Chilean prog rockers Aisles have released a video for new track Smile Of Tears. The video introduces 25-year old Israel Gil as the band's brand new singer. He replaces Sebastián Vergara, brother of guitarist and founder German Vergara, who had been singer with the band since 2002.
Gil is currently studying Music Theory at the Conservatory of Music of the Catholic University of Chile. He's been studying music since he was 16-years old.
"The process in how I joined the band is quite funny," Gil explains. "In my life, things have always happened in a playful way but also through crises. In 2018, I was going through a heavy vocational crisis. I was having deep doubts about the way I was approaching music, because of the influence of university, of family members, friends... somehow I was feeling lost.
"I thought I always wanted to sing well, and I had never done it because I had been studying violin. I started singing a lot, learning, watching YouTube tutorials... I was self-taught. I started working with my voice, I did not only want to sing well but also to deliver an explicit message; it was frustrating for me to deliver that message only through musical knowledge and not through connection with the audience.
"One day I thought, "I want to sing in a band". I downloaded an app called Vampr - which I started to use because I was playing violin in the streets- and I started going through ads and I saw German's post, where he said they needed a singer. I thought his band looked professional, so I texted him and said that I was an amazing singer (laughs), I love to advertise myself. I said to him I was interested, that I knew a lot about music and music theory, and then he said, send me videos singing these songs to my email. The thing is, I never sent them. But he saw my videos on Instagram, he saw my profile and he said he liked my voice, and that's how the process started. He showed me songs from 4:45 AM and Hawaii, and he said we needed to work on my voice but I had a tremendous potential. German believed in me before anyone else.
"I sent him my recordings of those songs, and then they contacted me back a year later. He called me and said that the band had liked my voice, and my heart was speeding, I couldn't believe it. He said that I needed to take singing lessons, and also English lessons, so everything was lining up and I was feeling really happy. My dream was coming true little by little.
"I did the audition in their rehearsal room and it actually wasn't that good. I heard the recordings and I was nervous. But I finally have to say that the band believed in what I did and my potential, which is something that I even had trouble with, because I do things, and they either work or they don't work, I don't invest too much time thinking about them. When they called me and told me that I was their new singer, it must have been one of the happiest experiences in my life, it was a dream come true.
"So the process was really long and exhausting, but in a good way. It was very fulfilling to start to do new things, to explore areas I already knew but from a different perspective. I feel this is what I have always wanted, the way that I wanted to work, this space to express myself musically it's what I've always wanted. I want to communicate with the audience, and hopefully, make them feel like they are having a great experience. That would make me feel really happy."
