Indie pop rockers ASPN on In This Dream ahead of release party Saturday at The Rino

ASPN. // Photo Courtesy of ASPN

Last August, The Pitch premiered “In This Dream”—a single from Kansas City indie pop band ASPN. We were incredibly psyched to hear the band’s blend of ’80s synth pop and modern indie pop, and the band’s energy was undeniable. Here we are, almost a year later, and ASPN is now releasing their debut full length, also entitled In This Dream. The album has taken a good, long while, dating all the way back to the band’s formation, and they’re having a release party this Saturday, June 22, at the Rino in North Kansas City to celebrate.

We spoke with lead singer Abigail Wallner and lead guitarist Mario Perales to discuss what it took to bring these songs from their heads to your ears.

The Pitch: When we premiered “In This Dream” last year, at the time, you mentioned that you all had been writing this song since 2021. What’s it like to have it now as part of a collection of songs?

Abigail Wallner: It’s been really great to see all of these songs go through their various stages, starting off as just these demos that we would take on our phones, moving to using professional recording equipment, then moving into an actual studio, seeing them come to life, and have that final breath that makes the song what it is.

We have been working on this album itself since 2020 and that song specifically since 2021, so it has been a couple years in the making, and it just feels really good to have those songs out there. It’s been really awesome to see those go from the conception, the ideas, the memos in my phone—where I just wrote down some lyrics real quick—to this finished product.

Where was this recorded?

Abigail: We recorded it at a studio in Grandview with a guy named Logan Murphy, who was part of a band called Familiar. I connected with him through that band because I had been a fan of their music and I found out that it was all self-produced and that he did all the production. I reached out to him, we connected, and then he was just working at this conglomerate of a studio. There’s a bunch of different producers who work out of one building and we worked with him, specifically, to record this entire album.

This album represents so many different facets of ASPN. We’ve got the dancey stuff, like “In This Dream” and “Raindrops,” but then you move into like quieter modes with things like “Eight-Hour Drive.” Was balance an important part of putting this album together?

Abigail: I mean, I think we always wanted to have a couple of slower songs. We definitely didn’t want the entirety of the album to be this upbeat, high-level music. We wanted to have some slower songs and to incorporate those, but I think all of it just happened really organically and naturally. That’s kind of just how the dice was rolled.

We came up with all these ideas and sometimes we would think it would be a slow song. “In This Dream” actually started as this sorrowful song, then our bassist Nick Nolte and drummer Jacob Schneider came on the track one day and they had this idea of just laying down this groovy bassline, and our drummer was like, “I can run with that.”

They took it, made it, and spun it into something completely differently, and it ended up this really cool groovy song that we didn’t anticipate at the beginning. There were songs that started differently than they ended up, but it organically just had this natural balance. It just really worked well in our favor that that happened.

Mario Perales: I think that’s a great observation. I think the funniest part of our writing process, if anybody were to step in, is how sad we bring in our songs—at least Abby and I. We bring in the saddest version of each song and then somehow we always make it very upbeat. Some of them stay downbeat because when we try to make them upbeat, it just doesn’t work.

As Abby said, we find a really good balance as a band. I don’t think there’s like one voice that says, “This has to be a pop song” or “This has to be a slow song.” We all contribute and it’s fun.

I feel like any album that’s been in progress since 2020 has a very obvious reason behind it, but are there other explanations as to the time that it’s taken to make In This Dream?

Abigail: I mean, there were other factors that definitely played a role in it. We worked through a couple other members before we found this core group. We had people kind of coming and going for a while that definitely affected it before we found like, “Okay, this is our group. This is our sound,” but that definitely presented some obstacles along the way.

At one point, we did not have a drummer and Jacob, who is now our drummer, was the rhythm guitarist who stepped in and said, “I play drums.” We had to like do some workarounds, figure out what was working, what was not working. I think that when we got this group and we started recording this album is when everything kind of fell into place. The reason that it was taking so long is because we didn’t have the right group. We didn’t have the right set of people. And now that we do, it’s fallen into place and we were able to get the album recorded and released.

Mario: Yeah, I will say that to Abby’s point, it was a lot of growing pains. Once we got the core group, it was actually pretty fast once we got it. I think if you were to take our studio time for that album, I think we recorded one song a day. Once we were in the studio, we knew what we wanted to do, and that was just because we had so much growing pains and so much time to get to that point. The time we did get to the studio, we were really locked down.

You mentioned that the two of you bring the saddest versions of these songs, but how does playing them live change them for you all as a group?

Abigail: I guess for me, most of the time when I come into the rehearsals with a song or an idea, I don’t play any instruments besides piano, and even then, I’m not going to be out there soloing piano or anything, but I have an understanding of chord progressions and what sounds nice, know the notes, and can figure things out.

So, I’ll take chord progressions and lyrics to rehearsal, and I’ll just play them for the band. Most of the time, I’ll record it and just play it through our in-ear system, and from then on, it’s pretty much everyone taking their own instrument and just adding their flair into it. I don’t know how to tell Jacob how to drum, we don’t really like infringe on each other’s creativity very much. It’s just everyone bringing their own thing to the table.

I will say that when we go out and play them live, it definitely does have a different energy than playing it in rehearsal, obviously. There’s like a little bit more infectious energy that you can feel from the group and sometimes there’ll be an added fun bass or drum that is just cool and different. It’s just constantly sparking new ideas like, “Oh, I remember what you did in that show. That was really cool.” It evolves naturally based on all the talent in the other musicians and what they bring to the table.

Mario: I think the only thing I would add is that there’s a sense of trust within everybody in the sense that, like, Abby comes in with no real authoritative power to say how the song is going. She trusts us and we also trust her. For example, I come up with instrumentals and I give Abby the hardest job, which is to come up with lyrics and melodies to just chord progressions that I write, which are sometimes just out of whack, but she figures it out. I don’t know how.

It’s a sense of everyone just bringing it together and it’s that magic. Even if you were to hear us when we record it, we can’t even pinpoint to exactly when the moments happen. It just kind of happens by the end of it and that’s why we keep doing what we do.

The release show for ASPN’s In This Dream is Saturday, June 22, at the Rino with Harper K and Heath Church. Details on that show here.