Awake & Dreaming on Surface Noise

Interview from 55:13

Surface Noise · Vinyl Community Podcasts

Awake & Dreaming on Surface Noise

With host Chance Hollingsworth (Concert Buddie), Arnaldo and Chris · Live on YouTube, November 12, 2026 · 32 min interview

Sasha Kristoff and Stefan Schneider of Awake & Dreaming joined the Surface Noise panel live on November 12, 2026 to talk about their debut album Inevitable: why it was always meant for vinyl, how the two sides were sequenced around the flip, the ink-in-water cover, how Jay Dufour came to mix it, the Radiohead records they love, and why Can't Sleep, Faceless and Event Horizon never leave each other on stage.

Host Chance Hollingsworth (Concert Buddie) and panelists Arnaldo and Chris (the Groove Seeker) came with notes. Arnaldo and Chris both named Old Ghosts their favourite, Chance called the a cappella close of Cold Shoulder “a pretty clever way… to end a side of a record,” and sent the band off with “Be proud. Excellent work, guys.”

Listen to Inevitable Signed vinyl Join the list

Key moments

Songs from Inevitable in this interview

Full transcript

Chance: Chance Hollingsworth, host (Concert Buddie)
Arnaldo: Arnaldo, panelist (Fidelios_Frequency)
Chris: Chris, panelist (the Groove Seeker)
Sasha: Sasha Kristoff, vocals and keys
Stefan: Stefan Schneider, guitar

55:13Chance: One thing that's always been great about social media is promoting and discovering new music and sharing it with folks, so hopefully we'll view this as an opportunity to do that with our guests. The band is called Awake & Dreaming. They're out of Ontario, Canada. I'm joined by Sasha, the lead vocalist, and Stefan, the guitar player. Stefan, do I have that right? Songwriting wizard. Can I bestow any other titles upon you, sir?

55:47Stefan: I'll take songwriting wizard. Thank you.

55:50Chance: Excellent. Thank you guys for joining us. I even have a graphic. They came out with their new album on October 16th, their first album, I believe: Inevitable, self-released, really slick vinyl color, may I add, because obviously you wouldn't be on the show of record, talking records, unless you had a record. So the barrier to entry was crossed. Guys, I want to welcome you to Surface Noise. How are you doing?

56:24Sasha: Great. Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

56:27Stefan: It's a pleasure.

56:29Chance: So this is Chris, the Groove Seeker. He's a big jazz guy, so don't hold it against him. And Arnaldo is a YouTube supernova, the highest paid member of Surface Noise. We're looking forward to digging in. The first question: was it always the plan to put this album out on vinyl? What say you?

57:03Stefan: Yeah, I'll jump in right away. The answer to that is yes, for sure. We have a collection of vinyl. I've been collecting for a really long time, and I really enjoy what it brings to an album: the idea of an arc, and the ideas being interconnected as you listen to it. I'm a huge believer in music existing longer than singles, and that you can actually tell a story that runs 45 minutes across your LP. So it was always by design to create an arc like this.

57:40Chance: Now that's the right answer. If you'd said something like “well, we had to,” the signal would have got real weird. Sasha, do you feel the same way? Do you have records yourself? Was it important for you to put this out on the greatest physical format there is?

58:00Sasha: Absolutely. I think there's just some kind of magic in vinyl. I don't necessarily know how to capture what that is, but it's a bit of what Stefan said about wanting to tell a longer story than just a single or a couple of singles. We toyed with the idea of doing an EP, which tends to be anywhere from four to eight songs, and it just didn't feel quite like what we wanted. Designing the record for vinyl, you think about it in a different way. On a CD, you think about what order the songs go in. On a record, something we really had to think about was the flip: side A and side B. It's essentially two pieces. You start off on whatever note you want, you finish the first side, and it has to end well and encourage people to go for the flip. And when you flip, it's a new beginning, another chance to introduce something different or to spark that interest again. And then of course the final song: after listening for, in our case, 45 or so minutes, how do you want to finish something that is quite a bit larger than a lot of what's being released right now? From a storytelling perspective, that makes it really interesting. You have about 22 to 24 minutes per side, so some of the songs were really written with that in mind: okay, we want one more song here, but maybe it can only be three minutes, so how do we say what we want to say in that amount of time? Does that make sense?

59:46Chance: 100%. The intentionality, if that's a word. There was intent and purpose in how you structured it.

59:55Sasha: Sorry, I saw one of the comments. Yeah, I said “aboot.”

59:59Chance: Well, we weren't calling that out, but since you called it out: yes, they're from Canada, guys. There may be a slight dialect of accent. Question for you guys: who are some of your musical influences? What are some bands that really inspire you and push you, not only in how you make the music and record the music, but maybe how you listen to music as well?

