Ghost Cult is proud to premiere the new video for Dune Altar Records‘ post-Punk/Goth Gaze/Alt-Rock band Osnova’s latest holographic single “Waiting For June.” Jean Claude “JC” Vorgeack (guitars), Caroline McLaughlin (vocals) and Sam Ribeyro (drums) retain the haunting hypnosis that makes people fall in love with their work on the newest single, perhaps their personal best yet as a group. Fans of Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine will love the vast and intoxicating charm of the song, even as it plays hard to get with an edgy minor flirtation into deeper waves of distorted oceanic waters that Nothing fans will eat up. The video was created by Adam Brant with JC and captures the band’s sharp and mysterious aesthetics smartly. Watch the video below and check out an exclusive interview with the band by Morgan Y. Evans for Ghost Cult!
Morgan Y. Evans for Ghost Cult: Your band sounds so full and spacious…cinematic. Your song “For Selene” is a great example. I was drawn to that right away. We need to go back in time and put you on some 90s soundtracks so you are already rich off nostalgia streams! Or just get A24 on it and place you in Love Lies Bleeding 2. C’mon, people. But anyway, I love how the band has a sense of “feel”. You are letting songs “play out” and breathe. I always loved that about stuff from Machines Of Loving Grace or The Cure. There is a songwriting element and theme to the pieces, but it also feels like collective meditation when you hear or see Osnova!
JC: Thank you, Morgan. I guess it’s no secret that I am a massive Cure fan. Foremost for their ability to create a world. It’s so much more than music…It’s a full environment that envelopes and feels as immersive as reality. I hesitate to call it an escape. But it is open to explore. And you find new things every time you listen.
I used to worry that the Cure comparisons just came from owning a chorus pedal. But there’s probably some homage, deliberate or not, going on too. I’m at peace with that.
CM: Man, A24 and a nineties time machine would truly be the dream! But it makes me so happy to hear that you’re giving “For Selene” some love, Morgan. It’s technically the B-side of our “Octavian” single release (in a digital sense). Since “Octavian” has been the single with our biggest listener engagement so far, it ended up making “For Selene” the sadly neglected stepchild of the two and I wish more people would hear it.
That being said, “For Selene” has a really beautiful flow, one of the best of our current releases (imo), so I’m glad to hear that you noticed it. My artist heart thanks you <3 We wanted that piece to have an ebb and flow that felt nostalgic, moody, and a bit romantic so that intention certainly contributed. Also, fun fact, the lyrics are written in French to elevate those intended feels. So you may meditate away when listening, en Français!
GCM: I have always been a fan of a great trio. Motorhead just made me that biased for life (although I do love their under appreciated eras with Brian Robertson or Wurzel when they had 4 members). But I dunno, with three pieces something feels more immediate! Something about trios lets me connect most to the energy between players. As soon as you add that fourth member I feel like I am being sold something more or it is cock rock, haha. How did JC decide to do so much heavy lifting? I know the project started out of his demos? How did you connect with Dune Altar?
JC: This is definitely the first time (and likely only time?) that Motorhead will be mentioned in an interview with us, haha! To be honest, we would welcome the right bassist if she/he came along. We had someone a year and half ago, but it turned out to be a less than perfect fit. We continued looking for a while, but in the meantime, the 3 of us ended up growing quite close. So we decided not to let it stop us. We continued playing shows and working on new music. Sometimes, I think we forget that we’re supposed to have a bass player. Hopefully the right person will come along at some point. But they’ll be jumping onto a moving train at that point. A train full of stupid inside jokes and all the other lovable quirks that bands develop over time.
When we were getting ready to release our previous single, it was our drummer, Sam, who suggested that we possibly try working with a label. To be honest, I figured it was a longshot at best, so I only tried two labels. As an adult, I don’t find myself surprised or excited as much as a kid would. The positive reply from Dune Altar was a rare exception to that.
We were aware of Dune Altar because of Iress. We respected the music they were releasing, and it was clearly being done with integrity and care. Sam (who is terminally unavailable for interviews) had met Justin at a show. In his words “I smoked weed with him and he seemed to be a smart guy“. How could you possibly argue with that??
It cannot be overstated how grateful we are that Dune Altar is working with us. Having them in our corner is invaluable. The added exposure, of course. But more than that, they’ve been an ally. More than once, we’ve turned to them for advice and suggestions. We’ve never been steered wrong.
