Aside from a single cassette released from Brooklyn microlabel Hate to Quit under his stage name K. Porcelain, Carlo Vincente Soriano's work is mostly available on Instagram, either in seconds-long Stories that disappear after a day (I'm still missing his cover of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On"), or in somewhat-longer-lasting posts.
When I saw the 25-year-old Throgg's Neck-born singer at the now-closed Flatbush venue The Owl in December, he didn't even sing into the microphone. Instead, the audience had to lean in to hear his lightly-samba-inflected songs about sex, drugs, and hatred that remind me a little of the Moldy Peaches.
Given Soriano's penchant for obscurity, I was a little surprised when he told me, "I definitely want to grow and eventually be famous." Soriano said the Instagram thing is mostly for convenience, not a strategic decision. "When I post a new song on Instagram, it's nice to get the likes that I get."
His preference is for cassettes, actually. "I like the idea of having my music as a collector's item, or, something that's kind of exclusive and hard to get," Soriano said. "I had it on Spotify for a while, and Bandcamp, and many, many people were listening to the music, but I wasn't making any money."
"I'm starting to value physical media, just because I want there to be a little more respect for the song," Soriano continued. "I don't feel like it's very respectful to binge a song that you like until you're sick of it."