Interview: Demure For Sure To Release New Album + Shares “Party Hardy” Video

Based out of NYC, artist Zach de Sorbo crafts genre-hopping, otherworldly music as Demure For Sure. His new album, Tie-Dye Shadows, explores the breadth of Sorbo’s striking sonic narratives while stoking dark, dreamy visuals in the mind’s eye.

To go along with Demure For Sure’s latest video for “Party Hardy,” we sent along some interview questions to get to know him a little better. Check it all out below and look for Tie-Dye Shadows out this Summer.

Hi, Demure For Sure! Congrats on your new album. Can you tell us a little more on who you are and how you first started the project?

Thanks. Demure For Sure started a few years ago as a bedroom project in New York. Just a name to slap on some recordings I was making at the time outside of my former boy band. I was just putting out EPs of varying styles and genres for a while. Then when I decided it was time to play some shows, my friend Dennis joined in on drums, and we filled out the rest of the stage with projections and LEDs.

What’s your songwriting process like? Who are some of your biggest influences

I usually start with something visual. It could be a movie or just an idea of something basic like bubblegum or soda. Then I muster up some sort of timbre to associate with it in my head, and then write some music around that with lyrics to match. Although that isn’t always the case. It’s probably a little more mood dependent than that.

I’m really influenced by any sort of movie or show that has great music associated with the images and disposition. Stuff like Badlands, Drive, and Danger 5.

What are some of the larger themes at play on the album? What sort of headspace were you in when writing it?

On Tie-Dye Shadows I tried to create a synergy between all the facets of each song. I wanted vocal style, lyrics, color and genre to all be specific and in sync. For a song like “It’s Magic” I wanted to sing like I was casting a spell, make really twinkly and whimsical sounds, and use every synonym I could think of for hocus pocus. All within a fairly pop context though.

Also, I had a few older songs I never did much with that I wanted to remake – stuff I had done for other projects. “Baby Break Me” was a song I did for a web series called Ghost Stories in 2011. I wanted to add vocals and re-record some of the music. “I Wanna Be Your Boy” was a song I had thought about using in my aforementioned former boy band, Astro Club Blonde. “Come On, Let’s Ride” was a song I had originally pitched for a movie called Man Underground before I did the score.

If money were no object, what would your dream live performance look like?

I always wanted to have glitter cannons before I heard about something called glitter lung. Now I fantasize about a set that looks like an industrial factory, full of iron levers, cranks and gears, each controlling a different sound, but not necessarily making industrial music.

Any new artists/venues/purveyors of the arts in your local scenes you could turn our readers onto?

I think I’ve been to every Pharmakon show in New York over the past year-plus. The best was at Trans-Pecos in Ridgewood last summer at the Summer Scum festival. It was in the basement, jam packed and had to be 100 degrees. Really abrasive and loud with a strobe light. She started crawling along the pipes on the ceiling and screaming. It was horrifying.

Where can we follow you and any shows coming up?

We’ll have an album release show soon, hopefully sometime in June. Still have to lock down a venue, but we have CDs. We’ll post the details on Facebook when it’s all set.

Any parting thoughts? Open platform!

A few months ago we made a music video for the lead track on Tie-Dye Shadows called Party Hardy. Expect a sequel to it in the next month or so called French Kiss.