We’re only doing digital releases at this stage, but that’s appropriate. I think that a lot of bands have a tendency to be unrealistic about where they are at. Everyone is nice to you when you’re new. So it lets you sort of live in a fantasyland; believing that the sky is the limit. We have no illusions about who we are or where we are at. We aren’t selling millions of records. This is a slow growth and at some point, we’re going to face real criticism and other challenges. But because we’ve had the opportunity to grow at an organic pace, I’m pretty confident that will be able to take our licks and keep moving forward.
As to my heavy lifting…I don’t think of it as that. I am a person who constantly has to be making. Making music, photos, videos, flyer art, recording, mixing, etc. I lose my mind if I’m not being creative. That’s my neurosis, and I don’t need people to match me. As long as nobody slows me down, I’m happy with my role.
I need these people. I respect them. I am not a genius. I need them to bring out my best. I’ve made music alone, and it’s barely a shadow of what I can do with Sam and Caroline. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful to be making music with them.
CM: JC, don’t make me cry! So grateful to be part of this and making music with you as well! And don’t let JC fool you because he DOES do a LOT of heavy lifting! He’s the many cogs that make the whole Osnova machine run. Granted, we are all our own form of cog, but I feel like his cogs are the most technical of the 3 of us. He’s the one that is always starting new songs and then Sam and I go from there. Once a song is finished, he’s been the one mixing and mastering everything, which boggles my un-tech-savvy mind.
As far as bass players go, we’ve definitely been super selective about bringing another musician into the mix after it’s been the 3 of us for quite some time now. Especially when our writing chemistry (and friendship!) is so great. It’s such a delicate balance. Finding the right bandmate really is like dating. There are so many things that have to be right before you’re able to make the commitment, so we’re being highly cautious before expanding our current throuple situation. But we are on the lookout for a bassist! We’d love to welcome the right fit should that magical being present themselves!
Also, this was the first time I heard about how we officially connected with Dune Altar, and that vibe is so very ‘Sam’ and also, ironically, very much how so many entertainment connections are made. Such a small and silly world we live in… Dune Altar has been so amazing to us. We’re incredibly grateful to have them in our corner, no matter how comical the initial connection may be.
GCM: I was listening to The Avengers “We Are The One” the other day. It is amazing that song exists and can resonate over so many years. What does it take to write a “great” song? Karma or blessings from the Muses? Chemistry? Timing? Catchy? Many factors involved. What is a song that did that for you “growing up?”
JC: Two things that music has to have (for me); It needs to have motion. It should make you feel like you’re walking or driving or flying or something. Even if you’re sitting still. That’s the groove, sure. But it’s also everything else you attach to that engine. Phrasing, space, density…all of it.
And the other, is it should make you feel like you want to enter the space being created, that it is worth exploring. If that’s cinematic like you mentioned, that works for me. I guess it’s kind of like we’re making music for movies that don’t exist yet, haha.
I like simple melodies that stay with you. Makes you want to listen again and again. Virtuosity turns me off pretty quickly. Caroline has very formal training and comes at things from the other direction. So the early stages of a song can take some push/pull and finally compromise. Hopefully, the equation lands in the right place ultimately. Sam is there to tell us when something doesn’t work. He has good song sense, looking at the tune as a whole. He’s the judicial branch of Osnova, haha.
I’ve discovered that healthy bands are able to disagree without feelings getting hurt. Best idea wins. We are all in service of the song, and whatever moves that song forward. If it doesn’t make the song better, it’s out.
We’ve come a long way when it comes to taking things from an idea to completion. I’m really proud of that. I’m also sure that our best work still lies ahead. I can’t wait to hear it!
CM: I totally agree with the sentiment of the best work being ahead. That’s one of the things that makes being part of a newer band so exciting. The very beginning was exciting because we were finding our style and feeling out the chemistry. Now I feel like we’re finally in a place where we’ve done a lot of the work to find our footing in the writing process, which has made our current songs even better, but are still new enough where it’s invigorating to see what direction we go in. And almost our entire set that you hear us play in our live shows are songs that haven’t even been released yet, and those are the songs I like best! So come see us play!
As far as how our songs actually end up getting made, the beginning is almost always the same. JC comes in with an idea with all of the instrumentals pre-recorded. Then he hands it off to me and Sam where I go home and write a loose melody and lyrics and Sam works his magic on the drums with the beat. Then we come back together in the studio, show what we came up with, and collab on what does and doesn’t serve the song best.
