Q&A with After The Smoke frontman Rob Coin

Florida collective, After The Smoke, prides itself on posting up outside of the box of cookie cutter mainstream music by bridging the gap between contemporary and futurism through songs such as “One In A Million” and “Typical Weekend”. With a recent project Microwaves garnering a lot of attention from new and old fans alike, front man Rob Coin explains the group’s goal and what fans can expect.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE PROCESS OF COLLABORATING IDEAS IN A GROUP DYNAMIC? I think we all bring something to the table since we are all open-minded when it comes to music and art so usually the process starts when one of us has a spark and someone contributes to that idea in their own way. It is just finding that balance between the different ideas that come up with something new. Usually I handle the songwriting and the producer takes over in terms of the beat direction… It’s a progressive idea and I think we all strive for each song to be extremely different from the previous work.
WHAT IS THE MOTIVE BEHIND AFTER THE SMOKE’S WORK? Destroy and rebuild. Everything we do is about deconstructing the visuals or deconstructing the sound and seeing how we can build it back into something new. We are not afraid of failing, we’re not afraid of falling and we take that motivation by doing something outside of the box without fearing if it will be a pop song or hit single versus building something that we like. With that as the spinal cord for our entire movement is how we’ve been building so instead of having a shotgun effect and going after everyone, we just been pinpointing our own sound and hopefully people have been gravitating towards that sound.
WHAT IS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND YOUR UPCOMING PROJECT MICROWAVES? Right now, it’s really an out of body experience type of vibe that I’m going for right now. It’s about being under the influence, whether it be drugs or under the influence of where you come from, who you hang around, or the society that you’re developing in. We are taking people on a journey sonically and visually so if you listen to our music or watch our videos, it puts you in a different place and a different state of mind. You can see what we see through our vision and that’s where we’re trying to take people.
WHAT WAS THE JOURNEY LIKE IN PUTTING THE MOST RECENT PROJECT TOGETHER? I wanted it to reflect something completely different from White Girls and Red Velvet Cake, our previous EP, and I think where the previous project was disjointed, I think this one is definitely an adventure. It’s less lyrically driven and more instrumentally driven. Microwaves is frying your brain. As soon as you pop in the album or take a listen, it’s going to take you on a trip. It’s highly influential.
WHAT IS A MAJOR LESSON YOU’VE LEARNED FROM THE INDUSTRY ON YOUR JOURNEY THUS FAR? Fuck everybody, except your home team. I’ve been able to meet a lot of people that I looked up to since I was younger as far as getting into the music and trying to strive to be within the music industry and I realized that there are a lot of smoke and mirrors and people aren’t how they seem. You can do a lot of your stuff on your own, granted there are a lot of advantages being a part of a major label when it comes to promoting, but if you want to take the extra step and go the extra step as far as marketing… then you can actually make a lot of things happen for yourself. It’s a very self-motivating experience if you’re able to take on that extra task.