Everyone claims to be a DIY artist these days. You won’t know the true meaning of the word until you hear, see, and experience Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor. “A sonic spiral that at times can make you feel like you are drowning in a spectrum of the most vibrant colors and at times can make you feel like you are at a funeral,” says front-man Sean Morrow of the look, sound and feel of his band. “The live visuals, artwork, and music all work in equilibrium to achieve this aesthetic”.
Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor not only write and perform moody electrifying psych rock that they record in their aptly named Space Camp Studios they also create trippy artwork, and put on a live light show that could make anyone flashback. Sean Morrow (guitar, vocals), Eric Oppitz (bass, organ) and Rick Sawoscinski (drums, percussion) are unified in their pursuit of SOYSV’s vision. Oppitz, an accomplished designer, makes the artwork for album covers, silk-screened posters and other merch; Morrow, whose voice has been compared to Jim Morrison’s, handles a majority of the booking and is always looking for new opportunities with his networking skills; while Sawoscinski handles promotion, marketing and technology. Wayne Woodward adds stunning visuals to the band’s live set, making him their secret weapon. Anyone who has experienced a Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor performance has felt the power of the swirling, ever-changing images he shapes.
Though from Detroit, Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor’s reach is long. They’ve shared the stage with The Black Angels (with whom they are often favorably compared), Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dead Meadow, and Acid Mothers Temple; joined the elite ranks of psych bands at Austin’s Psych Fest for the second time in 2014; toured with Holydrug Couple, Loop, The Warlocks, and The Telescopes, and played SXSW and CBGB Music & Film Festival. Their previous album, Spectra Spirit has been repressed on vinyl three times since its release in 2011. In Summer 2015, the band will embark on their first European tour and tour the US.
Their upcoming release, Desert Brain, out June 2nd, not only brings Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor’s aesthetic to life, but it brings to fruition years of planning the ultimate immersive listening experience. “I think we were a bit scared to make it,” says Oppitz. “It took us much longer than a typical record of a collection of songs would have taken us. Not only did we have to write the songs, but we had to compose the transitions between them and then think about how each song fit into the overall concept of the entire record.”
Shimmering layers of sound slide and collide across the 47-minute album, which was crafted to be an end-to-end experience that’s more a shifting moodscape than collection of individual songs. The band’s commitment to experimentation is as solid as ever, and Desert Brain is a testament to that approach. Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor ventured away from Space Camp Studios in search of a distraction-free environment and found themselves in a cabin in Northern Michigan. Within the wooden walls, Morrow, Oppitz and Sawoscinski tested their ideas on vintage gear, including a newly acquired Mellotron, recording all the live tracking for the record on tape. “We do a lot of experimenting, kind of need to break an idea into a million pieces and then try and put it back together,” says Oppitz. “The cabin was perfect for environment for how we work. It was a very enjoyable way to make a record.”
There’s a lot of inspiration percolating through Desert Brain, everything from the surging tension and narrative flow of Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining and Apocalypse Now to the time element of of four years passing for the band. “Lyrically and musically, we really tried to tap into the chaos, celebration, and tragedy that has affected us over the last four years,” says Sawoscinski. “Since Spectra Spirit, people in the band have faced marriage, eviction, success, breakups, the death of a good friend to addiction, career changes and displacement. Desert Brain is just four years of life.”
While the process of writing and recording a unified album like Desert Brain was challenging, the reward is a seamless, immersive journey for the listener. From the opening, flanged guitar strains of “Seventh Scene” to the juggernaut of chugging noise at the center of “What’s Your Cloud Nine 37” to the building waves of vocals, drums and tension that drive the title track, Desert Brain has texture, hypnotizing rhythm and a sonic landscape you won’t soon forget. The album, in keeping with Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor’s tradition of covering all aesthetic bases, will be released on clear and splattered blue vinyl.