1:00:38Sasha: I think we collectively listen to a lot of Radiohead, but for me, my background is pretty mixed, so I listen to a lot of different things. My early childhood and middle years were in classical music: playing violin, piano, singing in choirs. So I do listen to classical music, certainly, occasionally. Even pop punk, because I had teenage years like anybody else, those angsty years. I still love a little Good Charlotte once in a while. And I was a singer-songwriter before the band, so I love a lot of the singer-songwriter girlies. A little Alanis Morissette always kind of hits the right mood. So I'm kind of all over the map. Stefan's background is a bit different, so I think that has really influenced us as well.

1:01:35Chance: Stefan, what about you? What are some bands or artists that inspire you, and does that translate into how you play and write?

1:01:41Stefan: Yeah, for sure. Muse is a big one that we really like. Early Coldplay is another one that we really like as well. And I heard you mentioning the retro interest earlier: I grew up with a lot of soundtrack love and appreciation, a deep, deep appreciation specifically for those old-school games and the soundtracks that come from them. Huge joy and appreciation for them.

1:02:05Chance: I love it. Before we go forward to present day, let's go backwards. How did the band come together? Sasha, you talked about doing music on your own. Was it one of those “band wanted” notes on the bulletin board at the local coffee shop, or did you know each other through the local music scene?

1:02:39Sasha: It's a bit of a weird case, I guess. The two of us came together during COVID. We met online, and we both had an interest in writing music and trying to create something different. I sent Stefan a song I had written a long time ago and he really vibed with it, and he had written some stuff on his own that he sent me, and we listened back and forth and said, okay, let's give this a go. We were interested in the same direction, which is important in a band. I don't know that we had a huge plan to form a full band. We liked writing together, and it grew from there as we needed more people. We found a drummer, and that really added a nice new piece to the band, and eventually we were playing shows as a three-piece and realized, okay, it's time, we need a bassist. You find the right people at the right time, I think.

1:03:41Chance: And have you had any member changes? I don't want to bring up any sore points. Or is this the formation since you got together?

1:03:57Stefan: It's been the formation. It's been great. Ryan and Phil on drums and bass.

1:04:05Chance: Awesome. So you start writing songs. This album was mixed by Juno Award winner Jay Dufour. How do you make the decision to take songs you've written to the studio? What studio, who mixes it? What's that thought process like?

1:04:28Stefan: That was actually a really big step. We were applying for festivals at the time and getting people to listen to it, and they said it was great, they really liked our stuff, and they encouraged us not to be afraid to reach out to the people we think make amazing records: they're just people, and if they like your music, they'll take on the project. So we literally listened to Canadian artists we really liked, and one of them was July Talk. Jay mixed July Talk and won a Juno for them. So we literally just reached out to him and said, here's our music, what do you think of the project? And he was super excited. Speaking of vinyl, he was really excited at the idea of doing a full album, because it's very common nowadays for the award winners to just get singles nonstop. He liked the idea of mixing ten tracks.

1:05:25Chance: I love it. Speaking of Canadian influence: I saw you played with Blue Rodeo as I was doing some research. How much has the Canadian music scene influenced your development? I'm going to say the Yankee, American goofy stuff, the Tragically Hip, the things I know. But I'm sure there are other artists who have inspired you. Can you share some of those to expand our horizons?

1:05:55Stefan: Sure, I'll jump on it first. Some big ones are Metric. July Talk is another one. Our Lady Peace is a really good one.

1:06:03Chance: Our Lady Peace, yeah.

1:06:06Stefan: The Tragically Hip, obviously. Grimes is a little weird, but she's also kind of in our vein, just a little bit. It's actually been a really interesting experiment, really listening to who we can play with in Canada and discovering Canadian music in that sense. There is a ladder from us to the very top, right? So what does that ladder look like, who do we make friends with, who do we try to play with? And really just building the local Ontario scene.

1:06:28Chance: I don't want to bury the lede: are you happy with how the album turned out, not only in bringing your vision and the songs to life, but in how it sounds? You always hear the stories about the first time you hear your song on the radio. Radio isn't as prevalent now, so what does that look like for a contemporary band like you: the first time you hear it on streaming, or the first time somebody says, “oh, you're from that band”? Sasha, I'll ask you.

