"After almost 3 great years of In Stereo, I am officially moving on. The many experiences had with Chris and Jakob along the way , I believe have shaped us into the mates and musicians we are today, and I am thankful for the drive and passion we shared that pushed us from one big thing to the next," he wrote, thanking both Chris Lanzon and Jakon Delgado for all the good times.
As expected, fans went into meltdown mode wondering WTF was going on, especially since the day before, Chris and Jakob decided to cleanse their @weareinstereo Instagram page completely, and start from scratch.
So, we sat down with the boys to get the low-down, and ask what we can expect from the new and improved Instereo (no more spacebar) in 2018.
"Ethan left at the end of 2017. He didn’t want to do music anymore. He wasn’t passionate about it, and there wasn’t much we could do to change his mind. He was set on that, which is fine," Chris explained.
"It gave us a good chance to reassess the bands image and music, we were already thinking that we needed to freshen up a bit."
GF: Did you plan on deleting all of your Instagram right before Ethan announced his exit?
"Yes. We kind of liked creating a bit of hype about what was happening with Instereo now. It was all part of a plan to release the song, with all that timing and the tension in the air.
"We didn’t delete it all, we archived it. It’s all still there. We just thought it was a fresh start. We couldn’t delete all those memories."
*The sound of fangirls all around the world exhaling with relief*
"We were both at home separately, and logged into the account at the same time," Jake explained. "I was like, you start at the top I’ll go from the bottom and we were like ‘Archive! Archive! Archive!!!’ Within like ten minutes everyone was freaking out, and the next day was when Ethan made his announcement.”
GF: Was there ever the discussion about replacing Ethan?
"No. When he said that he wanted to leave, it was more about how can we make this work with just us? We were too established to bring someone else in, and it was never in our minds that we need to replace anyone because you can’t replace that.
"It’s worked really well so far with new songs. The process is a lot smoother now.”
GF: Tell us about your new single, "Cruel".
"Its about being in an emotionally bad place with someone. It’s about being trapped by them. That can apply to any relationship in your life. We just felt it was something very relatable," Chris explained.
"We worked on it together," Jake said. "It was a fun process to record and then shoot the video clip for. The video makes the message a lot clearer especially with the door, and the desert.”
GF: The video is out this Friday... we've seen a lot of teasers already on your social media. What can you tell us about the music video for "Cruel"?
"Whenever we are writing a song we often have an image in mind of a video. In this case, we wrote the song first and then started thinking about what kind of things we could do with the film clip.
"We had the idea of going to the outback to capture that idea of being lonely and trapped.
"At first, we didn’t see the point of going all the way to the middle of Australia, but when we got there and then saw the video's final product, we were like, ‘holy sh*t this is awesome. And I (Chris) almost died.”
GF: Sorry what?
“We had two cars, and we planned to find this specific abandoned cabin when we got there, but we couldn’t find it.
"We found a property with bullet shells on the ground and we were like nah let’s head back. Anyway, we were staying pretty far away from the desert, and while heading back, a tyre blew out. We had no spare tyres either.
"So we pull over, and the tyre was completely shredded. Our manager took the other car and told us to film what we could, and we only had small rations in like 45-degree heat. We didn’t know what to film, and I (Chris) look out and see a small speck in the distance. So I flew the drone out a kilometre away, and we found the actual cabin we were looking for! So basically, the tyre blowing out was meant to happen. Otherwise we wouldn’t have found it.
We grabbed our stuff and started just walking through the desert, and in the video you will see some shots of that. Us just walking. Then we got to the house, and in the house we found this door, and we were like ‘We have to film this door’ and I then had this crazy idea, like, ‘We’ve got to walk up to the door and open it, and the next music video will start with us opening the door and walking through.'
"So thank god for the shredded tyre! It was one of the best days of our lives. I (Chris) even swallowed a fly mid-performance and threw up. It was buzzing in my throat. I don’t know if I even got it out. The show must go on!"
GF: Do you have any more new music coming out soon?
“YEP! We have been writing in the studios quite a bit. We’re very excited for this year particularly because we’ve got a lot of exciting plans.
“We’ve written the next single already. We are planning a video for that at the moment. We want to do something even more epic than what we did for “Cruel”. We’re also hoping to go to L.A this year to do a song-writing trip and meet some people. Producers and labels over there to test the waters over there."
GF: What can you tell us about your next song?
“It’s similar, but a lot more upbeat than “Cruel”. You can dance to it. We’re experimenting with a lot of different sounds, a lot more electronic vibes. The fans are going to get a lot of music this year. We’re going to release very often.”
GF: Did this whole process with reinventing Instereo and Ethan leaving bring you two closer together?
"All three of us were always really good mates, but now that it’s just me and Jake, both of us really want this. It’s an easier working space now, not because there are less numbers but because we both have similar mindsets of what we want.
"We both have a clear vision of where we see ourselves in the next five years with Instereo and how we get there. It’s just a lot clearer… and visionful," Jake exclaimed.
GF: Can we get a definition of 'visionful'?
*Laughing*
"Visionful is full of visions and colourful," Jake told us.