Psych-rockers Corners of the Sky welcome the wildness inside with Replay Lounge gig Jan. 15
Corners of the Sky, live under a bridge. // youtube.com/@CornersoftheSky
Over the course of the last year, psychedelic rockers Corners of the Sky have rapidly become one of our must-see live bands. When their name’s on the bill for a show, you know that it’s an event worth attending, if for no other reason than to catch their energetic reverberative set.
At the beginning of December, Corners of the Sky released their most recent album, Live Under A Bridge, a potent recorded distillation of what makes them such a thrilling band to see. As implied by the title, the band “Recorded under an old abandoned railroad bridge in North Lawrence” and “all equipment was powered by portable batteries,” as the terse summary on Bandcamp states.
Given the fact that Live Under A Bridge doesn’t sound as though it were recorded outdoors and the only way one might even guess it was recorded live is from the sheer amount of energy coming through your headphones, we had to know just how it came together, so we hopped on Zoom with Corners of the Sky’s guitarist and vocalist Jason Perez and bassist Jacob Sell to discuss just what makes recording live such an integral part of the band’s identity.
[Corners of the Sky play the Replay Lounge on Thursday, January 15, with Profile and Micha Reynolds. Details on that show here.]
The Pitch: Your first album, Live at the Dunes, came out in January of 2024, and your most recent one came out at the end of 2025. They’re both live recordings, which feels like a very good set of bookends to the last two years of the band.
Jason Perez: Indeed, we’ve come a long way. It’s a very similar vibe, too.
What’s the appeal of making a live recording, but not just in a venue? Both of those recordings were in very different but equally unusual places.
Jason: Yeah, it is just fun, man. You just go out into the wilderness, grab a couple of batteries or whatever, and just plug in your amps. It’s different–you don’t see people playing outside much anymore, at least. We’re trying to bring it back. It’s different. It’s fun. Why not?
Jacob Sell: If you ask me, it’s also a testament to just how raw it can be.
What are the challenges?
Jason: Battery life. As soon as that last song ended, we tried to do one more take of the last song, and it just died. Everything died on us.
What batteries are you using to power all of this?
Jason: So, our second guitarist, Ravi Bilgen, has this little rechargeable orange battery. I don’t know the brand. What I bought is this–I think it’s meant for boats or something similar. They’re a cell battery that you can hook like jumper cables to and then use those jumper cables to power into an inverter, and then that inverter converts that electrical energy into usable AC/DC power, and then with that, you can plug an outlet and then plug your amps.
In addition to recording the audio, you also shot video. I feel like video is just as crucial to Corners of the Sky as audio. Has that become a thing that has ramped up as you’ve gone along, or has it always been something you’ve wanted to be part of how you present yourselves?
Jason: I think it’s just kinda always been a part of it. Even like back in the early days, we had a buddy with a really nice camera, and he shot a couple of videos for us. It just kinda it always was a part of it. It never really was meant to be a part of it, but I think it’s good ’cause it captures the live experience a little better than it would just like audibly, ’cause we move around a lot. I think it’s good that people can see that.
Jacob: It’s worth a mention that that first Dunes album–there was some video accompaniment for it, but it ended up getting scrapped for one reason or another. It was just kinda strange.
Jason: Our friend who filmed it was a bit of a perfectionist and didn’t think it was ready.
Jacob’s bass cam. // youtube.com/@CornersoftheSky
Jacob, the thing I love about the video is that you have the GoPro mounted at the end of your bass. There are several camera angles to that video, but that just adds something to it. Where did that idea come from?
Jacob: This is gonna sound really weird and off the wall and totally different from the type of music that we’re all into, but I remember a while ago when I was just getting into very entry-level metal stuff, I saw Slipknot messing around. Sid Wilson, Number Zero–his role in the band is very odd as the sampler or whatever, just scratching records or something, and that only happens every so often.
So, sometimes he’s just moving around dancing and he just has a dedicated cam, as well, that would capture him just going ridiculous. I saw something like that, maybe on Instagram or something–just somebody having a camera from the end of their guitar, and I just jerry-rigged it myself. It’s just stuck on there ever since. If you see what my bass is looking like right now, it still has the mount on it. If I ever do want to attach my GoPro to it, I can do it as I please.
When I was talking with Jacob this past weekend, he mentioned the fact that you guys have played something like 70 shows this year. What does playing that many shows a year allow the band to do sonically?
Jason: It allows us just to become really familiar with these songs, and because of that, we can get lost within them and then find our way back pretty easily. Also, we can mess around with the style and things. Because we know the songs pretty well, we can tweak it. We’ve learned the rules, and now we can break ’em because it’s just consistency. We don’t wanna have to practice anymore. We just play it. What you see us play on stage is very much–just very free. It’s very likely that we’re practicing then and there.
Along those lines, there are several songs on Live Under a Bridge that are not on the Electrify Your Mind album, and you’ve been teasing them as being indicative of glimpses at your next studio recording. Where are you at in that process right now?
Jason: Currently, we have everything recorded. We’re awaiting just the transfer of files so we can start mixing it. It’s upwards of 132 gigabytes of files that we need to sift through and then eventually tweak and play around with. That’s where we’re at in that process. We don’t know when it’ll be done, just that it’ll be done when it’s done. That’s just kinda how we roll
Where did you all record this?
Jacob: Different places every time. As you can see from our live releases, from anywhere outside or under a bridge somewhere to a basement or a home studio. The most recent recording was done in a very close friend of ours, Jonas [Birkel] from the KC desert rock group Vela, in his house. It’s been a very fun recording process with him. Electrify was done in my basement in Lawrence.
Given that you’ve had such a big 2025, what do you hope to do in 2026, and what plans do you have on the horizon for the new year?
Jacob: Finish what we started. Really, just a lot of follow-through when it comes to anything that we put out–that being music material or, for this next album, it’s very, very exciting because we’ve been able to work with some animators and we have a couple music videos that are in production right now.
Jason: And in addition to that, I’ve got most of the songs written for the next project, so I’m already thinking ahead, as well.
Corners of the Sky play the Replay Lounge on Thursday, January 15, with Profile and Micha Reynolds. Details on that show here.
