“I've been making music since I was 13, around then my dad got me my first keyboard. I wanted to make something, and I thought to myself: “what is the easiest style I can make by myself, alone in a room, with a keyboard?" and I thought: "of course, black metal!" The music I made then sucked really bad, I just pressed the keyboard like this, and made blast bits like that, but I kept making it until 2014. Later, around 2016 I tried to have fun by remixing some songs. I remember I had a synthwave cover of a System of a Down song called Lost in Hollywood. It was weird, but it was the first time I uploaded a synthwave cover. When I enrolled into university, I had a lot of time for making more remixes and refining my game, it was near the finale of JoJo’s Golden Wind, I remember it vividly: my best friend DJ DENGUE said to me: "you should make a synthwave remix of Il Vento D'oro" - and that was the first time I got a hit on YouTube, and it changed my life forever.
I kept making a living off music, doing remixes to a point that I got sick of them. Making songs is different from making tracks, because if I make a remix it's just a little fun, it can be good, it can be impactful - but these original songs, I'm pouring my being into them, and I'd say if it resonates with people it hits me differently too. I made a fatal mistake of not developing my own aesthetic as I was making my remixes, I should have presented them with more personality from the beginning. By 2020 I was developing my debut serious album, Apathy. So I thought “Astrophysics, what does this name resemble? Space.” I was able to create my thing, and that was another turning point for me, to realize my creative capabilities.
For a great while the internet shaped my music and my creative process - not that my reality didn't shape it, I just sing in English, and on the internet. Our latest album, Vanilla Deathwish, was inspired by my reality growing up in Rio. I live on an island in a bay, and it’s so polluted that I say in this album it's like a "sea of mercury," because sometimes it has this silver glow. I used this imagery to portray my reality in a different way, in an abstract way I'd say, but it is indeed my reality. In other albums I tend to focus on sentiment, and this latest album was more focused about material conditions.
While I was making these albums, I felt powerless most of the time, but now I've been engaging more in political activities. That's one thing I regret, not being more politically engaged sooner. In middle school I was already very left leaning, and I got introduced to socialism, I believe I was 12 or 13, and it never left my head. The thing with Marxism is you won't change the world immediately, first you're gonna be very depressed, and that's how it went for me. I got this ideological view to write the things I wrote on those albums, and I mixed everything: the sentiment, the feeling, the emotions, the ideology, because it's all one thing for me. Now I'm making more charitable events, and trying to network more with my comrades in Brazil. I think we're in a great moment, of an ascending left, that is able to speak to the people about the circumstances in Brazil, and I think now is the time for me to put into practice 100% of everything that I learned, but I know it's a process. If everything shaped my life, I'm ready to shape my life by myself.
I'd say that Astrophysics is a success in its own parameter, it's great that I can do whatever I want now. Even if I'm not receiving 10% of what the remixes received, if I get comments like "your music changed my life", it's the greatest thing ever. That's success for me; I'm not there, I'm not mainstream at all, but at least I got something, I got fans around the world that want to see us. It's possible to do something like a show in London, Tokyo, Santiago - even if I'm from Rio. There's no booking and there's no agent; it's just force of will, the power of friendship, DIY, and people that can give some equipment for us to play. It's like a dream, in a way, to be able to live as an independent artist. I don't know at what time I won't be able to, we know how the world is, but I'll keep doing my thing until I can't.”