Interstate Royale
“Social Butterfly” is the second album from British and worldwide electronic collective Interstate Royale. Interstate Royale is headed by its core member Matt Vowles, who writes and produces the songs as well as collaborates with both new and former songwriters to form the collective.
The Interstate Royale project has been going for about four years. According to Vowles, for this second album “Social Butterfly”, “I happened to be working on a film with Sound Designer Martin Hernandez (Birdman / Revenant) and whilst watching the closing credits, I was captivated by the singer Mariela Espinosa from the Ecuadorian band Munn. I thought her voice was just amazing. After reaching out to Mariela, she agreed to guest vocal on one of the tracks. “When it Falls” was completed a few months later – and based on the success of that first collaboration, Mariela went on to co-write half of the songs with me and performed on every one.”
“I always had the intention that this project would have a more cinematic feel. I’m a big movie soundtrack fan – I also score for film and on the other side of my career I am a Sound Designer and Re-Recording mixer. I had recently finished collaborating on Kristen Stewart’s short film “Come Swim”. I took the sound designer role whilst St. Vincent wrote the score. The end result was a very dark and brooding soundtrack that turned out really powerful. I decided at that point that I wanted the Social Butterfly project to feel much more cinematic in nature. I am from Bristol, England – home to and in the same generation as Massive Attackand Portishead. These bands were a big influence on me. I am also a huge 80’s new wave fan too. The end result of Social Butterfly, hopefully, has a bunch of these influences in its sound.”
Other collaborators on the album are Ashley Dawson, Tatyana Kalko, Jordan Anholt and Alexa Jesse. “It’s great collaborating with other writers – sometimes you get an idea in your head of which direction the song should go and then another writer might just flip it 180 degrees and come up with something totally unexpected. That’s why I love doing this so much!”