Where the guys have seen my stubborn side come out would be when I get attached to lyrics. When there’s an initial first draft of a melody, I try not to write lyrics that I get too attached to because I know we’re way too early in the song-writing stage and things could drastically change rhythmically where I’ll have to throw the current lyrics out the window. But I like to at least start with a solid story and inspiration that I develop during those first few initial listens of the instrumentals that JC has created. How do they make me feel? What do they make me think of? How does that relate to me in the sense of story and how could that be relatable to other people? From there, it’s all about playing with phonetics, syncopation, and vowel sounds. The vowel sounds are SO important! A wrong vowel sound, especially on a sustained note, can sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. So I’m good as long as I have some rough lyrics with the vowel sounds in place and a loose storyline going on in the beginning. Then I finalize once I know the song is pretty much done because the lyrics are so personal to me and I put a lot of work into them. I was really into writing poetry and journaling as a kid so it’s run deep in me for a very long time. It’s where I find a lot of my self-expressing satisfaction and the guys have been very accommodating when allowing me to express myself in that particular medium.
And JC is right. Sam is the judicial branch. JC and I will be standing in the studio with 2 opposing opinions and then we both just look at Sam and say ‘What do you think?’. It usually takes a moment for us to shake an opinion out of him. Maybe that’s another reason why we’ve been wanting to make sure the 4th member is a good fit, because then we’ll no longer have a clear tiebreaking party during writing sessions!
But we’ve gotten really good at compromising along with knowing when to pull back on a personal opinion if a different direction ends up being a better move for the song. I will say, there have been times where a melodic suggestion has come up that’s been great, but as a vocalist, I have to be the one that puts the boundary up when there’s something that I know my voice simply can’t execute particularly well. Granted, the guys have gotten a lot better sense of what would and wouldn’t sound good on my voice the more they’ve gotten to know it. I have an unusually high range when it comes to where my singing voice sits naturally so they’ve had to adjust to that when it comes to writing as well. As JC said, I come from a classical background, but it all seems to fit particularly well into this genre, which I’m grateful for. I’ve encountered plenty of music writing situations in the past where people will want my voice to be something that it just can’t be, and I’ve been lucky that that’s not the case here.
I’m definitely not a cool kid when it comes to what I listened to growing up. Soooo much pop music! A lot of R&B too. It had to have emotion, that’s for sure. But I was exposed to a really wide range of genres as a kid because my whole family is really musical. And I think that wide range early on has majorly helped my songwriting skills. There’s something to be said about the writing of a good pop song. I will say I have an ear for a decent chorus hook and I think that comes from listening to so much pop as a kid. There were a LOT of songs I’d play on repeat on my boombox in my room until I was totally sick of them. Honestly, a lot of Mariah Carey. I was one of her biggest fans in the nineties. I also remember being incredibly moved by Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” as a kid. It’s so emotional and the layering done with his vocals is gorgeous. But again, the emotion! That’s what really gets me with a good song. I feel it, then I write it.
GCM: Your music in the new song “Waiting for June” has a shimmery hazy kind of quality that reminds me of California so much. As a transplant from NY, I love the June gloom here. It lets me have a gothy, hazy morning then get to work and the sun is out by 3pm and I still feel ‘responsible’, haha. The song also reminds me of the heat sitting on skin and traffic but also how all the desert and ocean vibes can be …psychedelic. Like swimming pool ripples. I think the opening credit sequence of Marvel’s sadly killed Runaways tv show was also a great encapsulation of that. What does the song and the vibe of it mean to you? Also, what led you to decide to self produce the upcoming video?
JC: I’ve seen that show! I think Covid had me watching more television, things I wouldn’t have tried otherwise. Some of The Runaways was really hokey, but there were some good parts too. I do remember that intro music being kind of cool. Made me curious, so I looked up the composer. Siddhartha Kosla; he also does the music for “Only Murders in the Building.” You can kind of tell. Signature style I guess.
I won’t try to deny my Goth roots. I only kinda committed to the fashion, but I’ve worn eyeliner more than once haha. I don’t think you can be a misfit kid without finding your way to goth or metal (or both in my case) at some point. Again, it’s that whole immersive world thing. And the fact that it used to be off-putting to adults was a bonus.
It’s cool to hear you describe visuals sparked by the sounds. Hopefully that means we did something right. I like how the icy sounds in the verses contrast with the fuller, warmer parts in the chorus. And the breakdown before the last chorus was meant to have sort of a “turning point” feel. Again, kind of cinematic I guess.
