In Draag: Indie outfit to play Meow Wolf with Wednesday
May 12—Adrian Acosta is often working towards finding balance in life.
Along with a day job, Acosta spends downtime working on music as part of the indie band Draag.
The dance/electronic group recently released the EP, "Actually, the quiet is nice."
"We were working on that music for six or seven months," Acosta says. "After our previous record, we went on tour and when we got back we were working on an LP for the last year. During the process, we felt like we needed another album between two full-lengths. The EP forced us to drift away for a moment and create something really different."
The EP was recorded in Monterey Hills and Sylmar, California. It was mixed, engineered and produced by Acosta and Ray Montes.
Acosta is joined in the band by Montes, Jessica Huang, Nick Kelley and Eric Fabbro.
Draag is opening for Wednesday when the tour makes a stop at Meow Wolf on Tuesday, May 14.
During the writing process for "Actually, the quiet is nice," the members of Draag had more songs than they needed.
Acosta says whittling down the number wasn't very difficult.
"You can kind of feel it right away," he says.
The writing process is like second nature for the band.
Acosta admits while the writing can come easily, each of the band members is also balancing a day job alongside the band.
"Lately, I will already have a song mapped out and I will present it to the rest of the band," he says. "They will come in and put their flair on top of it. That's where the collaboration comes into play. There's a song called 'Recharge' and that song was born off of just having Nick experimenting with this modular synth machine. It was supposed to be this ambient track and it evolved into something bigger."
Acosta says the rest of the EP was born from presenting the ideas to the band.
"The rest of the band stepped in and completed it," he says. "It's like this unspoken language. It kind of happens and I forget the entire process. It comes together seamlessly. It's as if the universe is allowing the moment to be present."
Although the EP is out, Acosta and crew continue to work on an upcoming full-length album.
For the current tour, Acosta says the band has curated a set list that works well for a live show.
Getting there was full of tough decisions.
"There are a few factors that we have to take into account before we go on tour," he says. "A lot of our songs are written in very odd guitar tunings. You can only take so many guitars with you. We did have to sift through the songs to make sure that we have enough guitars on tour."
Draag also hasn't played many of the cities on the tour and the band is treating each stop as an introduction.
"We've never played Meow Wolf before and it's exciting because we've heard so many great things about the venue," he says. "Being able to get out on the road helps us keep our musical mojo."
