For A.M. Architect, everything is interactive. A concert by the electronic duo isn’t just a concert. It’s a multimedia installation, a visual show, an interactive technology demonstration, and more.
At a typical show, the duo, consisting of longtime friends and collaborators Diego Chavez and Daniel Stanush, perform while generative visuals react to the audio they’re creating. “We use a program called TouchDesigner, so it’s all in real time,” says Chavez, whose myriad roles include digital media artist, technologist, and producer. “We love not being the performer; not being the cool guys on stage who have this distant presence. Usually, shows are so serious. It’s just fun to see people at play.”
That technological curiosity, that bold desire to merge disciplines, animates A.M. Architect’s third and finest full-length album, Avenir, announced today for a February 7th, 2025 release date.
The album showcases the duo’s multifaceted approach to electronic production, with Stanush’s musical training and melodic sensibility guiding Chavez’s knack for soundscapes and sonic manipulation. The result is a rich tapestry of pulsating beats, grainy loops, cinematic sensibilities, and charged vocal samples that cull from sources as varied as old crime movies and obscure country singers.
Today, the duo share their title-track “Avenir,” accompanied by a music video. The track paints a lush electronic beat backdrop of exploration, with notable vocals from guest Delenda. Pre-order the upcoming album here, and check it out the video for the title track on YouTube.
On the track, Daniel Stanush shares:
“In creating the music video for Avenir, we were inspired by the lyrics written by our collaborator Delenda. We were interested in the relationships between different versions of ourselves: the person you used to be, as seen through your current self, or vice versa. Like when you remember the promises you made yourself when you were a kid, or the things you regret and wish you could erase, and then as you grow you have to reconcile your old and new self, and the past/present relationship that creates.
Graphically, we wanted to present a dissonance between our self-perspectives, and allow them to evolve and blend together, constantly growing and fracturing, feeding back and diffusing based on a responsive video network, so we shot some video with Delenda, the song’s vocalist, and then created an interactive network in Touch Designer that would respond to video inputs as well as allow us to control how the network would respond. We’re really looking forward to bringing this same setup to live events and allowing audiences to interact with the Avenir in fun ways.”
The two worked on the album remotely for about four years, trading files back and forth between Sacramento (where Stanush lives) and San Antonio (Chavez’s home base). Stanush developed melodic ideas on guitar, bass, and Rhodes piano, while Chavez manipulated the tracks in Ableton and incorporated a range of innovative techniques, including machine learning and live-coding with the help of a portable, open-source sound computer called Monome Norns.
Above all, Chavez and Stanush sought to create music that would feel untethered to any particular time period; music that, like their influences, feels timeless and unmoored.
Chavez and Stanush tend to refer to A.M. Architect as a “multimedia collaboration” rather than a traditional band. The two have been close collaborators since around 2004, when they met while playing in rock bands in San Antonio together. Realizing they shared a love of electronic music (everything from German cult artist Arovane to the early work of Caribou, then billed as Manitoba) and a deep interest in the intersection of art and technology, the two began a side project, which morphed into A.M. Architect.
In 2009, they released their first album, The Road to the Sun, a nimble, beat-driven collection pairing Stanush’s melodic instincts with Chavez’s drum programming. Stanush had studied music theory and knew his way around a guitar or bass, while Chavez came from a hip-hop background and knew how to treat his bandmate’s instruments as samples, with a DJ Shadow-like apt for manipulating rhythms
That division of labor remained largely constant through the project’s subsequent albums—2017’s Color Field, 2019’s Chroma Variants—as their stylistic ambitions grew and the group moved away from live instrumentation in favor of ambient production. With an increased emphasis on vocal samples, Avenir (a French word meaning “the future, or a time to come”) brings A.M. Architect into a new phase of their career, veering towards ambient electronica instead of instrumental hip-hop and instilling their chilly soundscapes with an unmistakable warmth.
Stanush developed melodic ideas on guitar, bass, and Rhodes piano, while Chavez manipulated the tracks in Ableton and incorporated a range of innovative techniques, including machine learning and live-coding with the help of a portable, open-source sound computer called Monome Norns.
Because it was written in the throes of the pandemic, the material felt heavier than usual, with both musicians reflecting on death, mortality, and memories. Such themes were front of mind during the early years of the pandemic, when the duo began experimenting with audiovisual installations. At a warehouse in Sacramento, they led a major installation, using cameras to track people’s motions through the space, which then triggered different lines of melody and visual art on the walls. “We want to be able to bring that kind of experience to more of our projects,” Stanush notes.
Such experiments proved formative to the inventive, free-form spirit of Avenir. As Chavez reflects, “It changed our idea of how songs don’t have to be linear. As long as you’re in it, you can make the song move around. We like to play with time differently.” And true to its forward-thinking title, Avenir brings the future to your headphones even as it summons poignant reflections on the past.
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to George at Terrorbird Media.]
