Morgan Visconti and Sam Kelser have been friends since childhood, first writing songs together when Visconti’s father, Tony, was operating the formerly named Good Earth Studios in London. They went off to work on other projects before revisiting their material and ultimately forming their latest project, Ready, Steady, Die!.

“I think we reached a level of stability and maturity in our lives, along with having access to our own label and studios, that suddenly made it clear to us that these songs needed to get finished and heard,” they said. “We both worked on so many separate musical projects, as well as with each other, helping other artists that we sometimes forgot how jazzed these songs got us. Once we got back on track, we knew that we both work extremely fast when we’re excited about something.”

Since they wrote songs together at various points over the years, they had accumulated plenty of material. In order to get as much of that material out as possible, they decided to release a trilogy. The first, Pleasure Ride, was released in January and focuses on the beginning of their songwriting career as a duo.

Their songs focus on some part of the human psyche and torment, and explore these areas with equal parts style and cadence. The title track is about how people try and avoid emotion and boredom by abusing stimulants. “Deep” is about when life feels dark while “Dream People” is about feeling mad. “The Know” shares desperation for control. “Woebetide” is what they believe is a message from Mother Nature. They share the common theme of knowing that it isn’t possible to be alright all the time but that there are ways to move forward.

“There really isn't much you can compare to creating and nurturing something that becomes so personal and then releasing it to the world,” they said. “It's very scary because the soul is laid bare, and a piece of your life that you gave blood, sweat and tears to can be dismissed within seconds, especially in this conveyor belt era.”

While Pleasure Ride is the album that best reflects how their influences play into their music, the vision for the rest of the trilogy is quite the opposite. They want their follow-up albums to address the issues they - and the rest of the world - have been facing this past year while exploring different sounds.

“Lyrically, [Kelser]’s sharp insight and wit ties the whole project together but the second album is shaping up to be, musically speaking, both a more vicious and playful side of that equation,” they said. “The third album might be a disco album. We do have some dance songs - we’re not sure yet - but it’ll still come from that dark headspace.”