“Laissez – faire. Stimulus. Excitement;” when asked to describe their music in three words, Brian Adkins described his band Going Pro just about as uniquely as the group’s music style.
The Connecticut alt-pop group recently played at the Space to a pretty responsive crowd. “It’s a good feeling knowing that we’ve been getting great reception,” Adkins said, but they’re always looking towards the future for improvement, “It’s hard to play the perfect show though. We haven’t come close to peaking yet. Ideally, we would never peak, but would always keep getting better.”
The band’s formation was a long, but rewarding, process that began with Adkins and co-songwriter Mark. “(We) started writing songs from scratch with his beatbox vocals for percussion, organ, bass, and vocals. We didn’t want any guitars on the songs for the most part because we couldn’t find “fun” sounds from it any longer. I personally wanted to stay away from the guitar on the initial recordings because of the pain of getting a guitar perfectly in tune.”
A Craigslist ad brought lead singer Nicole into the mix as the boys knew they were writing for a female lead since the group’s conception. “She’s passionate and wants to drive this thing as far as it can go,” Adkins praised Nicole, “She keeps getting better.” She also helped find the final piece to their puzzle, drummer Mike through some very creative research, “We couldn’t contact him through Bandmix because he never visited his profile, so we googled the crap out of his name and visited all the previous addresses he lived at by way of internet white pages, knocking on doors asking if he still lived at each of the addresses, and trying to trail his whereabouts in the town he lives in by asking the current house owners if they knew where his current residence was. It was stalking…someone we never met,” but after a few more calls, they got in touch and Going Pro was complete.
First listening to Going Pro I had no idea what to expect. Their heavily layered tracks keep the listener engaged and Nicole’s voice fits perfectly in the nooks and crannies of their sound. It’s certainly very different than anything you’ve ever hear before and I love it! I can definitely hear influence from some of the bands Adkins has been into lately, including Chromeo, 4Hero and Internet Club, although if he could listen to one album for the rest of his life it would be The Supremes greatest hits.
Looking at their social media, a theme of “creative music solutions” is evident. Adkins explains that it’s a little bit of parody and reality. “I would say 25% the former and 75% the later for me personally. We liked the idea of putting a pure marketing perspective in front of our music, with a somewhat generic slogan like this that a company would use as their one line ‘finish them’ marketing attack. Commercial branding is funny to us, but not necessarily in a bad way, and this is where the ‘reality’ part comes in. We want to deliver quality results. We want to make great music that’s both fun and challenging. We like to make music that pleases us, and hopefully other people. It’s an offer to someone. We’re going to help you out. How? By listening to our music. We strive to provide solutions to mediocre listening experiences.”
Their advice on the music industry? Simple; “Love it. Know you love it… If you’re recording something that you like hearing, chances are some other people will like hearing it, whether it be your friends, or friends of friends for example.”
Be sure to check out Going Pro at goingpromusic.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/GoingProMusic and break away from your usual mediocre listening experience.
