About
“We call our sound POP MUSIC FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. I’ve always felt like I’m from another universe or another planet, so it makes sense that our music is as well.”
This is how Remy Trail, founding member of Unheard Sirens Inc., now describes the music he and wife Juliet Trail create. Sonically, it filters 70s and 80s synthpop through the lens of the modern synthwave and retrowave movements. But the “pop music from an alternate universe” moniker doesn’t just describe the duo’s approach to the sound. It describes the very person they make music for.
“I don’t know if you guys have ever had that feeling of being sort of out of place, or out of time,” Juliet says. “You wake up one morning and you think, ‘What the f* am I doing here? I must be an alien. Like, who put me in this weird place?’ Well, we’ve had that experience throughout our lives, and we realize ‘Oh! We have no idea how we got here. It must have been a portal.’”
Remy always had trouble fitting in. A shy, neurodivergent kid growing up in Charlottesville, Virginia, he always had trouble relating to others. He only realized in recent years that a lot of his feelings of being out of place came from being both bisexual and gender-fluid. During his formative years, he took solace in sci-fi, fantasy and rock music. In his 20s, he discovered punk rock, sparking an interest in making his own music. He soon formed his first garage punk band, Freak Flag.
Juliet is a lifelong musician. Inspired by her grandmother sitting at the piano and singing songs for the family, she started piano lessons at age five, choir at ten, and cello at eleven. She completed a Bachelor's degree in music, with piano as her primary focus, and solo voice and choir secondary. Later, she completed a Master's Degree in Vocal Performance & Pedagogy, with piano and choir as secondary pursuits. During college, she played cello and did backing vocals in the bands Rebar and Touk. In 2003, she joined the electronic-rock band Clare Quilty on keys and backing vocals. In 2004, she and the two other ladies of Clare Quilty recruited a female drummer and founded the acoustic lounge-rock band, The Dirty Dishes. In 2008, Juliet founded darkwave rock band Phoenix Noir, releasing the album “From the Ashes” in 2012.
Remy and Juliet started dating in 2014, discovering a kindred spirit in one another in many aspects of life, including music. The two got engaged in 2016, and around the same time, Remy invited Juliet to join his solo project which was then called “U.S.” They soon started writing their first songs together, which they would perform in late 2016 at their very first gig, a 1920’s-themed New Year's extravaganza, which was also their wedding.
Throughout their early material, they played with genre, balancing influences from punk, post punk, 90s alternative, industrial, trip-hop and dance music.
“We have so many influences,” Remy laughs, “so it’s been difficult over the years to pin down what to call our genre. That’s why we kept inventing new terms for it.”
In 2020, a year when most people wished they could escape to a different reality, the band started creating one through their conceptual, genre-bending album “Regeneration.” The album’s theme, largely inspired by one of the duo’s favorite TV shows “Doctor Who,” was about change and transformation, specifically those crucial moments when you have to stop being who you were and become who you’re meant to be. “[2020] was a huge time of reflection for me,” Juliet says. “Because whenever you have one of your own regenerations, if you’re a creative person, you create a lot of work to express all of that change, doubt, excitement, and fear–shedding the familiar and having this wide open space to reinvent your life.”
“I’ve had several regenerations throughout my life,” Remy says. “There’s been several times I’ve been in a different phase. In each, I’ve been a different version of myself. And I find that hugely fascinating. How many people can you be throughout your life, while still being the same person?”
The duo’s fascination with personal transformation sparked an interest in a new concept. Inspired by the various incarnations of David Bowie, Remy and Juliet created characters for themselves to inhabit in their future work: Remy Renegade (AKA The Rockstar), and The Empress Owl. “This story started forming around Regeneration, which we took with us into the next album, Renegades of the Portal,” Remy says. “It’s this sort of mythology we’re playing with: Two people from alternate dimensions meet each other somewhere in the multiverse, and take a portal together. They live multiple lives in other dimensions, but no matter what reality they’re in, they always end up finding each other.”
While “Regeneration” was a hugely experimental, genre-bending album, the two started playing with a lot of retropop sounds and textures, specifically on the tracks “Year of Perfect Vision,” “Brand New Life” and the title track. While trying to market “Regeneration”, Remy soon discovered synthwave, an entire scene of current music inspired by the pop and synth-soaked film scores of the 80s.
“I think we sort of found our calling at that moment. At around the same time, I was having conversations with our producer about our struggle to define our sound. That’s when he said, ‘Just say you make pop. You make pop music.’ And I was like ‘Holy shit! You’re right!’”
“Pop Music from an Alternate Universe” was born.
“It’s outsider music,” Remy says. “Even though it’s very poppy and catchy, I’ve never lost my original punk rock mindset. I always write from the outsider perspective.”
The band’s alternate universe pop is not only their own spin on the retro-future sounds of synthwave, it represents their mission statement: a futuristic sound for a world that feels like it has no future.
“There’s not a lot of hope right now,” Remy says. “I’m discovering more and more people who feel as out of sync with this time as we do, and rightfully so. I want to empower them. Because I strongly believe we are better than the so-called “normals”. And we have the ability to change this world, if we’re willing to.”