Although officially formed last year, the El Paso, TX/Ciudad Juarez, Mexico borderplex trio Estereomance, featuring Adria, Paulina and Manu can trace their origins to several years earlier — and to mutual friendships and a serendipitous meeting: Back in 2017, Adria had family member, who at the time was battling cancer. Adria and her family hosted a benefit event for that family member — and as it turns out, Manu also attended the benefit. Knowing that Adria was going through a difficult time, Manu invited her to hike through the Franklin Mountains during New Year’s 2017/2018. During that hiking trip, the pair got to know each other a bit better.
After the Franklin Mountains hiking trip, Manu invited Adria into the studio to record a cover of Cultura Profectica‘s “De Antes” that would be dedicated to her family member. Sadly, that family member succumbed to the disease; but the pair began a musical collaboration that eventually lead to them falling in love. Coincidentally. Estereomance’s Paulina is a mutual friend of both Manu and Adria: Paulina and Adria have been friends for the better part of the past decade. Manu and Paulina have collaborated on a number of projects, including acts that have been nominated for Latin Grammys — and they’ve also been longtime friends.
When the trio got together, they were all in a similar, creative transitional phase, and they noticed an immediate chemistry. Interestingly, the band has developed a creative process that has been successful for them so far: Manu frequently composes beats while having coffee. Paulina then creates improvised ideas to compliment the beats and then Adria comes up with lyrics. This has been largely been created by the bandmembers’ individual experiences and their desire to have their work centered around openness, fearlessness and following what they believe: Adria is a classically trained violinist and actor, who has played in orchestras and plays; Paulina is a vocalist, who has performed with a number of musical projects; and Manu is a bassist, sound engineer and producer, who has worked with an eclectic array of artists at Sonic Ranch Studios.
The trio’s latest single is the lush and slow-burning “Crimson Queen.” Centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, Adria’s achingly plaintive vocals, a two-step inducing rhythm and an enormous hook, “Crimson Queen” is late70s/early 80s inspired synth pop confection that sounds as though it could easily be part of the Stranger Things soundtrack while rooted around an unfulfilled yearning. “Through time, women’s worth has long been measured by physical beauty and more recently with rise of social media, quantified by the number of likes i response to it,” the band says in press notes. And as a result the song touches upon the increasing social pressure placed on both men and women to fit into a standardized concept of beauty and attractiveness, as well as vanity, obsession and insecurity.
