Hailing from El Paso, Texas, the Anhedonians are an experimental prog-rock project consisting of Serge Carrasco and Matthew Santillan. Their second album, AIRA, is a science-fiction epic about a crew of astronauts who endeavor to leave a dying Earth on an interstellar ark in search of a new home for humanity. It follows their 2018 album All Went Up.

Anhedonia is an inability to experience pleasure. I’m curious as to how that idea might reI’mlate to the music you make with your project, the Anhedonians.

Anhedonia to us is the challenge to live for something greater than pleasure: a calling, a passion, a search for knowledge, community, family, love, and fellow people. Sometimes the darkest things bring light.  Always seek that pin of light somewhere… Anhedonia can be a curse, but it can also be a blessing, as it forces you to remember that pleasure is not the end goal of a life well-lived. We try to make music that searches for and welcomes the unexpected and that keeps you guessing at every turn.

Our previous album, All Went Up, explored loss and grief within mythic and epic stories and textures. This one explores the death of a visionary astronaut, Vogel, and her partner Noah’s processing of grief after she passes. He leans into an optimistic hope that ends, unfortunately, in tragedy. Noah leads AIRA through the launch of an interstellar ark, nicknamed the Vogel after her passing. Unfortunately for AIRA, just after their escape the United World Government launches an attack to highjack their ark, and AIRA is forced to flee on a raft not suitable for deep space exploration.

They are left with the choice to return to an Earth that will slaughter them, or set the raft for a distant promising star. Although all ends in loss for the astronauts in AIRA, their journey inspires those who find them in the wreckage of a crash landing light-years away and shows them that they are not alone in the universe and that other worlds exist. The album asks the listener to consider whether the call to explore is worth the ultimate price, but there’s plenty of levity and lightness to balance the gloom.

The project consist of yourself and Matthew Santillan. How did the two of you get together to form the Anhedonians?

We met through a mutual friend @kross_831 and started playing/writing together before our last album. We’ve continued writing together and recording this album which is the output of 6-7 years of creative effort. Matthew’s house has become our hub for practicing, recording, and shows too! It’s called The Nature House. We host bands from around the world there. 

Your music has a strong prog-rock bent. How did you get into that style of music?

We’ve always been attracted to unfamiliar, extraordinary, bizarre, transcendent, streamlike, and throughline pieces of music. Prog rock delivers these experiences consistenly. We’re into songs that tell stories–when you read a book, you don’t read the same paragraph over & over again. We hope to explore more of the formless form in every new piece we create.

There’s also a science-fiction element to it. Do you think sci-fi and prog are a match made in the heavens?

Absolutely. We delve deep into sci-fi and follow in the footsteps of progressive bands before us: King Crimson Coheed and Cambria, The Mars Volta, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Porcupine Tree, At the Drive-In, Tool, King Gizzard & The Lizzard Wizzard, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and many more.

The song “Time to Leave My Planet” features spoken-word recordings of characters as they reflect on leaving Earth behind. Who provided those voices?

Our dear friends: Javier Martinez (@taleofgiants), Gina Massarro (@amphibiandance), and Jezreel Lasala (@atehjez & @pie_music). They are amazing musicians releasing incredible records. They voiced the human characters. We also played roles in that scene and throughout the album. Also featured in the scene you mentioned are a few computerized voices that add a timbre of cold indifference; these voice the operating system of the Vogel (the ark) and of the United World Government messenger.

In your story, the United World Government destroys the space ark for what basically amounts to copyright infringement. Is that a commentary on anything in the contemporary world?

The astronauts of AIRA foraged for the parts of their ark in a desolate world that did not care about space exploration anymore. It is only after they put those parts into a usable form that the United World Government declares the component parts to be its property and effectively highjacks the Vogel for its own purposes. In the modern world, big interests and big money swallows creatives and assumes the fruits of our creative labor–our dreams–for their own purposes all the time and sometimes turn the creator’s noble intentions toward destructive ends.

Do you have any plans to perform your album live?

Yes, we are going to be playing the entirety of it on December 5th at Rosewood in downtown El Paso, Texas. Come in your best alien costume. Supporting artists are our dear friends @taleofgiants, @amphibiandance, and @king_kalopsia. We also plan to tour the Southwest. Contact us @theanhedonians if you’d like us to play in your city or if you’re an artist that would like to play El Paso.

What’s next for you?

Further exploration into sound, nature, literature, cinema, and life, and we expect that no two of our albums or projects will be exactly alike. We hope to have new music for your ears soon!