The Nicaraguan Singer/Songwriter, Producer, and Multi-Instrumentalist Mars Rodriguez bring listeners to their knees with her blazing hot single, "Black Summer."
The one-person band ended up moving to the U.S. due to Nicaragua's political crisis, resulting in numerous lifestyle changes that led Rodriguez to home recordings where she learned how to engineer and produce music herself.
With her latest fiery single "Black Summer," we're able to hear immense sonic talent through the broad and meticulously placed instrumentals, not to mention Mars Rodriguez's forceful vocal performance. What pulls us in closer to the song is the profound instrumentation, solely crafted by Rodriguez herself; she infuses elements of Post-Punk, Blues, Alt-Rock, and Electronic into this scorching hot single.
Opening with a deep pulsating kick, "Black Summer" brings heat right from the jump. As faint electric guitar melodies flutter down from above, the upbeat pace is established and paves the way for Mars Rodriguez's vocals to enhance the atmosphere. As she begins singing powerfully desirous lyricism, the blazing rhythm guitar makes a mighty entrance and brings an incredibly forceful and authoritative aspect. Around the midway point, the instrumentation ventures off into this haunting Blues-Rock approach and swells the song into a heavily bold and robust tone. With sweltering minor-key melodies through the blazing electric guitar, we can feel nothing but power and dominance exude from the instrumentals and Mars Rodriguez's entire performance. With distant electronic keys for a haunting outro, it would be an understatement to say that "Black Summer" took us on a ride.
With tightly-wound instrumentals and a heavily intriguing vocal performance, Mars Rodriguez's music powers through as a force to be reckoned with, and "Black Summer" is no exception.
Hello Mars, thank you for joining us at BuzzMusic. We can't get enough of your dynamic and fiery hit single, "Black Summer." What inspired the single, from lyrics to instrumentals?
Well, 2019 was pretty intense, during summer I was experiencing great things, meeting people, musicians and playing at cool music venues, it was the 1st time I was doing this in LA, so that was very exciting, on the other hand, it was very sad, 2 friends of mine were going through hard times, they drastically changed in a matter of weeks. Mental illness is something we should all be talking about and taking care of... a lot of us are dealing with this.
Seeing as you create all of your instrumentals, how did you begin your creative process for "Black Summer"? How did you craft the instrumentals to take listeners on this dynamic journey, which you did so well?
“Black Summer” was one of those songs that came easily and fast. I was jamming and suddenly I had all the chords and guitar riffs, then it took me like 15 min to write the lyrics and find the melody, after that I was like, I need to make drums to play it on my next show, so I did that. I used a keyboard and my computer to make the drums and the outro. The guitars were recorded at home and some guitars were taken from the demo version, vocals were recorded at a rehearsal room.
Regarding your single "Black Summer," we can hear various genre elements within the instrumentals. What sort of genre approach were you aiming for within this single?
I love mixing raw, noisy, fuzzy guitars and delay guitars too, vocals with distortion and delay, so all of that combined with drum machines makes it kind of rock, post-punk, with a little of electronic music vibes I guess, it’s hard to explain, I really don't know how to describe it haha.
How does "Black Summer" fit into your EP "Don't Wait for Nothing"? What does the track add to the project?
“Don't wait for Nothing” EP means: Take all that you have and turn it into something, don't wait for perfection, or to have the perfect moment to do something. Sometimes, it’s scary not knowing what will happen next and that’s ok, however, we can always choose to do our best with what we have, start, learn, do. it’s like feeling fear and doing it anyway. Last year, I was playing a lot, I was also moving from house to house many times, ( I found cool people that helped me with this, I'm grateful). On the other side, my country’s political situation was and is beyond scary and I had friends dealing with mental illness, plus personal situations, so it was a lot of emotions but for some reason, chaos makes me do things, that’s how I cope with all this madness and difficult times.
What has been your biggest inspiration?
People that keep going even though things are fucked up, people that are not afraid to speak their truth. And also, I’m deeply inspired by nature, the moon, silence, noise, aliens, monsters, etc.