Lanterns won our BeatCrave Fav poll for February 2010, so here is our exclusive interview with the San Diego-based punk band as promised! We talk with lead vocalist and guitarist, Lowell Heflin, about the start of Lanterns, what punk really is, and a bit about what makes the San Diego music scene so great.
Check Lanterns out in our BeatCrave Exclusive interview below!
Passion Pit has had one hell of a year, and we’ve been following them ever since Chunk of Change was commercially released as an EP. Every “Best Of” list they’ve made since then has been a reward that was well-deserved for their unique sound and energy on their albums and at their live shows.
Their full-length debut album, Manners, was even more successful and easily made them one of the top bands to book at any venue or at any festival. They recently kicked off a major tour that started with NYC’s annual Summerstage and will continue to play everywhere from London to Paris to Tokyo.
Tonight, they will be playing a sold-out Los Angeles show at the Henry Fonda. Get pumped up for tonight by checking out this exclusive interview I was able to get with Passion Pit’s drummer, Nate Donmoyer, below! Catch a glimpse of their ride of success in the past and what’s to come in the future.
Hip-hop can be mightily unforgiving when it comes to defining – and especially redefining oneself. Amanda Blank began her career with a string of increasingly high-profile guest spots on rap and later pop singles; but even though she moved from the likes of Spank Rock to Britney Spears with an ease and dexterity matched only by her effortless, rapid-fire delivery, even fans assumed she was essentially – if not only – a filthy motormouth whose thoughts wandered more often into the bedroom than onto the dancefloor.
With the release of I Love You, her solo debut, Blank wastes no time challenging that perception: although the disc doesn’t skimp on dirty talk, it’s first and foremost a collection of future club classics, with several more reflective tunes thrown in as an indication her music is more than ready to make its way into the mainstream. Crave recently spoke to Blank (real name: Amanda Mallory) via telephone to discuss the development of her album, reflected on redefining herself and her music in her own terms, and talked about the challenges of being a formidable female in hip-hop’s boys club.
A little while ago we sat down with Gavin Hayes (vocals) and Mark Engles (lead guitar) of Dredg to talk to them about the one thing we care about the most, music. If your not familiar with the group, their a progressive/rock band from California who’ve been around for over 15 years. They’re latest album dropped back in June, and is entitled The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion. We were lucky enough to talk to these guys about their fans, their performances, and most importantly their tunes!
Without further ado, check out our two part interview below…
After an amazing show at The Glass House in Pomona (read the review), BeatCrave was lucky enough to sit down with Casey Cresecenzo and Erick Serna backstage. What followed was one an in-depth discussion of how the band came to be, where the band is going, what about the music industry they would both like to change and quite a bit more. Throughout the entire interview, it was quite apparent that both Casey and Erick absolutely love what they do and are extremely (justifiably) proud of the of the vehicle they’ve created to present their work.
The Dear Hunter is a band who is going to be around for quite some time and with such amazing talents as Casey, Erick and the rest steering their artistic direction, they’ll continue on a path of great music worth paying attention to: this is a band that gifts its listeners with albums that take them on an odyssey through layers of sounds and lyrics ever changing and ever engaging.
Take some time and get to know a band that has only just begun to leave their heavy imprint on the history of sound. Continue Reading
Welcome to part 2 of our interview with thenewno2. If you haven’t checked out the first part of our interview with the duo, you definitely should. Part one is a written Q&A with the band, with all sorts of fun stuff in it; they’re definitely not short on things to say. I don’t know about you, sometimes I find written interviews can seem a little impersonal, right? So we decided to switch things up a bit, so, and record them! That’s right, we have a series of exclusive video interviews with thenewno2 below. Enjoy!
Watch the videos below… Continue Reading
Welcome the first part of our interview series Thenewno2! For those of you who do not know of Thenewno2, they a favorite on BeatCrave. The band is comprised of childhood friends Oli Hecks and Dhani Harrison. Their sound is a mixture of rock and electro mix with, as Dhani describes it, “sweet” vocals. We have actually done a couple of interviews with them already, but what can we say, other then they like to talk a lot! This time around, we thought we might switch it up a bit starting off with our in-depth written interview to be followed by a series of video interviews.
They were kind enough to talk, at length, about their start as a band, what it was like recording their album, You Are Here, playing at Coachella, and all sorts of other fun stuff. Obviously, I am not going to tell you everything that is in the interview, because that will just ruin the surprise!
Check out what they had to say…
The unsigned artist is no longer just that girl you pass by playing “Landslide” on her acoustic guitar or the boy whose hat you throw a dollar in because his version of “Yesterday” was particularly touching. With the rise of the internet and a slew of sites dedicated to unsigned artist enabling talent to get their music to a huge audience without a single contract, the unsigned artist now has the ability to be a steady force in the ever changing world of music. Matt Monaghan is proving that with a heavy dose of unabashed talent the dream to play in front of live audiences in Europe and the states and listened to by a global audience can come true without being “discovered” by a record label. All it takes is true, unequivocal talent: something Matt quickly proves, through his music, he has plenty of. While his surname is quite familiar due to a brother whose face has been seen in Middle Earth, the strange island of LOST and even the dubious world of X-Men, Matt, song by fantastic song, show by amazing show, is making the Monaghan name synonymous with more than acting.
BeatCrave was fortunate enough to get an exclusive interview with the rising star of the music world and discuss the benefits and drawbacks that come with being an unsigned artist, his process for creating the music for which he is quickly becoming known and whether or not the fictional Driveshaft will ever become a life imitating art reality. We had a great time getting to know Matt and, dear reader, are confident you will too.
Progressive Kuduro has expanded rapidly throughout Europe and the US with the arrival of Buraka Som Sistema on the music scene – a group that mixes African music with techno and house electronica for the sole purpose of moving bodies on the dance floor. They made an appearance at Coachella this year, and will be at Pukkelpop in Belgium and Bestival in the UK.
Olivier Guiot, a Belgian sociologist from the Human and Social Science Faculty in Lisbon, is studying Kuduro for his masters thesis, and was gracious enough to chat with me about the origins of Kuduro, and the social impact of the cultural movement that is associated with the style of music. Listen to the interview after the cut:
