@
@
Entry Requirements: 18+
Songwriters Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak have a pact, a devotion to each other and to the music of @. In their solo existence, Victoria works as a beekeeper and Stone as a self-taught computer programmer, but when they get together, they become a singular, avant-garde song force. The East Coast house-show circuit first brought them into each other's orbit. Both Victoria and Stone are long time participants in the D.I.Y. music world, with their own separate histories in basement noise shows, warehouses and all ages spaces (Victoria has several records under the name Brittle Brian, and Stone has most recently gone by the pseudonym E.R. Visit). Over time, the two began collaborating long distance, and soon developed the @ formula – half Victoria songs, half Stone songs, with each filling in the cracks of the others compositions. On their new album Autosmile, the band’s first with the legendary indie label 4AD, @ have harnessed their unique process to reimagine the psychedelic folk tradition as an undeniably contemporary art form. @ are a coalition, a team, a two-headed cat, and their collaboration has led them, once again, to fascinating and timeless results.
Line Up
@ (pronounced “At”) is the folk-pop project of vocalist/guitarist Victoria Rose and multi-instrumentalist Stone Filipczak, who owe their musical bond to the power of text messages. Although the pair initially met years ago, it wasn’t until spring 2020 when they began sending each other music between their respective cities — Rose based in Philadelphia and Filipczak in Baltimore. A few exchanges down the line, Rose sent Filipczak an early recording of a song she’d written called “Star Game” asking him to contribute drums. She didn’t anticipate what he returned to her: “I didn’t like it at first. It felt jarring to hear my music so arranged,” she says. “I almost plotted to end the collaboration.” But it wasn’t long before she came around to the potential of what she and Filipczak could create together.
