Tell us your real names, country of birth, date of birth and childhood experience.
I’m Érika Martins (Erika Martyns, vocals), born on August 10, 1992 and lived all my life in Portugal. Dénis Amaral (Dénis Rhomays, guitar/producer) was born on April 5, 1995 in Hamburg, Germany but moved to Portugal when he was six. Luís Mendes (Ziig, bass) was born on July 11, 1993, lived all his life in Portugal just like David Rodrigues, (Dave, drums) but his date of birth is June 25, 1991. We all have a lot of childhood experiences that would be funny to share, but would take at least a day ahah, so in a nutshell: Before I got into music, my first experience in the artistic world was through theatre. That was what sparked my interest in live performance. Dénis interest in music started at a really young age. He learned to play piano when he was seven, saxophone when he was nine, guitar when he was about twelve, and that was also when he started to get into music really seriously. Ziig is kinda the joker in the group, he’s always cracking jokes, and whenever the mood is a bit low he manages to get everyone laughing. Dave, is the most positive and professional guy you can come across. Always pushing forward. He started playing drums literally when he was still a baby. (That might explain why he’s a monster on the drums).
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Tell us how you start your music career, your band name, musical background, experience and skills.
I started singing when I was about 7/8 years old. I was singing all the time but just for myself. At the age of 10 I got my first acoustic guitar from my godmother. That was a game changer for me. My interest in music got even bigger. I learned how to play it all by myself and in a couple of months I began to write my own songs. I sang in some projects, but I got to a point where I felt the need to create something I could really relate to. Luckily I had Denis with me to help make ARY real.
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Tell us about your genre, concept and idea behind your music video and the song.
So, about our genre… We don’t really like to label ourselves to a specific genre but I guess for people that never heard our music before, we could say that it is a mix between rock, pop and electronic music.
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Tell us everything that we need to know about you as a musician and the ups and downs you have faced in the music business.
Being a musician is not easy. We all start with that dream… That dream that takes over when we see “a specific” artist performing live, or on YouTube and we think to ourselves: “I want to be like her/him. I want to do that for the rest of my life”. Of course it isn’t as easy as we would like it to be. We dedicate almost all our time to writing music, to create something new and meaningful, we spend all our money on our art (‘cause we believe in it and want to share it), and that should be enough right? No, the struggle gets even bigger as closer we are to release it. The music business is mental, always changing, everyone wants a piece for themselves, a lot of “unhealthy” competition among artists (especially by local ones once you start getting noticed)… But no matter how hard we get “knocked down”, what make us grow as artists/musicians is having the strength to get up on our feet again and again, learn from our mistakes and never give in.
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Tell us about other members of your band, crew or music video director and how the music video was shot.
ARY started just with Dénis and me. Soon Ziig joined the band and later on David. Dénis Rhomays has his own studio and there’s where ARY music is created and recorded. For our music video we worked with Iberico Alex, (photographer and video director from Belgium). He helped us directing it and was also the camera operator. All the post-production was made by me.
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Tell us how long you have been in the music industry, your experience and your future goal.
I’m a music addict since I remember but got more serious into the music industry about 2011. Started singing in cover bands, but at the same time I was always writing my own music as an hobby and kept it just for myself. After a while I got to a point where I started to feel more confident about my voice and songs, and working side by side with Denis for a long time now, definitely was what made me jump from performing other artists music to perform my/our own. I’m totally focused on ARY, and our future goal is to spread our music, tour on bigger venues and get more people engaged with what we do. There’s no better feeling than read messages from our followers congratulating our recently released work “I Think It’s You” and sharing their positive feedback with us.
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Tell us what inspires you to write, compose and sing.
A lot of things., sometimes it can be my personal life that can be a mess, and writing about it is a way to express how I’m feeling and at the same time take some weight out of my mind. Other occasions I get inspired by stories about my friends and what they’re going through, or what’s currently happening in the world.
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Tell us the secret behind making a hit song.
That’s a great question. I wish I knew. I don’t think there is a secret behind making a hit song. I do believe that being conscious about what you’re trying to achieve sonically, and being lyrically honest can help get people engaged to your song, because they might relate themselves to the story you’re telling. Making it a hit doesn’t ‘ just depend on the artistry of song, but how you promote it, and how you well connected you are to get it spread to the masses.
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Tell us the message you will like to pass to your fans out there.
I would like to thank them all for their awesome support, their messages, their comments on our socials and everything. It might sound cliché but it’s true, without them nothing would be possible.
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