Acapella group, the Acatonics, are releasing their debut album ‘Don’t you understand?’ at midnight on Oct. 10.
The album consists of songs the Acatonics performed at competitions throughout last season. “2024 was a really great year for us, so we thought why don’t we end it with a bang and start the new year off with an album,” senior Acatonic Aiden Feng said.
Last year, the Acatonics won the SingStrong High School a capella competition in New York for the second year in a row. “This past year, we broke a lot of a capella records. We won first place at our New York competition and two of our members won individual awards, which I don’t think has ever happened before in the group. A week later at our Maryland competition, we won those same three awards: first place, best vocal percussionist and best soloist. At our semifinals in New Jersey, we placed in the competition for the first time. Because of all those achievements, we decided it would be a good idea to record the album so it sits with those memories of victory and being close with everybody,” Acabella president Naysa Mustafa said.
The first album produced by the Acatonics holds significant memories of the past year to each singer on the album. “It’s not really the music, it’s more the memory that we have. We get to do something really cool and go to different states and perform for and meet different people. This is just the culmination of all that: the friendships, the sad parts, the good parts. Everything is all in this one album. We’re all really proud of it,” Feng said.
Each year the team’s dynamic shifts, as new members join and older members graduate, making the team closer knit. “The people in it make it so amazing. It’s nice being with people who share the same passion as you and also want to sing as much as you do. It’s also helped me become a more outgoing person, making more connections with people because when I joined a capella, I was new to the school so it was nice having a group to fall back on,” senior Acabella Stuti Patil said.
What makes the Acatonics unique is their diversity, but ultimately their love of music is what makes the team so strong.“There’s not that many groups in the school that take people from many parts of the school and combine them. Like if you’re on a sports team, you kind of grew up playing that sport together. There’s something unique about taking people from all the different parts and putting them together. You have to be vulnerable and do something outside your comfort zone. I think that is a bonding experience for a lot of people,” a capella director Keith Schwartz said.
The release of this album on Spotify will allow a larger audience to experience and interact with the Acatonic’s music. Their reach is no longer limited to those who can travel to attend their competitions. “This gives people the ability to hear what we work on without having to leave the state or the room because you can play it on your phone,” Schwartz said.
Additionally, the recording of their music will allow the Acatonics to submit their album for more awards under different categories.
The album was only made possible by an accident. The group was set to perform in Tennessee, but due to a snowstorm they were sent home. The team instead used the refund from the trip to pay for the recording of this album. “The honest answer is it’s expensive to do and I feel like over the last couple years, we’ve grown in terms of the things we’ve been doing and recognition. Last year, we made it as far as we ever have so we wanted to commemorate it with an album,” Schwartz said.
The process of recording this album was creative. The album was recorded in the basement of senior Acatonic Jake Cheng and took three days of continuous production. “A professional came with huge boxes and bags of audio equipment to my basement. As soon as she was there, she started snapping to find the spot with the least amount of echo because she wanted to add the echo effect in herself. She was snapping around to listen to the acoustics and that’s where she set up her microphones. Then she set up her laptop with her recording software and then we had headphones to listen to tracks,” Cheng said.
