All the experiences I had made me realise it was all meant to be, and we weren’t too far from making success a reality for ourselves.” Mac got me VIP passes and made things possible. He remembers the time DeMarco got him backstage at Coachella, “those were uplifting experiences. Their relationship was affirming in many ways, especially when paranoia re-emerged through drug related headlines about other musicians within the industry. When he moved back to the States and settled in Los Angeles, DeMarco gifted him a synthesiser on which he wrote Chamber of Reflection. Before Eyedress was signed, he met DeMarco in Singapore, opening for him under another moniker before his solo project took off.
I think TikTok is the one that really helped.”Īs his engagement to his audience increased, so did his other connections, including psych-pop artist Mac DeMarco. I was always paying attention to what new things were coming out and shared my music on all platforms. That rise to fame has been supported by global communities online via social media outlets such as TikTok, a platform that “helped reach all those kids who are fans now. His paranoia set in early on when he received death threats and learned to protect himself from Filipino street violence, vocalised on his 2017 album Manila Ice, which also highlights his insecurities as an outsider to the typical Hollywood-ised ‘American dream’, whilst internalising a profound sense of self.Įyedress has been making waves on indie shoegaze scene for some time now, not least with his song, Jealous landing on Billboard’s Hot Alternative Songs chart, and appearing on Rolling Stone’s 25 Breakthrough Artists list. He recalls “in the Philippines, I was in a really poor environment, so I don’t think I had the chance to listen to music the way I did when I was in America.” Nevertheless, he had a whole life before moving to the States.Įyedress grew up in Manila, navigating life with anxieties at a young age.
His best friend was a hardcore emo guy, and he had a high school classmate who played drums for Ty Segall, which inspired Eyedress to rock up to class with bass riffs and mod 60s blazers aplenty he was in some sort of alternate universe to the edgy dreamers of early 2000s Orange County. READ MORE: “I’m in my robe just playing guitar all day!”: Jared James Nichols on the pandemic woodshedding that led to his new EP After joining his first band at age 13, he quickly dove into different musical genres and the world of indie music in projects such as Claud Winters, Bee Eyes and more recently, The Simps, with his niche taste for music stemming from skateboarding videos in the SoCal scene.
When a punk dude with dyed hair and tight pants asks you to play bass for him, you say ‘yes.’ That’s exactly what happened to Idris Vicuña, also known as Eyedress, when he met the band members of The Liberal Underground outside a San Clemente movie theatre.