The third album of the Nashville created-gone to New York band, the Sufis, title “After Hours.” The album, released on Burger Records, is the first of band since they moved from Nashville, to New York. It focuses on “contrasts,” says the Sufis’ Calvin Laporte, as many of the songs were written and composed during the after hours, after long days of work. The contrast starts with the album’s cover photo, shot by California-based photographer, Sasha Eisenman.
The Sufis are a duo, consisting of Calvin Laporte and Evan Smith. “After Hours” is out on January 12, 2018.
Antonio Villaseñor-Baca: All of the writing and recording was done in about a month; what was the major influences in it? What are the themes in the album?
Calvin Laporte: Well, the reason we did it so quickly in a month is, we originally had another album coming out for Burger [Records], but we decided to shelve it and we made a whole new album right before the release date. So while we were making the album, we work with deadlines, you know? So we had just like a month to get everything done, which is kind of difficult. I guess we were thinking about that. Honestly we weren’t thinking of trying to do anything too much. A lot of the album was more, kind of comes from the subconscious. We kind of changed the way that we record, like on some songs we’d write a drum part, then write the song to it. And in terms of the concept of the record, it’s probably influenced a lot by getting off work and kind of just going around New York, because we moved here from Nashville since our last record, and just go to shows and hanging out and meeting people. Just overall see the atmosphere of New York, like around midnight, is a pretty good description.
A: Is that how [the album] gets the name ‘After Hours?’
C: Yeah, exactly. A lot of the stuff s like, I was working, I was like being an artists’ assistant, and I’d usually get off at around midnight and we’d meet up and write our songs and come up with the ideas like super late at night, just walking around, or just like getting coffee.
A: And how does it tie in with the album cover, or was it random?
C: It’s all tied in. For this album we were interested in contradictions. What we’re interested in is this idea, like see the underworld but also the contrast if it were more like religious and spiritual. Some of the songs on the album are influenced by the Tao Te Ching, the Chinese philosophical text. The other half of it is kind of influenced by this really dark underbelly kind of thing. We collaborated with Sasha Eisenman, who’s like photographer from California we got hooked up with. He kind of helped us come up with the idea. We wanted to have like the after hours and like it’s obviously not nighttime in the photo. It’s all meant to be contrasted with each other.
– By Antonio Villaseñor-Baca
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