For many, the Commercial Music program here at Cerritos College allows them to develop their skills and prepare themselves for a future in the music industry.

However, it doesn’t get much better than performing in a band led by the Music Department’s chair, Professor Maz.

He heads a rock band consisting of students from the college, simply named “Andrew Maz”.

“Back in 2016, I was working on a project and I had one student, Sergio, who was interested in the process. We were originally going to work on an instrumental album, but a few months later we had new material and he brought up the idea of adding lyrics. We realized if we were going to do this, we needed to add a drummer,” recalled Maz.

Maz eventually decided to form the band with students in the Music Department.

“I pulled from the talent pool I had, and I wanted to work with students because I had done it in the past… a large part of it is the fact that they’re a different generation and they have a different take on music and a different take on the sound,” said Maz.

At this point, the group began to form. The group consists of Maz on vocals, Mikey Enriquez on drums, Joel Alvarez on bass, Sergio German on guitar, and Emili Romano on vocals.

Maz recalled the recording process for the group’s first album, Entropy.

“We were recording and eventually released the album. We were done with the show, and people were asking ‘When’s the next one?’ and so I was like okay… That’s when I began to work on Singularity,” said Maz.

“Singularity was part two of the story that had started off on Entropy. Everyone kind of knew that. I had been secretly working on part three, Winter, during the Singularity sessions. The last song on Singularity, ‘Static,’ had the lyrics written by Emili. The last line was ‘Here we are, before remember like it was that cold December’. When I saw that, I told her that the next album was called Winter,” said Maz. “It all kind of fell into place”.

Winter is the third part of a trilogy that has a consistent theme throughout it. For each record in the trilogy, his goal was to ensure that each one of them had their own distinct sound.

Maz wants the audience to interpret the meaning of the records themselves.

Emili Romano, one of the vocalists in the group, was instrumental in providing the tone and content of the vocals in both Entropy and Singularity.

“I really wasn’t able to find the words for it. I handed the music to Emili. She ended up writing the lyrics for one of the songs on Entropy, track 10. ‘Eventuality.’ It was originally an instrumental, but she wrote a melody and lyrics for it which I really ended up liking,” said Maz.

According to Maz, she wrote about 60% of the lyrics on the album.

Regarding the influences on the albums, which are very synth-driven, Maz stated that there was never a clear intent on replicating a certain genre.

“I never go in with an intent, I guess. I forget that the current crop of late 20 and 30-year-olds are actually big fans of 80’s music. Likely because their parents listened to it,” explained Maz.

As a result, many of the songs have a distinct sound that reminds one of the synth-heavy tunes from the 1980s.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the recording process for Winter has been temporarily halted.

“The tentative release date for Winter is Fall of 2022. We started rehearsals in January of 2020, with the intent that the album would come out in February of 2021… We had gotten about 5 rehearsals in and then COVID happened. Between that and having to shift all my classes online, everything got put on hold,” Maz said.

The band has explored other avenues for recording safely from home, but with members of the band being preoccupied with stuff outside of the band, the record has been put on hold for the time being.

They’re hoping to continue rehearsing during the summer and beyond.

When looking back on the albums and the experiences he’s had while working on Entropy and Singularity with the band, Maz said “What these students and this band has shown me is that everyone has the potential to be amazing. They just have to go out and find it”.

Entropy and Singularity are available to stream on Apple Music and Spotify.

You can also find live performances of the band playing songs off Singularity on Maz’s YouTube channel.