Indie-Electronic Duo Half an Orange Brings URL To IRL With Debut EP
Over the past year, indie-electronic duo Half an Orange has slowly created a universe of their own. While Ohio natives Andrew Spellman and Michael Maloof surely reside with the rest of us on this three-dimensional roller coaster of a planet, as of late the two have found a flourishing musical existence among the vast void of cyberspace. Through unique audio-visual experiences, passionate, vocal-centric production and collaborations with some major names in the online gaming community, the prolific animated astronauts have continued their internet rise with the release of their debut EP, Mostly We Grow.
It's apparent that Half an Orange has put a great deal of forethought into each of their distinctive offerings thus far, including this latest endeavor. Having developed each song off Mostly We Grow from poetry, Maloof wrote over a year of backpacking in Brazil, and the two spent countless hours synthesizing acoustic skeletons of their tracks into the vibrant indie-electronic fusion we hear today. With their name derived from the Portuguese expression “metade da laranja” (translated to “half an orange”), the duo have made well on directing the sentiment of yearning, of searching for the other half of their orange, and simply searching for sense of completion in their music.
Yet to explore the dissonance presented in the expanse between the URL and IRL experience, Half an Orange has continued to reach far beyond music alone, utilizing their animated astronaut alter-egos to pair their lush, wanderlust inspired sound with intricate fictional stories in each of their captivating music videos.
Although Mostly We Grow arrives as Half an Orange's debut project, the meat of the EP is comprised of a few impressive tracks which have been making their rounds for quite some time now. From their slow, chill guitar-driven inspirations all the way up to their upbeat yet melancholic track "Old Friends," Spellman and Maloof have always held fast to the idea of genuine music making genuine connections.
Having teamed up with a myriad of unique personalities throughout the development of their constantly evolving audio-visual experience, it seems the duo have slowly and somewhat unintentionally accumulated a wide variety of friends and companions, essentially fulfilling their initial goal of finding the other half of their whole.