1. What is “Wince”? (i’m talking what is it really…)

Wince: /wins/ : to shrink back involuntarily (as from pain).

2. I have heard Wince compared to experimental rock contemporaries like BCNR, Black Midi, or Unwound, but, personally, what are y’all’s biggest inspirations ('wincepirations' if you will) as a band?

A lot of Wince’s aesthetics come from bands like Hella, Pinback, Slint, and Sonic Youth, but I think a lot of the band’s vocabulary comes from 20th century expressionism/modernism and even baroque music. Composers like Berg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and late Mahler all come to mind as active influences at the moment (Bartok being my favorite).

3. What is the writing process for y’all, and how does that translate to playing live?

I (David) usually write a riff or small progression and try to score it out to really visualize the other parts. The whole thing is a bit academic but I try to treat it like playing a video game or some sort of puzzle game like, “this note goes here, this rhythm goes here, and this note goes up here”. It's fun writing like that because it just adds an element of playfulness to everything and forces us to play things that might be uncomfortable or otherwise difficult to come up with by writing on the instrument.
After I write out the parts, I bring them to Greg (Albania) and Will and they’ll give me back some feedback of things that are just impractical to play, better ways to play certain parts or maybe even add to it a bit. After that is done, Ryan comes up with a drum part when we showcase the songs to him and that’s pretty much it! As for playing live, we really just stick to the score for the most part, we don’t improvise at all.

4. How do you conjure the rock n roll spirit before shows?

Soylent, sushi, Zelda, and LiveLeak

5. Favorite memory as a band?

When we played Bard College (Upstate NY) in May 2022 we had to drive around 100 miles north of the city to the venue, and had planned to sleep there because it was so far up. Then at around 1:00 AM, Ryan’s mom called, and was like “we need the car in the morning”, so we basically just drove back down 100 miles to Brooklyn at 1:00 AM.

6. What should we expect next from the band?

We have our debut album coming out around Fall of 2023 which is most of the songs we play live. As for new music, our second album is almost done being written. I guess for newer music, expect more extremes of what is already happening.