Cincinatti-based singer-songwriter, ibbi Too Vicious, has just released his latest single, Astrogirl, and we here at the Send Me Your Ears studio have been taking a listen today.
Astrogirl is inspired by the recent trend and rise of interest in astrology. The song follows themes of astrology and the concept of a girl not understanding the guy she’s with, and just wanting to be around him to meet their own selfish need for recognition.
Ibbi describes Astrogirl as his first single with a full band, and also his first single with a music video to go with it. It is a very unique and edgy emo/pop/indie track which has a cool video with it (see above).
Astrogirl starts with some electric guitars and then a click count in by the drummer before you’re straight into the full band sound.
Ibbi’s vocals are clear and present in the mix with modern production. There are times when the vocals are layered with echoes and delays. There are other times when the voice has some digital vocoder-like effects. The melody of the vocal line isn’t the focus here, it’s the speed and the enunciation of the delivery – almost more like rapping than singing with real skill to it.
We like the deliberately filtered and distorted drums. They add a real edge to the track and make it feel just a touch emo-like.
At one point during the track, there’s a brief guitar solo with very distant reverbs, at another point, the song stops for a conversation between ibbi and (we presume) the aforementioned girl, where she’s asking him to “like” her latest social media photo post and passively aggressively “noticing” that he hadn’t “liked” it. You’re then immediately launched back into the full band sound, left thinking about the superficiality of a life guided by “likes” and “follows”.
From a production perspective, a hi-pass filter at around 40Hz would remove all the sub-bass rumble and clear up the low end nicely. Also, a small cut around 750-800Hz would reduce some slightly honky tones. Another mastering idea would be to use a multi-band compressor for 3-5dB of gain reduction in each frequency band across the spectrum followed by another light compressor/limiter on the whole mix to drop another 3dB and use make up gain to bring the overall volume back up. To our ears, a little more stereo in the mix would help too. Most DAWs have a stereo plug-in which are really fun to use.
Ibbi Too Vicious has created a truly unique indie track with Astrogirl – a song which highlights the fragility of young life in the social sphere and makes you think about what’s important to you.