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Belinda Interviews Australian Hip-Hop Group, Thundamentals.

With an art exhibit, a new album and one sexy video, Thundamentals set their sights on making new fans part of “Everyone We Know”.

 There’s been such an over-saturation of hip hop (especially in the US) how do you feel your sound, and the new album Everyone We Know, measures up to what is out there?   What sets it apart and what makes it a good fit?

I don’t think we have ever really tried to fit in to what is out there, obviously we take inspiration from things we hear, but not usually directly. From the production perspective I have always made beats/songs in a similar way, buy vinyl, listen to vinyl, sample it, make beats.. There hasn’t been a time where I have thought I should just do what the U.S. is doing and make strictly 808 beats. I think we have managed to have something different by being progressive with our sound and experiment with new and different sounds regularly. I love sampling, but Im not stuck that every beat has to sound like golden era, I’m happy to just make something that sounds good to me.

What made you decide on the actors in the video vs appearing in it yourselves?

In the past we have all usually featured in our video clips, and had spoken about doing some where we aren’t all in the clip. We had a connect with a really talented producer from L.A. and his pitch for the track seemed pretty spot on, he was to shoot it over there and cast it himself. For us, this was a bit of a risk considering what we had done in the past but it turned out to be perfect.

Where they a couple or was it just an incredible chemistry on screen?

Apparently they are both actors and in a relationship, which definitely helped the credibility.

How long have you been playing together?

We started making music together loosely around 10+ years ago. Throughout the end of high school we were all getting right into our respective crafts. Poncho wasn’t in the band at the time, but he was local and was a trumpet extraordinaire by 13.

How did that come about?

We were friends, we had similar interest in music and an ex-member Silent Titan had gotten an MPC and started making beats. Me and him were heavily into DJing and once he got an MPC I followed and we were making beats and DJing all the time in high school. This just flowed into us all being friends and making music together and the subsequently as a group.

15 tracks is a huge number to release on a single album.  What was your reasoning behind that? 

It was a little while between drinks with the last 2 releases, so we felt we had a lot to say and show. Poncho and I had actually written around 100 beats before the song writing process had really began, and we were well and truly on a bit of a roll leading into the intense writing period. We had sketched out around 25-30 songs before we decided what would be the album, and it was hard to cull as we were all attached to different song demos in different ways.

Thundamentals_-_Everyone_We_Know_(iTunes_3000px_-_No_Logos).jpg_JPEG Low...


Pro skate boarder / professional model/actor / Stuntman / Strongman 

Do you hope to get to the US for a tour soon?

We are definitely looking at trying to do a run over there in the very near future.

How long were you working on the album,  and what are your personal favorites in the catalogue?

Poncho and I started about 9 months before the rappers, Tuka had his solo project going on, and Jesse was taking a break at that point, so all up around 18months. Off the new album, probably one of my favourites and personal goal kickers was the title track “Everyone we know”. I love soul music and we wanted to start the album off where the last one left also try and start an Australian hiphop album like no one had done.

 Where did you draw the inspiration for this album and how is it different / same as your previous work?

As I said before, the process was somewhat similar to other albums, but as your music taste grows and you learn more and more about your production techniques, evolution is inevitable. We are always all trying to push ourselves a little and not get stuck in what we know.




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