Lennon Midnight

Lennon:  The first instrument I learned to play was guitar. My folks got me a Fender Strat Squire with a dinky little Squire amp (it was a package deal) back in 1996 when I was fifteen. I eventually upgraded to an Ibanez Saber in 1997 for my sixteenth birthday. I still own the Saber and Squire amp. In 1998, I got into DJing and producing music on the computer via a DAW called ReBirth338 (which emulated the Roland TB303, TR808 and TR909). The DJing and music production thing for me really stuck. In 2000 when I was eighteen, I was working full time and could afford to buy my own stuff, I picked up Reason 1.0 and fell in love with that DAW instantly. It was like a huge version of ReBirth, and so much more evolved in that it allowed for custom instrumentation as well as sample usage. It also included a proper visual based sequencer which ReBirth never had. I wound up producing a lot of techno/rave styled music with it. Reason stuck with my up until current times. As an instrument (technically multiple instruments), Reason has been my favorite and most trusted for the past seventeen years!
Lennon:  There was a long period of time where I wasn't doing anything musically (from roughly 2009-2014). In that time I was rediscovering a lot of new industrial and darker music.The bands that really got me off my ass to start making music again were William Control and Psyclon Nine. Watching my favorite bands perform live was a huge, HUGE inspiration to making me get off my butt and say "Alright, I don't care what people say. I'm gonna do it this time!". From 2002 to 2006, I had a little industrial project going called Verachtung. It was a solo project and, at the time, I didn't have the money to really pick up proper gear for recording vocals and live instruments. The project fizzled out after five or six songs. Skip forward to 2015, Klebert and I had been going to quite a few shows together since we'd met in 2014. Watching these industrial and metal bands play live is what really gave me the push to say to Bert "Alright man, were gonna start a band and do something awesome!". In January of 2015, we sat down together and started working on our first song called 'Seduce Me' (back then it was called 'Seduction Addiction'). Both Psyclon Nine and William Control still inspire me to this day! They both make such amazing music that it helps drive my creativity and give tons of inspiration since every new album or single they release really pushes the envelope in regards to sound production and ability. There's always something new for me to discover in their music every time I listen!


Lennon:  Klebert and I met at work and we still work together! He's the production manager and I'm the art director for a vehicle wrap and sign shop in Las Vegas. So yeah, its kinda like being married! We see each other everyday and usually every other Saturday for band practice or recording! Both he and I contribute equally to the band. I handle all the vocals, synths/synth patches and production/mastering work. Klebert handles bass, guitar and some synth patch building. We both enjoy the dynamic of splitting everything fifty-fifty. We're both very DIY in everything we do! We do have a live drummer that joins us from time to time for gigs, but he has his own band that he's busy with. We eventually would like to add a full time live drummer as well as live synth player so we can fill out the stage a bit better. But for now, we both really enjoy the dynamic of being a duo! Studio wise, we handle everything ourselves. We just use my home studio. It's great learning how to do production and mastering ourselves. It really helps us grow as musicians and artists! We do have good friends in the music industry with a lot more experience. They contribute their advice and knowledge at times (which has been very helpful along the way), but for the most part we like working our way through problems and challenges with just a basic push in the right direction. You don't learn if you don't experience things for yourself to find the answer.
Lennon:  We formed officially at the end of January 2015. It was a bit of a slow start as I was learning new recording and production techniques as well as buying new gear for proper recording (mixer, mics, cables etc). As an artist you should never stop pushing the boundaries of your work, so I'm still learning new ways to make things sound better (I'm extremely anal about learning how to grow and perfect things). 
Lennon:  Since starting in 2015 things have gotten much smoother! Starting out was very rocky just due to being so inexperienced. The first year was the hardest. Its a common misconception for most bands or producers starting out to just crank the volume to get more sound (I made the same mistake). It's far from that. To get full, rich and loud sound it's a giant combination of leveling, compression, maximizing and EQing! It's a tricky mishmash of so many elements! Also, bit rate and frequency play a large over all role too! Fallacies was a mix of 16bit 44,100khz sound and 24bit 48,000 sound. The new EP is being recorded completely 24bit 48,000khz so everything sounds really clean and vibrant! Not saying I'm some kind of seasoned veteran at all as I'm still learning better techniques every time we write and record something new, but I have a good foundation to work with now! The sound were getting out of the songs on the new EP really beats the hell out of Fallacies! But its just due to constantly wanting to learn and then applying said knowledge! 
Lennon:  The new EP is entitled Post Trauma. Its the sequel to the storyline set in Fallacies. Backing up a bit, Fallacies was about my last three major ex's. Two of which I'm still good friends with (this took years upon years of healing to achieve). The third we don't speak much anymore as we don't mesh well personality wise. But yeah, Post Trauma is the sequel to the album in that its about three different women I've met or been involved with since the third girl on Fallacies. Fallacies had 2 songs per ex, Post Trauma will only have one. Though, each song is split into two parts. Part one of each song is an intro and part two is the actual song. Its look like total run time will be around twenty-five to twenty-eight minutes for the EP (I still need to write out and record a spoken word intro the EP like Fallacies). 
Lennon:  The first release was a huge learning process for both of us. We were getting use to how each other worked as an artist/musician, I was constantly learning ways to improve what we had previously written when starting the album. Bert wound up picking up a few new guitars and amazing new Line6 pedal board. I picked up a TC Helicon Voicelive 2, a few new mics and a new Mackie mixer with interface throughout the Fallacies recording process. Once we learned how to really work with all of our hardware properly, we wound up getting much better results! 'Wish' and 'Destroy' on Fallacies were the last two songs we did and to me, they were the two best sounding songs on the album as we had really gotten comfortable with production, work flow and recording at that time! Basically, through writing Fallacies we were really growing into functional musicians instead of those who just dabble as a hobby! Writing the new EP has been a much simpler and much faster process! I haven't had to go back a redo entire songs because my work flow in my DAW changed or because the sound quality was horrible due to improper EQing etc etc. Both Bert and I now have a MUCH better idea of what were doing and when new knowledge comes our way to make things better. It doesn't require a major reworking of every song! 
Lennon:  Hmmmm, the future of Lennon Midnight. We have one more EP planned for the Fallacies Saga which like I mentioned earlier, we will be starting on this Summer. We are going to redo three to four songs I wrote back in the early and mid 2000's. That EP will be the prequel to the story introduced on Fallacies.
Lennon:  You're absolute welcome! Thank you for the amazing interview and chatting with us! Its always an honor to do interviews with people. Honestly, we just like making music that makes us happy and we've been extremely lucky to have built interest from fans and professionals alike! I never thought in a million years that we would gain the attention and notoriety that was have in the last two-and-a-half years. Bert and I started Lennon Midnight as an outlet and something to have fun with, we never thought it would snowball into something people really dug!