Wordplay Magazine Issue 3

92 Colosoul / issue five /

WORDPLAY

/Colosoul/ issue five

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90 Colosoul / issue five /

WORDPLAY

Photos by Alex Engels

88 Colosoul / issue five /

/Colosoul/ issue five

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Thundamentals

Two weeks prior to the release of their highly anticipated new album “Foreverlution” Wordplay get’s the lowdown from Jeswon of Thundamentals!

Upon waking up Australian Hip Hop fans with the “Sleeping On Your Style” LP and a more than successful nationwide tour, being named as “the next big thing in Australian music”, taking out countless awards and titled one of the top 10 acts to see Live in 2010. Jeswon, Tuka, Tommy Fiasko and DJ Morgs of the Blue Mountains are the forever evolving Thundamentals.

How did Thundamentals get started?

Basically, for now a three piece bunch of kids, growing up a couple hours West of Sydney came together out of a love and appreciation of hip hop culture. Some of us were into MCing, some were into DJing and beat production and another one was into Graffiti and Skating. It was all the kind of youth hip hop orientated street culture with mad passion that we’re all in love with.

I didn’t move to the Blue Mountains till I was 17. All the other guys were friends that grew up together in the mountains. I was kind of a blow-in that moved up with my family from Sydney. The rest of the guys and the wider hip hop community really took me under their wing. And then, through this common link of love for hip hop and seeing other friends in the community like Hermatude and Urthboy making waves and performing and taking that art to the next level inspired us to do the same. For me, personally, it was a mad blessing that my parents decided to move from Sydney to the Blues, I would’ve probably stayed just a hip hop fan. But moving to a place where people are taking the art to the next level, that was like a serendipitous moment in my life.

Tell us about your new album “Foreverlution”…

The album itself is kind of an interesting mix of hip hop with classic elements and real warm, traditional 90’s era sound influences.

But more contemporary. It’s got some dubstep in there, some gilted kind of beats. The title is a reflection of that Foreverlution is a mix of these things that will sound good forever and the evolution part of the title refers more to those futuristic and contemporary sounds we are trying to push beyond the realms of what people think Aussie hip hop should sound like. It’s that familiarity of elements that we all love in hip hop, trying to push boundaries as artists. Between the aesthetic old that we grew up on and trying to evolve as artists and challenge ourselves to use sounds that haven’t been used in Australian hip hop before.

by Calvin LeGuay

What inspired the track Move it up?

The message behind that song was that we are really just at the beginning, even though we’ve been together six years, we’re just coming into the consciousness of the average music lover. We can’t tell what happens in the future, so we’re playing it by ear. We’re here and just try to enjoy the moment. We realized: You have to work hard at anything to be successful. So we’re going to keep writing and making music until people recognise. This song is dedicated to everyone with that idea, as in ‘you have to work hard to reap benefits’ and I think that message resonates with people. Also, as everyone has dreams that they are chasing. We’re chasing our dream and we know it’s not going to be and over night success. We’re just trying to appreciate each moment as it arises because you never know what tomorrow holds good or bad, just enjoying being able to perform and feeling blessed.

How did accompanying Astronomy Class influence you all?

We had the good fortune of getting to know Chasm during our early days of first starting to gig in Sydney. Chasm was one of the first sought of artists outside of that Blue Mountain community who really showed an interest in what we were doing.

And he was also one of the first people to really be supportive from outside of the Blue Mountains scene. So we did a few more gigs with Chasm and also myself and the other MC, Tucker. We would go down to a bar in Sydney near the Opera House, Chasm would pay us fifty dollars each to come down and kick freestyles over beats.

That was like the genesis of our relationship with Astronomy Class. Once Chasm was working on his solo release called the “Beyond The Beat Tape”. Both, myself and Tucker, ended up featuring heavily on that album. As a result of that, Chasm asked myself and Dialectrix, who is also a product of the Blue Mountains hip hop scene, and DJ 2Buck to tour his album nationally, as well as part of the Obese Block Party. And it was through the tour with Chasm that I got to meet Pegz the owner of Obese Records.

Once we had our first EP done, Pegz heard it and liked what Thundamentals was doing and offered us a deal through what we were doing with Chasm. So Chasm played a big role in introducing Thundamentals to the wider Australian hip hop community.

When Astronomy Class were touring they asked if we would support, which makes sense ‘cos we get along and the music types are similar, and to this day the most fun I had on tour was with Astronomy Class.

attention to details. We put a lot more thought into what songs are about. The EP was testing the waters, an experiment. Ther are a lot of different sounds on that EP and it was partly just kind of seeing just what got the biggest reaction; seeing what people were vibing on the most. But also, even for ourselves, just finding what direction we wanted to move forward with in the future. I feel like “Sleeping On Your Style” and now even more so with “Foreverlution” we’ve really kind of defined our sound. I feel the EP was like the seed to work out our direction. Now we’re at a stage where we know what we like, where we’re going, and it’s kind of international; and I just think that no one else in the Australian hip hop scene sounds like the Thundamentals. I think we got something unique which I’m proud of.

Who influences your sound?

So many artists. It’s kind of hard to say.

We’ve been listening to hip hop for over 10 years and it’s hard to define. Al Green, James Brown they’re the kind of people.

They were laying the foundations for hip hop before hip hop was. Sly and the Family Stone. We pay attention to musicianship and collaborate with different musicians, we’re not pro musicians ourselves. The Blue Mountain weather is shit, it’s terrible you stay in-doors.

So kids pick up a guitar and get really good at it. We’re lucky to have some world class musicians as friends of ours that we grew up with in the Mountains and we always try to get them involved to some capacity with our own music because it gives our music a level of richness that we probably couldn’t have created just by ourselves.

Where does Thundermentals plan to take their music in the future?

Like I said with “Move It Up”, for the moment we’re having the time of our lives, we’re so grateful to travel around Australia and perform for fans and get to see Australia, which is an amazing thing. It’s a spinout even though we’ve been doing it for a while and we’re so lucky that we can just connect with people through music. That being said though we would love to be able to travel overseas and perform our music in strange and exotic countries and we’re looking into doing that next year. In general, I just want as many people to hear what we have to say.

How has your group developed since your 108 EP? I think we are forever improving, trying to become better practitioners of our art. The quality of the beat production and the rapping since we dropped our EP has improved 10 fold. The biggest difference is the quality and

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Ageof Innocence Summer 2011-12