Berlin’s emerging rock outfit, Off Lights, have recently unveiled a video for their latest single, “Man Or Machine.” Metal Insider recently caught up with vocalist Julian Ticona Cuba to delve into their style and what fans can anticipate in the near future.
Can you tell us about the origins of Off Lights and how the band came together during the pandemic?
Hi, we are Off lights. We consist of Thorsten (guitars & songwriting), Sascha (drums) and Julian (vocals & songwriting). We originally all come from Frankfurt, Germany, where we got to know each other during the pandemic and now live in Berlin. Sascha and I already knew each other from a band project we both played in before, and I got to know Thorsten during the pandemic through a musician forum on Facebook. He posted an ad there regarding the search for a singer and mentioned several bands I liked as references. I had then listened to a demo of him on SoundCloud and was immediately in love. Then everything went very quickly – I sang something on this demo, sent him the track, he thought it was great and from then on we made music together.
What inspired the lyrics and theme for the song “Man Or Machine?”
After our previous single “Into The Night“ we wanted to release something more positive and hopeful with “Man Or Machine.” The song deals critically with the topic of artificial intelligence and reflects in everyday situations, symbolically the inevitable conflict that manifests itself in the question “are we man or machine?” Through the interplay of melancholic lyrics and positive sounding music, we wanted to reflect the ambivalence of the subject in the song and encourage through the hopeful message, despite the increasing mechanization of the world, not to lose faith in the truth and in our own humanity.
How did the concept for the video for “Man Or Machine,” come about?
In real life I am an advertising and music video film director, so it was clear to me that I also write and direct the concepts for our music videos. With the concept for the “Man Or Machine” video I wanted to show in an aesthetic and expressive way the desperation that the characters in the song lyrics experience in different everyday situations. I didn’t want to simply show the situations that are described in the song lyrics, but consciously try to visualize or represent a feeling that everyone can identify with. This feeling that the machines and the digital world take us more and more and do not let go. The cables that surround the dancer and prevent him from moving forward are an expression of how trapped we have become in this world, and at the end of the video the singer faces his digital self, which in turn is a reference to our digital stamp that each of us leaves on the web.
How would you define the band’s musical style and influences?
I think in general it can be described as classic modern rock with influences from bands from the early 2000s. Influence-wise, I personally also like to listen to hardcore bands like Get The Shot, Nasty, Thy Art Is Murder or Knocked Loose but then again I love classic radio pop and especially catchy and well produced Scandinavian pop by Max Martin (Backstreet Boys, Nsync, Katy Perry, Pink, Ariana Grande, etc). Both push buttons for me that make me feel good and inspire me when writing. I also love rock, especially early 2000’s rock, emo and new metal of course… I think you can hear that most in our music. With Sascha our drummer it’s the same with the music-influence I guess and with Thorsten it’s rather more modern rock that he listens to and what he orients himself on when writing.
What was the process like creating the debut EP, Back To Life?
There were basically two ways of writing the songs for the EP: For some songs, I already had complete song ideas with chord progression and vocals ready (e.g. “Into The Night ” & “Man Or Machine”). I then recorded these as acoustic demos and sent them to Thorsten. He bulds rock songs out of these acoustic demos with drums, guitar and bass and then we refine the songs until they were ready to go into the studio with. There, Sasha joins in and adds his drum style to the songs. Another way is, similar to hip-hop artists who click through samples in the studio until something inspires them, I click through all of Thorsten’s demos until a playback clicks and I record vocals and ideas to it. For example, “Back To Life“ was like that. It was the first song I heard from Thorsten and immediately recorded the first verse and the chorus to it after I heard it.
Berlin is known for their music scene. How has the city itself influenced your music?
Berlin is primarily known for techno and electro. From our experience, the rock and metal scene is rather small here to be honest. Therefore, the sound of the city has not really influenced us. But what influences us lyrically are the many different people who live here and their stories. The city is huge and full of people, but you can still feel totally lonely and lost. There’s a lot going on every day – you try to take it all in but you still feel like you’re missing something. Joy and sorrow are very close to each other, and this stirring ambivalence can be exhausting but also totally inspiring (if that makes any sense haha). The musical influences come with us mainly from the personal music tastes, which are slightly different for each of us, which we try to unite in our music.
What’s next for Off Lights? What are some exciting future plans fans can look forward to?
We will be playing the support shows with Written by Wolves in Germany in November. This includes four dates in Frankfurt, Berlin Hamburg and Cologne. Come by if you’re in the area, it’ll be fun. Apart from that we are planning to record our first full-length album next year.
If you want to stay up to date just follow us on our Socials like Instagram/ Facebook or Spotify and Youtube for new releases, shows and everything else: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify.
Is there anything else you want to say or add?
Thanks for your interest and reading this! Stay tuned for our upcoming release. We got so much in store for you which we can’t wait to share. Love, OFF LIGHTS.
