Twilight Sleep

By Susan Brooks
Photo by Joya Martuscello

“At the beginning of the record, it was just a record, and by the end it was a band,” says singer Tracy Marcellino regarding the eponymous first album and germination of the now Los Angeles-based five-piece Twilight Sleep.

Twilight Sleep’s evolution from idea to actively gigging band has been a gradual but exciting process, fueled by the group’s fearless creativity and ability to work as a productive team, culminating in last month’s release of the Race to the Bottom of the Sea EP, their sophomore and most fully-realized effort to date. Full of movement and feeling with sound combinations ranging from sleek to slightly raw, there is a post-punk vibe to the music that feels like 1983 married to an up-to-the-minute Silver Lake sensibility. A bit of goth and electronica pull from the band’s early Bay Area roots, and founding member Raj Lathigara’s years of training in classical Indian music yields impeccable song structures. The lyrics are Marcellino’s, inspired by sounds she and Lathigara create, and she calls their content “a snapshot of my mind.” The first track, “Night So Lush,” sounds like a handful of jewels scattered on velvet, and blue feathers and rubies are just a few of the graceful images interwoven on “Bluebird (Red Sky).”

The seeds of Twilight Sleep were planted in Marcellino, who had yearned to form a band for years, and Lathigara, whom she met in San Francisco where he was producing and playing in the underground. The two collaborated in the studio to craft Twilight Sleep’s first record and moved to Los Angeles to launch their collective career. Over time, they expanded from a duo to a five-piece as the needs of their musical development directed. Lathigara says, “Everyone wanted to see a live show, so we relocated to L.A. where the band scene is more thriving, and we got a few more players.”

“We didn’t want any sequencing,” adds Marcellino. “We wanted to be a live band. That stuff in the studio is amazing, but it’s not fun to play.”

With a background in punk and industrial, drummer Joe Suarez (also of London After Midnight) came to the band through the back door, first directing a video for the song “Ice Capade” off Twilight Sleep’s first album. Eddie Ebell had a long history as a classical guitarist and eventually moved on to electric guitar and bass, playing the latter for Twilight Sleep. Guitarist Philip Triantafyllou was a Northern California friend of Marcellino’s who she had known since junior high, and joined the band when he moved to Los Angeles. Together their contributions fill out Twilight Sleep’s live sound, and all five members flesh songs out in the studio, building on Lathigara’s production and Marcellino’s poetic impulses with communal trust and respect for one another’s visions. About their process, Ebell jokingly says, “When Tracy wants to write a song that sounds like muscle striations of a black sexy horse, we give it to her.”

By using the concentrated musical vitality in the Silver Lake area as a springboard, Twilight Sleep has carved out a niche with support from clubs and fellow musicians alike. “I feel like the more good bands there are, the more fun it is,” Marcellino comments.

For the EP, they handled everything but the mastering within the group, from producing the songs down to designing the packaging. With an eye toward future fruition, Marcellino says she’d like to be on a label at some point to see what would happen, but that she is happy for now with the way things are. She sums it up thusly: “Doing stuff DIY now goes so much further than it did. This is such a good time to be in a band.”

www.twilightsleepmusic.com