CM: I love that those are the feelings and visuals “Waiting For June” conjures, because that’s totally on par with the vibe of the song. The overarching theme with the lyrics is about that feeling you get as a kid when you’re sitting in a classroom, constantly wishing summer would arrive, while constantly (and unknowingly) wishing your childhood away (oh, the innocence!). So those summer vibes and visuals are exactly what I’d imagine that child in the song to be picturing in their head.
As for music vid production, JC had some clear visuals under his belt that we had been waiting to utilize, so we decided to put those in motion for this release and it was something we could manage doing on our own. We’re very lucky that we also have connections to amazing visual artists. JC being one of them! He’s a photographer as well as a musician, which MAJORLY ups our visual game. And one of my best friends helped us on the vid as well, who happens to be a cinematographer (shoutout to Adam Brant!). The simple, yet striking visual quality of the vid allows for the viewer to enjoy something a little extra with physical visuals while allowing space to let those mental visuals resonate. Someday, you might run into us creating a video with more grandeur, but for now we’ve been choosing to lean into a more understated style that allows the music to be the focus.
GCM: Was your name a nod to the troubled 19th century Ukrainian political journal? Also, what are some lyrical themes that mean the most to you as a band. In your own words, I mean. Obviously I can listen to the songs, haha. But love to hear it elaborated on.
JC: Osnova is a Russian word. Sam brought it in. It means “foundation.” But in some contexts, apparently it can have a double meaning of “warped”. Which is very contradictory and almost doesn’t make sense to have the same word for two disparate things.
I despise coming up with names for bands. So when he explained it, I was like “done.”
Sometime later, it also dawned on me that in Portuguese, os nova means “new you”. Kind of cool too, I guess.
We picked the name long before Putin invaded Ukraine and made all things Russian despised again. I’m sure our name is a liability in some circles, but once you pick a band name you kind of just have to commit and own it.
CM: I didn’t even know about this political journal! It’s cool to hear what possible connections can be made to our name. I’ve found that people have had a lot of questions about it, but JC does a great job of explaining. The name was already in tact before I entered into the picture, so here I am, an official Osnovian!
GCM: One thing I loved about the fun Permanent Records show I curated with your band, Globelamp and Cruel Diagonals was that each of those artists have a lot of “payoff” if you are patient. I mean, the songs are good all the way through but as a deeper listener I think some artists reward people with layers. That kind of music, regardless of genre, is very important to me in 2024 when I think so much is being reduced to easy digestible nuggets or even AI trash. Thank you again for participating! And Lana Del Rabies was even there in the crowd. I was so stoked about that whole day as a fan of everyone. Do you have a lot planned for the rest of this year?
JC: Firstly, thank you again for putting that show together and asking us to be a part of it. We really enjoyed getting to meet you and the other artists. Fun show!
We actually have quite a bit of music recorded and ready to release. Many of these songs we’ve already been playing out live for the majority of the year. But because of how music works in the modern age when it comes to releasing on the various platforms, we talked with Dune Altar and decided it would be better to release them as singles rather than a full length album. Unfortunately, that does mean that we are at the mercy of a label’s release schedule. But it’s also completely understandable because we aren’t their only band. And certainly not their most lucrative, haha. We are continually grateful for everything they do for us so if that means having to be patient on releases, then we suck it up.
But suffice it to say, we’ve got plenty more stuff that we’re eager to get out and share!
In the meantime, we continue doing what we know how to do. Taking every opportunity to play good shows and evolving the music that we make together. It’s slow, but we just hope that the sound we make will continue to find its people.
CM: We had such a great time at that show! And it was so wonderful meeting you in person and seeing the other artists perform that night! I actually had a couple friends surprise me with their presence and they hadn’t seen us perform since our very first show, which would’ve been about two years ago? Anyway, it was awesome to hear that we totally blew their minds with how much we’ve grown as a band musically and performance-wise. I’m definitely excited to see how much we grow and where we are in another two years and hopefully many years after that.
That’s the plan! Personal and artistic growth.
Follow Osnova:
https://bit.ly/youtubeosnova
https://www.sptfy.com/osnova
https://www.instagram.com/osnova__band/
MORGAN Y. EVANS
Follow Morgan’s work here:
Main band photo by McKenna Mobley
Live photo by Morgan Y. Evans