Pulling a page out of the Postal Ser­vice book, Phillipines-based acoustic/lo-fi duo Senor Senorita cre­ate music by mail; com­mu­ni­cat­ing the bits and pieces of their music on and offline before com­bin­ing their best efforts to cre­ate some of the best lo-fi DIY music this side of the Atlantic. Stick­ing with the basic premise of cover songs for now, both Liz and Marco are keep­ing Senor Senorita a small project as they jug­gle daily life and work along­side their music. They will how­ever, take requests.

You can stream their cover of Fil­ipino band Hun­gry Young Poets at the tail end of the interview.

Tell us a lit­tle about Senor Senorita and those involved.

Liz Lanuzo: I’m a writer and mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant by trade. My nose is usu­ally bur­rowed in beauty and fash­ion and all things girly. Proof: Projectvanity.com. But once in a while I take a break and read books as well as lis­ten to music. When I have more time, I work with Marco to cre­ate our own music.

Marco Dela Torre: Senor Senorita came together via an out of the blue online con­ver­sa­tion insti­gated by Liz. We got to talk­ing then next thing you know we were trad­ing past home demos. Just seemed nat­ural to give it a go. We had a lit­tle pre-production meet­ing, map­ping out our steps. But noth­ing really mate­ri­al­ized til months later. I think the day after that meet­ing I saw Nine Inch Nails live and play­ing acoustic songs was the far­thest thing from my mind. Til I started get­ting into DIY record­ing in a hard­core way. Then things sparked back up. And the rest was histoweee.

You were in punk and rock bands pre­vi­ously, what prompted the switch to more acoustic settings?

Marco: Punk rock is still my first love. But I’m open to any genre. I mean I’m lis­ten­ing to Metallica’s “Ride The Light­ning” as I answer this. Though I would still apply my punk sen­si­bil­i­ties in my acoustic work. Just the idea to cre­ate the most out of very lit­tle. I had thought turn­ing in a sin­cere sound­ing acoustic result would have been effort­less. But boy I was wrong. I do find it more reward­ing that punk though.

How do you both select the songs to cover?

Marco: Purely out of talks on music we like. One will say “Hey, I like this artist” to which the other replies “OMG I have their entire discog­ra­phy”. When it clicks, it goes on the list. But there have been more obscure pics lately. More chal­leng­ing ones. Like some old timey Annette Han­shaw tunes.

In a “Did You Know” sec­tion, if states that you’ve only “met twice” … truth, or inter­net rumor?

Liz: Truth. We met only twice, and for no more than ten min­utes. We just talked about ran­dom stuff, not even about the songs we wanted to make, the direc­tion we want to take…just mum­bling some his and hel­los and how to use the mic prop­erly. Lol. Truth be told, Marco and I are not close at all. We don’t talk much to each other, even online, where we orig­i­nally met. So tech­ni­cally, we’re strangers.

The only time we con­verse is when he strums the track and I sing to it.

Marco: Yeah. We got a Postal Ser­vice thing going.

How about your gear/set up— the first track you’ve posted includes men­tion of Garage­band and some stu­dio enhance­ment— was this a one-off exper­i­ment or will you stray from the basic acoustic/lo-fi set­ting in the future?

Marco: My day job as a graphic designer affords me tools in my var­i­ous hob­bies. And right now my main hobby is DIY record­ing. It’s a pro­gres­sive thing and you can sorta hear it in the tunes we play. Ear­lier stuff were done with Liz singing into a web­mic while I plugged straight into my lap­top. I just finally put together a decent mic setup. But Garage­band is still the go to pro­gram just out of neces­sity and ease. Just a sim­ple track­ing and mix­ing tool. It could evolve to a proper live set up even­tu­ally. Soon as our sched­ules cross more often. Right now its as if we’re astronauts.

Any plans to record in the future for pos­si­ble release?

Marco: Best I can say is who knows? Just get­ting our music online was already our lofti­est goal. But I’d like to think if ever we get to prep­ping a release, it’d be our own songs by then.

Do you take requests?

Marco: Why not. It don’t hurt to ask. We would at least con­sider it. Just don’t expect a speedy turnaround.

Visit Senor Senorita: senorsenorita.tumblr.com

AUDIO: “Rebirth” (orig­i­nally by Hun­gry Young Poets)

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