone who — even masked as he is in ‘Virtual Volumes’; they recorded in March and Castellanos was the only one who’d been vaccinated — is so expressive, I genuinely thought the opposite would be the case.
I am a fan of All Souls, even more for having done this interview. Accordingly, I had a lot I wanted to talk to them about. Actually even more than is in the video. I had wanted to talk about the Josh Graham video for “Winds” but decided to pull the question when I realized that all I wanted to do was a Chris Farley-style “that was awesome” kind of thing. Incidentally though, it was awesome. And so is the recent ‘Jam in the Van’ session that was posted last month that you can see below.
One way or the other, this was a fun interview this past Saturday at 9:30PM, when under normal circumstances I’d most likely have been in bed because I’m just that lame. Thanks for reading and/or watching.
Enjoy:
All Souls Interview with Meg Castellanos & Tony Aguilar, June 5, 2021
All Souls‘ ‘Virtual Volumes’ stream from Total Annihilation Studios in Los Angeles airs June 18. Tix and merch at Livefrom.events. Songs for the End of the World has been waiting for you since its release last Fall. That and the ‘Jam in the Van’ performance discussed above are right here for your convenience.
