An interview with Television Skies on finding a visual identity through music.
A quick online search of the artist “Television Skies” gives a consistent result of “electric nostalgia for the restless” on many social platforms. The musical duo Ihor Shuhan and Paul Maczaj, however, didn’t come up with that image for their band overnight; it took years of experimentation to land where they are now.
Shuhan and Maczaj met over a decade ago while playing in another band. Television Skies wasn’t born until a few years later, but even then, it wasn’t established as the artistry that the duo wanted to publicize.
“We’ve been doing this since 2016,” Shuhan said, and 2021 is as far back as they want people to know about, which is when the current first post on their Instagram page was published. There are several posts that are now sitting in the band’s archives—things that are not as “on brand,” as Maczaj described.
This is a theme that many artists experience some difficulty with at some point in their creative journeys. “If you listen to our first bunch of albums, it's... a lot of range, I guess, which is fun and cool,” Shuhan explained. “And I know a lot of people appreciate that out there, but the identity gets really watered down.”
“We listen to all sorts of music. We like all sorts of visual and aesthetic things. And all that can be really scattered in the kind of look and sound,” Maczaj said. “Honing in on that and finding what the essence of it is—we're starting to feel like we are finding that for the first time.” The band now uses the phrase “electric nostalgia” to pinpoint their genre of art, which is not limited to music.
“[Electric nostalgia] is where the content is all across the board. It's the music, it's the videos, it's the visuals, it's the poster art, it's the photography,” Shuhan added. “It's all part of the same thing.” Posting a lot of social media content as trial and error in their early days helped them tie the visuals together with their music to create the magical connection that they continue to produce today.
The duo has gone through many phases of artists they listen to and note inspiration from. A lot of the current bands can be classified as moody, cinematic, and driven by feeling—the Arctic Monkeys, Cigarettes After Sex, and The 1975. Much of Television Skies’ sound also includes guitar riff and synth notes popular in the early to mid-2000s and the ‘80s.
Maczaj mentioned that the newest released songs are always the most fun to play live for him: “They're in that sweet place of, ‘we've now gotten really comfortable to live in them, but we're still finding new things in them,’ so they're still sort of developing in that way,” much like the way they’ve established their artistic identity.
The strength of Shuhan and Maczaj as a unit is unlike any other friendship, which has helped solidify them as a band and their persona in the music realm. Maczaj drums during live shows, and Shuhan does “everything else,” as per Maczaj, including vocals and guitar, along with mixes from the “special computer” for production.
“There's a lot of challenges that come with [making art]. When you do it with somebody who shares the same vision and the same dream and understands, it’s like a bond that is built on something that's bigger than us,” Maczaj commented. For their March 30th headlining show at Arlene’s Grocery in New York City, guitarist Ian Holubyak joined them on stage, but the behind-the-scenes band work is still spearheaded by the duo.
“It's like a Duolingo streak, you know. We’re locked in here; we're stuck,” Shuhan joked. “There are no streak freezes in real life, so we just have to keep doing it.” All of their musical experiences outside of school endeavors have been with each other, and it shows with the character they have established as Television Skies through electric nostalgia.
