Joe Diaco is tinkering on his keyboard in his old bedroom on the second floor of his parents' house in Cornelius. Dressed in jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt with a Beck T-shirt underneath, he's talking about his relationship, personally and musically, with wife April.
She's sitting cross-legged on the floor, in black slacks and a white top, looking up at her husband with a sparkle in her eyes, and ending many of the sentences he begins.
"It's a sweet story," she says, then blushes slightly, "the way we met."
You best believe the Diacos, as the Shangri-Las once put it in a song, are in love, LUV -- with each other, and with music. But the style of music the couple makes in Joe's childhood bedroom, which overlooks a suburban cul-de-sac neighborhood, may not be what you'd expect.
Joe and April, who perform under the name alt.ctrl.sleep, create beautiful, dreamy soundscapes not unlike the delicate experimental pop music of Mazzy Star.
In the early 1990s, the sound was dubbed "dreampop." It's a far cry from the Carolina twang of roots rockers like the Avett Brothers or Southern Culture on the Skids.
Neither Joe, 28, nor April, 29, is a native Southerner.
She was born April Porcello and raised in a blue-collar Italian household in the suburban New York town of Nyack. Her family moved to Mooresville when she was a senior in high school. Joe was born to an Italian family from New Jersey who moved to the Cornelius area when he was 14.
"It was hard to adjust to the South at first," says Joe. "My gym teachers ..
." He trails off and gazes down at the black and white keys of his vintage Wurlitzer electric piano. "Um, well, I got called Yankee and stuff like that.
"
He got a computer and some music software, and found solace in sounds that took him far away from the pristine Charlotte-area 'burbs. One of his earliest musical discoveries was Kraftwerk, the electronics duo that scored a couple of hits -- "Autobahn" and "Trans-Europe Express" -- around the time Joe was born in 1978.
"When I was younger, I actually used to go out to the gallery crawls and set up my computer and play music," he says.
"People didn't know what I was doing. They'd ask if I was checking my e-mail."
April had an equally hard time adjusting.
"I actually got fired from a job because of my accent," she says. "I was a waitress."
When they were in their late teens, Joe and April say they felt lost.
Both were searching for someone who might understand.
Joe remembers the moment when, in his early 20s, he stood at a crossroads.
He'd recently decided to hold an open-mike series at Saeed's Bar Deli, in Cornelius.
"I was outside and looking up at the full moon, and there was this shooting star. I know this sounds kind of cheesy, but I said, `Well, I've got to make a wish.' So I was like, `Just please send somebody to me, just give me someone who understands the music I make.
'
"A couple of days later, April walked in."
April and her sister were driving on Catawba Avenue in Cornelius around that same time when they saw the sign outside Saeed's announcing Joe's open-mike night. "I had borrowed my friend's guitar a few days earlier and said, `I'm going to learn how to play this because I really need to do this, for me,' " says April.
"So I did. I wrote like two songs. That was about two days before we drove by Saeed's.
"I had been thinking the same thing Joe was: `Please God, send me somebody who loves music as much as I do.' I was just lost."
April says she saw the same shooting star.
When she walked in and approached Joe about playing, sparks flew, though both were too shy to show it. The two began spending time together and soon fell in love and married."When I met April, she inspired me," says Joe.
"Before that, I had no support at all for my music. They'd just be like, `What you're doing is weird.' But she heard it and said, `Joe, you need to do something with that.
' "
Things were rough at first. When they felt no one would listen to their music, they considered moving to Portland, Ore. But Joe's father got sick and the couple put their plans on hold.
Joe had landed a job buying used albums at the Manifest music store on South Boulevard. Each night when he came home, he and April would work on their music, often through the night. Joe would play guitar and keyboards, and put it all together in his computer; April learned to play drums and sang Joe's lyrics.
Joe's co-workers had no idea what he was doing. "He was always coming to work tired but never leaving the house to go anywhere," says Pat Dugger, another buyer at the store.
Then one day, less than a year ago, Joe brought in a CD he'd burned of the couple's music.
His co-workers were stunned. "I couldn't believe he could be doing all that and not telling anybody about it," says Dugger.
Co-worker Enid Valu was enchanted: "I think they're the best band in the area, it's just no one knows about them.
"
Joe uploaded some of the songs onto a page in February 2006, and began sending links to people in the music business.
Six months later, he got a response from Lakeshore Records' Brian McNelis, who chooses music for movie soundtracks and was nominated for a Grammy for "Little Miss Sunshine."
Three months after that, Joe got the call of his dreams.
Producer Mark Kramer, one of the architects of the dreampop genre and owner of the influential indie label Shimmy-Disc, had been to alt.ctrl.sleep's MySpace page.
"I thought it was some of the most original, startling and utterly unique music I'd heard," says Kramer. "It made me feel like I felt when I would hear new music when I was younger."
Joe and April are making plans to work with Kramer.
They're trying out their music in small cafes around Charlotte.
"We knew we'd get some kind of feedback, we just had no idea it'd be this big," says April. "We're just totally overwhelmed with the response and we're very happy about it.
"
After all, only a year ago, Joe and April were just another couple in love.
I'm accustomed to people putting CDs in my hands in hopes of getting a review. So when Joe Diaco gave me his CD when I was shopping at Manifest, I thought, {quot}Here we go again.
{quot} But I was knocked out!
Listen to them: On MySpace, if you want to listen to only one song, click {quot}In the End.{quot} Philosophy:
"Our approach to writing music is easy: Make it simple, psychedelic, and easy on the brain.
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