KCRW Premiere: New Single from Anthony Valadez – Under Water

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(Editor’s Note: Many of KCRW’s DJs are artists and remixers in their own right. We asked Anthony to share his brand new single with KCRW listeners on the day before its release.)

Under Water” is the first single from my forthcoming album entitled “Just Visiting“, which will be out June 5 on Plug Research.

The song started as a jam session with San Francisco-based band The Park, who have been supporting Quantic and Alice Russell on tour recently. I have a studio inside my apartment and they were in my living room setting up for a rehearsal to hit the road with Oakland artist Wallpaper.

I had a pre-existing track on Pro Tools and the band added layers of keys, bass and drums. With their contributions, the song started taking shape and form.

I then sent the track to one of my favorite vocalists, Mar.

He’s based in Amsterdam and I’ve been playing him on KCRW quite a bit over the last 3-4 years. When I was in Europe for some DJ gigs, we finally linked up in person. We were sitting in a Chinese restaurant talking about music and I mentioned how much I love his voice and he began jokingly singing George Michael’s” Last Christmas”. I knew instantly I wanted to record with this guy!

He layered his vocals into the mix and added so much warmth to song.  We emailed sessions back and forth and this the final product that I am very very very proud of!

— Anthony Valadez

Anthony Valadez – Under Water (Single) by Plug Research