Boogarins x Levitation Room

Boogarins’ Fernando “Dino” Almeida and Benke Ferraz began playing music together as teenagers in the central Brazilian city of Goiânia — creating psychedelic pop in their parents’ gardens, filtering their country’s rich musical history through a very modern lens. By the time the group’s home-recorded debut LP, ‘As Plantas Que Curam’ (2013), was released worldwide, the band had recruited a proper rhythm section and were developing a name around Goiânia. Soon after, the group was booking regular gigs in Sao Paulo and across the country. 

Sombrero Dúvida, the band’s fourth full-length release, is a question. A play on words in Boogarins’ native Brazilian Portuguese. It’s a contraction of “Sombra ou Dúvida”, the title track of the album, which translates as ‘Shadow or Doubt’. There might seem to be a darkness to the question, given that both choices aren’t exactly cheery. Yet, Dino, the smiling, Afro-donned singer of the group tells us that “shadow” refers to a feeling related to your comfort zone, whereas doubt is the uncertainty that hits people and leads them to follow their instincts.”

“We didn’t want to write songs telling people what to do, but instead help them find their own thing. So, there are more questions in the album than answers” Dino adds. In these days of uncertainty, perhaps there’s some comfort to be found by remaining in the shadows.

In Los Angeles, where the weight and pressure of the city’s fast paced culture can make your legs feel like pillars, emerges psychedelic quartet, Levitation Room, to break the bonds of gravity with their cosmic wall of sound and thought provoking lyrics. “Just as their name suggests, Levitation Room’s music instills the listeners ears with a light feeling of floating. The dreamy guitar and Lo-Fi projections of psychedelic rock and garage are reminiscent of a deep 1960’s era, but still grounded in an alternative dreamgaze flavor that permeates modern indie music today.” - OC Weekly. Their decidedly hallucinogenic songs whisper and hum the same gentle refrain of their summer of love influences, conjuring up the cognitive imagery of sunny days at the park, spent with friends in a euphoric haze along with lyrical and sonic meditations on life, love, society and self-awareness. 

In tradition, and much like the bands and musical troubadours that inspired them, Levitation Room started out with late night jam sessions in a dimly lit garage between fellow musicians and long time friends, Julian Porte and Gabriel Fernandez. Julian, a dedicated street musician who felt he needed a broader platform, found chemistry with Gabriel, who he knew as a guitar player in various teenage punk and garage bands around town. Coming together in 2012, they bonded over a shared love of British Invasion groups (The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones) and 1960’s psychedelic outfits like The Grateful Dead, Electric Prunes, The Pretty Things and began drafting their earliest tunes. It wasn’t until the late summer of 2012, that the band came to fruition when they found a rhythm section in two individuals with almost identical names; drummer, Johnathan Martin, and bassist, Jonathathan Martin. The four began writing songs, playing gigs and recording music out of a quaint studio in East LA. 

After the release of their self recorded demo “Levitation Room Vol. 1”, they quickly began gaining momentum and performing at local music venues throughout Southern California. 2015 saw the release of their first official debut EP “Minds Of Our Own” released on Burger Records. Later in the spring of 2016, they released their first full length album, “Ethos”, with the help of their friend and new keyboardist, Glenn Brigman, who recorded and helped produce the record. Since 2014, Levitation Room has participated in various shows, tours and music festivals across the US and Europe and continues to see the growth in listeners and followers on YouTube, Soundcloud and Spotify (with nearly 2 million plays on their song “Friends”). With the promise of a potentially bright future, Levitation Room has begun to mix and finalize their second album that they hope will display their process of maturity in sound and song- writing, exploring new territories of influence in music and instrumentation, combining folk, jazz, raga, soul, pop and of course… psychedelia. Stay tuned! 

Depending on who you ask, the story of Andrew Beck and Rob Jepson’s meeting was either a thunderous epic or a heartwarming tale. Jepson remembers the two meeting in high school in Provo, Utah, Beck providing a jolt of creative electricity to boost him out of the sad songs he’d write on his new guitar. Beck remembers a mountaintop and eyes of flame, the duo speaking in tongues alongside rushing waters. “Either way, we continue to have that creative soul connection,” Jepson laughs. One listen to the debut album from the band resulting from that meeting, The Mellons, and it’s clear that the duo are capable of capturing both halves of that mystic equation.

Released in October of 2022, via Earth Libraries, Introducing… The Mellons! finds that balance somewhere in pages of the Beach Boys book of psych pop. Jepson and Beck unlocked the expansive potential of their songwriting when they found their match in another pair of collaborators. Multi-instrumentalist and producer Dennis Fuller and percussionist Ian Francis had worked together in a handful of bands, and Jepson and Beck enlisted them to join The Mellons and round out their sound. “All of these pieces of songs that Rob and I had swirling around in our heads started to magically come together,” Beck says.

Though the resultant tracks are jam packed with everything from clarinets and violins to sleigh bells and trumpets, the layers never overpower the intimate harmonies and honeyed lyrical emotionality at the songs’ core. “I wanna get closer/ I wanna go deeper/ I wanna know it all,” they sigh on opener “So Much to Say”, surrounded by twirling guitar riffs and glimmering bells.

The Mellons play a symphony’s worth of instruments, and self-producing the record largely at Fuller’s No. 9 Studios in Salt Lake City allowed them to chase that stratified sweetness to its heartfelt extreme. “Writing, arranging, and composing everything ourselves gives us the freedom to really get the exact sound we’re all interested in,” Fuller says. Always focused on the power of a taut hook, The Mellons made sure that freedom was used for a purpose. “We stay true to the musical stylings of the mid- to late-’60s while still creating room for the vogue,” Francis says. “It’s all about finding that balance.”

Even though the band members have worked together for years, they still dig for the surprises that come out of pinging ideas around the studio. The stomping waltz of “What a Time to Be Alive” revels in that bounding energy, though this time drawing its strength from streamlined muscle. The rhythm section of Fuller and Francis lock into an elephantine stomp, gamboling through a field of falsetto. “Just for a moment/ Lost in a moment/ Caught in a dream,” they sing, eventually drifting cloudily into a Beatles-y outro of swaggering horn, loping percussion, and muffled laughter.

After winning over critics and listeners alike with their impressive debut, The Mellons have fine tuned their live set, playing at key venues including Kilby Court, International Artist Lounge, The Urban Lounge, Schellraiser and more.