1:07:11Sasha: It's always different. As a singer, the first couple of times you hear your voice back to you is a bit of a strange thing, because when you sing it's physically in your body. You're hearing it come out of your mouth, out of your head, vibrating as you sing. So it's a very different experience to listen to yourself as a singer. Even listening to myself speak is different. But to hear the record after spending almost three years making it: we were really meticulous about each of the individual instruments, the vocal lines, the harmonies. Some of the record we charted out by hand to make sure the harmonies were as we wanted them, or we would go one way with a song and decide, oh shoot, this song is good, but it needs to be four BPM faster or slower. We were really that, I would say, neurotic about it, because we wanted to be, like you said earlier, so intentional. So when you finally hear something like that, it's like having a kid, I think. You've spent all this time putting all this love and attention into it. To hear it on the radio has been amazing. And it's been really cool at the shows we've played to hear how people have discovered us. We did an interview with CBC Radio and they played some of our music, and someone came to a show and said, hey, I heard you on CBC Radio. That's crazy to me, to go from writing music in our basement to that kind of thing. It's really amazing. And like you said, Blue Rodeo.

1:08:52Chance: Arnaldo gets that a lot in public, when they recognize him from YouTube. Arnaldo, any questions for Stefan and Sasha here before I continue to pepper them with the hard ones?

1:09:22Arnaldo: I wanted to congratulate you guys. This is your first album, right? You must be very proud and excited to finally have your music pressed on a record or on a CD. I think it's Jack White who said you don't own the album until you own the album. Having it pressed on a physical format must make you really proud. I had a question on the cover. It's a great album cover. Is it smoke? Is it a liquid in another substance? Are you allowed to reveal what it was about?

1:10:02Stefan: Yeah, absolutely, I can jump on that one. It's a bit of a funny story. We were maybe two songs into the record, and I found a place where they do this artwork: it's essentially a backlit liquid, and they inject ink into it. So it's water and ink, floating. It was one of the first things we came together on for the album, way before all the music was written.

1:10:37Sasha: Before there was an album.

1:10:39Arnaldo: I think it matches. It represents the music on the album, especially one of the songs, probably my favorite song, Old Ghosts, which for me is very ethereal compared to the other songs on the album. And I totally get your Radiohead influence on the closing track with that organ. That's probably a perfect closer for the album. The other song I wanted to mention is Can't Sleep. It has three or four notes that are very catchy and repetitive, a guitar pick of three or four notes that comes back in the song a couple of times. So those are my thoughts.

1:11:43Chance: It's interesting. When we were talking about this before, Arnaldo named the ones that weren't my favorite tracks, not in a bad way. I really liked Faceless on side two. I don't know the premise or the origins of that one, but the first time I listened I made a note: I want to come back to this one. And the way you started the album, with I U Me: hopefully this isn't an insult, but I could hear that on a soundtrack somewhere, to your point, Stefan. I don't know what kind of movie or TV show, but it took me somewhere where I could see a visual story behind it. And then to follow it with the second song, Rewire, which shifts the whole vibe: I thought that was obviously intentional. Arnaldo is more the ethereal kind of listener, so we're getting it from both ends. Chris, split the difference. Questions for our friends here?

1:12:50Chris: Congratulations. To echo the gentleman before me, Old Ghosts is also my favorite. I didn't know the name, but I remembered it was track three. I listened to it on SoundCloud. I U Me is a great opener, and I really liked Can't Sleep. I like long songs. Three-minute songs are fine, four-minute songs are fine, but that one stretched it out, and I like how it builds up. I have two questions about your live sets. First: are you playing the same set list at your shows, or do you vary the track order and the songs?

1:13:50Stefan: I'll jump in. It's a great question. We usually play longer than the album. When we do our headline show, it's usually around an hour and a half to two hours. There are chunks that are always together: we always do Can't Sleep, Faceless and Event Horizon together, in that order. Those three pretty much can't be separated. The other ones we mix in, because we'll throw in some covers and stuff, so we have to be a little more creative with the order.

1:14:22Chris: Okay, so two questions then. What covers are you doing?

1:14:26Chance: That was exactly my question.

1:14:28Sasha: On the tour we just did, we would do Zombie by The Cranberries, which is always a personal favorite. We did Creep by Radiohead. We also did Heads Will Roll by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a turn-it-up party song, just to give some more energy to the room. A lot of our songs are a bit slower, so we like to pump it up that way.

1:14:53Chris: So when you're playing live: Can't Sleep is a seven-minute song. Is it seven minutes live, or do you stretch and improvise at all? What's the approach there?

1:15:06Sasha: That song is kind of crazy. We tried so many different ways to rearrange it: okay, it's long, so maybe we'll take out the second bridge or the second chorus, different pieces, to tighten it up. The opposite of what you're talking about, actually, because we felt that seven minutes of people standing and watching is a different experience than if you can sit and meditate into it. But we ended up loving it the way it is, and we wanted people to get the full experience of it, so we play it straight through. There are a couple of songs we play faster live. Old Ghosts is one of them; we bump it up a couple of BPM. Faceless is the most variable from show to show, especially when Ryan really gets going on the drums. That song is sometimes so fast that afterwards I'm like, okay, I need to take a second and chug some water, talking into the mic while I breathe again.

1:16:09Chance: That was my note on Faceless, quite frankly: I just love the energy. So I can only imagine how that translates, especially picking up on the energy of the crowd. It's got to be an experience.

1:16:21Sasha: It is, yeah. It really gets moving, that's for sure. People jumping around, too. Like you're saying, we feed off the crowd energy. Sometimes the song will start off at one tempo and just get increasingly faster as people get more hyped up, and we get hyped up.

1:16:37Chance: A couple of questions from the gallery real quick, and then we'll come back to the professionals. Joel, Static ATX Records: what's your favorite Radiohead album? I don't know if there are any wrong answers, but I'm sure Joel has wrong answers. Stefan, I'll start with you, sir.

1:16:55Stefan: Mine is In Rainbows, kind of definitively. It's a tough choice, but it's just always been my favorite. Weird Fishes is one of my favorite songs. I really like OK Computer; it's actually probably my second favorite. Let Down is amazing. Paranoid Android. And then probably Kid A, and it's not at all a distant third. I super love Kid A. How to Disappear Completely is one of my favorite songs. It's just totally amazing.

1:17:20Chance: Sasha, do you feel the same way? Any curveballs? Pablo Honey, maybe?

1:17:27Sasha: I would say OK Computer is probably my favorite. It's hard to top The Tourist, No Surprises. I guess it depends on how sad you want to get, really. But I also just love Karma Police. I know it's maybe one of the more... can you even say Radiohead is mainstream at all? I don't know. But it's closer to something familiar, and Karma Police just hits in a good way, I think. And that whole record, front to back: there aren't a lot of records that you want to just sit and listen to over and over in the same order, especially these days. We're talking about vinyl, so it's really important to have that listening experience all the way through, and I feel that way about OK Computer. I really love it.

1:18:15Chance: All right, this is a controversial question, because I'm the worst about putting labels and genres on music, and what I heard was a lot of different genres. A question from the crowd: Living Analog Sound Lab, out of Hawaii. You can give them a straight answer or you can lie your pants off. How would you describe your music? It doesn't really fit into one genre. If somebody just asked what kind of music you play, the grandma question: Sasha, how would you answer that one?

1:18:47Sasha: We go back and forth. We usually say alt rock, because it's not your straight kind of dad rock, for sure. If we say just alternative, that maybe leads people down a more goth path, a little heavier, and we're not quite that heavy. Like I said, we're in between. So we call ourselves alt rock, or we'd say art rock, because we have some of those differences you mentioned. Some of the songs are hard to call rock at all. Old Ghosts is a piano and a voice, mostly.

1:19:25Chance: Art rock. Stefan, do you agree with that? Don't say hip hop. That would just throw everybody off.

1:19:35Stefan: No, I think art rock is what we go by. It's certainly rock music at its core in some places, but we are not afraid to take people away from the typical.

1:19:50Chance: Love it. A friend of the show, Mark Lastman, says: “I saw Awake & Dreaming in Toronto at the El Mocambo back in March. Great show.” So look at this: we do have Canadian viewers, believe it or not. They're in the chat, representing well. Chris, any other follow-ups before I hit them with the go-home questions?

1:20:21Chris: Just one more, going back to the live show. You're a four-piece, right? I don't remember reading the credits. Is there someone who plays piano live, or do you rearrange the songs?

1:20:35Sasha: I do.

1:20:36Chris: Oh, you do? Okay. I didn't know if you sat down or what.

1:20:40Sasha: I stand. That was a big turning point for us, actually, getting the standing piano stand. So I'm front and center with the Nord keyboard, standing, and I sing and play at the same time.

1:20:53Chris: Oh, great. I like the piano work, or the keyboard work, on the album. I can't really tell if it's a keyboard or a piano.

1:21:01Sasha: It's both, for sure. Old Ghosts, we keep coming back to it: Stefan and I actually play that one together live. I play the bottom half and he plays the solo up top. It's kind of a fun thing.

1:21:12Chance: I'm glad you brought up the keys, because one of my notes when I was listening was Cold Shoulder, the last song on side A. The keyboards really stood out to me; maybe I'm using the wrong word, but very synth vibes. I really enjoyed it. The vocals reminded me, I don't know if you know a singer named Grace Potter, but I got a Grace Potter kind of sound from the presentation. And I love the last part you did with the song, because you took all the music out and it was just isolated: “I'm gonna dance in the street while it's burning.” I thought, that's a pretty clever way, to your point, to end a side of a record and then flip it over. A very smart move.

1:21:55Stefan: There you go. Thank you.

1:21:57Sasha: That was the Stefan decision. We went back and forth about whether to leave that in or to cut it at the end of all the instrumentation as well. So I appreciate you saying that. It was one of many decisions for the record, but it was a controversial one at the time.

1:22:12Chance: Awesome. David Bianco is here, one of our Surface Noise alumni. He says he streamed this album: great debut. Praise from Safe And Sound TX Audio Excursion. Chris, any other questions before I hit them with the two go-homes?

1:22:28Chris: Hit them with the go-homes.

1:22:30Chance: All right, let's go home, everybody. Stefan, I'll go with you on this one. If someone is discovering Awake & Dreaming for the first time tonight on Surface Noise, what's one song you'd recommend they start with, and why?

1:22:46Stefan: Just one? I think it's Underwater. It is tricky, to your point: you kind of enjoy Awake & Dreaming if you listen to our album. It has a lot of different varieties on it. I think Underwater is perhaps my favorite song on the album.

1:23:03Chance: Sasha, what say you? You only get one chance to make a first impression, as the saying goes. Where do you lead them? Underwater? Lights Down Low?

1:23:16Sasha: It always depends on what kind of person they are. Underwater is a good middle ground; I might agree with that. But if I had to make a different choice, secondary might be I U Me, just because it has a bit of a mixture of us as well, I think.

1:23:35Chance: Love it. And this is the go-home question: what's next? Is there touring in your future, more concerts, more recording, maybe some dates south of the border?

1:23:56Stefan: We finished a ten-city album release tour from Windsor to Quebec City, which I think is almost the size of Texas, actually. So it was a pretty vast ten cities, and we opened for Blue Rodeo along the way. So we've been trying to rediscover what we want to do next. We are applying for lots of festivals to play next year, and we're going to start dabbling in what sounds might come out of us next and see if album number two can come out. We have played south of the border once: we played in New York City one time, actually. It's a secret.

1:24:32Chance: Uh-oh, a secret show. What venue?

1:24:35Stefan: It was called the Delancey.

1:24:38Arnaldo: I'm familiar with it. Lower East Side.

1:24:42Sasha: We definitely want to do more shows, anywhere that wants to see us. We really like to be able to travel and do band things and play shows. It's kind of a perfect combination: to be a bit of a tourist, but also get to do some shows and have fun that way. I saw that comment from Michael about the Junos. That's really funny.

1:25:13Chance: If you're winning over the natives in the Surface Noise chat, the sky's the limit, guys. He says, “the Juno Awards, here you come.” Michael Elliott: first you heard it, on Surface Noise.

1:25:26Sasha: Do we tell them, Stefan?

1:25:29Stefan: I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

1:25:32Sasha: So, we did submit the record. So who knows? You never know. But even just as a guest, I think it'd be really fun. I've personally been to the Junos twice: I went in Ottawa, and I think the other one was London, Ontario. It was amazing, such a fun thing. You guys have a lot more cool award shows than we do, maybe, but that's our big one. The after-parties are great. I played pinball with Sloan, which is hilarious. So random, but you just never know who you'll meet.

1:26:09Chance: Love it. I put out the link before: if you're interested in sampling the record, it's on the streamers. I downloaded it on Apple, not showing off, and I'm sure it's on Spotify and other places. And Bandcamp: I'd always encourage anybody to go direct to the artist if you can, particularly on Bandcamp Fridays. Do you have any dates coming up that we can promote, or is the next leg still in the planning stages?

1:26:44Sasha: Still planning, still planning. But follow us on socials; we always post as soon as we can.

1:26:51Chance: You guys are on Instagram; I tagged you in our post today. That's always a great way to get news and information. Awake & Dreaming: again, the album is Inevitable. Be proud. Excellent work, guys. I hope this is the beginning of a lot of great stuff for you, and I appreciate you connecting with Surface Noise to help spread the word. Thank you for joining us, Sasha and Stefan from Awake & Dreaming. Great to have you on.

1:27:37Sasha: Thank you so much.

1:27:38Stefan: Thanks so much. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed from the stream and lightly edited for reading (repeats and filler words removed). Timestamps open the video at that moment. Watch the full episode on YouTube.

“It's always fun to see people in the beginning of something and see where it goes, right? So maybe we will be able to say, remember when.”
Chance Hollingsworth, host (Concert Buddie), after the interview (1:27:52)

Press kit Inevitable Awake & Dreaming