7 minute read
Interview with Drax Project
DRAX PROJECT
@ Jonathan Benbaruk exclusively for On The Move
Comprised of Sam Thomson, Shaan Singh, Matt Beachen and Ben O’Leary, Drax Project is a band mixing R&B, EDM, pop and even Jazz influences. Formed in New Zealand in 2014, the quartet started in the industry by covering famous pop songs online and grew their fanbase thanks to their original approach and wide range of influences. They eventually rose to fame with the massive hit «Woke Up Late» featuring Hailee Steinfeld. As they finally just released their debut album, we sat with the band to talk about their story.
@ Jonathan Benbaruk exclusively for On The Move
On The Move: Hey guys! You have this new single called «All This Time». Despite the pop aspect of the song, I can feel an electro vibe to it. Are you going to continue pursuing this EDM path further in the future?
Ben O’Leary: «All This Time» is an interesting one. It’s actually quite an old song even though we just released it. We’ve been playing it live in shows for about two years and the heavy saxophone part is like «dum dum duum duuuum».(laughs) That’s the kind of stuff we’ve been playing live since we started the band.
Ben O’Leary for On The Move
@ Jonathan Benbaruk exclusively for On The Move
Matt Beachen: We always loved big drops. We covered a lot of songs that have big drops but we also love beautiful guitar lines and pop melodies and stuff so we combine the two.
Shaan Singh: On the album we just dropped, there’s a mixture of many things but «All This Time» is the furthest into heavy drops that we have.
- Matt Beachen
On The Move: Where does this inspiration for electro music come from? Are you fans of DJs, producers who produce this kind of drops?
Matt Beachen: We started off almost as a live DJs. We started off with drums and saxophone and playing for half an hour, straight, almost like a DJ would, just changing songs. That’s how we started, it’s almost like our DNA. We have the big climactic drops and we can go in the build-up ...
Ben O’Leary: This sound kind of comes from us playing live because we wanted to sound the way our shows sound, very high energy, if that makes sense. The bass hits you very hard and it’s very loud... it’s kind of how we spin, like trying to get all the sound have that energy in the recorded versions, the same as it does live.
Sam Thomson: It is probably a good representation of the level of intensity our shows can get to.
Shaan Singh: We’ve actually already played all of the songs on the album live before the album dropped. We played them in our shows in New Zealand recently. We’ve done that ever since we’ve been a band.
Sam Thomson: We’ve been testing the songs.
Ben O’Leary: Also the style of the guitar and the saxophone... for example «Cry My A River» by Justin Timberlake, we’ve played this song in pretty much of all of our shows. Even the original songs, the fans who came to our shows before are already familiar with them.
On The Move: How do you guys work in studio? Are you all bringing ideas, do some of you come up with melodies or lyrics then you build everything around that?
Shaan Singh: Everything you just said is correct (laughs)
Matt Beachen: Yes, you’re pretty much on point. A lot of the time we start with a guitar foundation that Ben would make, we all can make those, but Ben is particularly really good at it.
Sam Thomson: Basically we would have this little idea and someone would play rough guitar on it and then someone would bring the drop to the table and then we would all sit down and make a basic idea of how we would structure the song, and maybe try melodies on it and sing random things. After a while you hear words just come out and someone might have a concept for some lyrics or storyline.
Sam Thomson for On The Moe
@ Jonathan Benbaruk exclusively for On The Move
Ben O’Leary: It’s extremely collaborative. For example sometimes Shaan has written the whole song and brings it to us and we’re like « we love this and that but should change this part or this part ».
Matt Beachen: We’re all songwriters and we want to be a part of everything.
On The Move: Do you guys usually have the same taste?
Shaan Singh: We end up getting to the point where we all like what the song is. We have a rule where we try everyone’s ideas even though it might sound weird to everyone else, just to try it and know if it works or doesn’t work but we generally have similar taste.
On The Move: I think your music cannot be labelled and put in one box because of the different influences you guys have. I feel like you’re creating - I wouldn’t say genre - but your own perception of the music you guys would like to put out.
On The Move: Let’s talk about the massive track that is “Woke Up Late” ft Hailee Steinfeld. Did you expect this kind of reaction?
Ben O’Leary: That’s how we like to look at things! (laughs)
Matt Beachen: Can you write our bio, please? I’m gonna write down what you said and put it on our Spotify bio! (laughs)
Shaan Singh: I think that’s a very good way of putting it
On The Move: What can you tell me about this debut album you just released?
Matt Beachen: It’s self-titled and we wrote it pretty much over the course of two years so it’s been a long time coming
Shaan Singh: Some of the songs are about when we were still working jobs while being a band and another song is about being away from home because we’re in a band so it’s like the journey in some ways over the past few years.
Sam Thomson: There are other things which are not specific to that but…
Matt Beachen: I’d say the album is quite exciting and the music feels good. You can put it on at a party, you can put it on in the bath, when you wake up... (laughs)
Ben O’Leary: You can put it on when you’re brushing your teeth (laughs)
Shaan Singh: We didn’t feel as a group that we had to try very hard on the album, we like all the songs and we took our time.
Shaan Singh for On The Move
@ Jonathan Benbaruk exclusively for On The Move
Matt Beachen: We don’t feel like some are singles and some are just album fillers. We think that all of them are good, of course we have our favorites but we enjoy all of them.
On The Move: You previously covered some rap songs such as “Still D.R.E” by Dr Dre. Would you like to collaborate with rappers in the future? If so, who?
Shaan Singh: We would love to!
Sam Thomson: Not at all. It’s weird to think about that at the time we wrote “Woke Up Late” we weren’t focusing on it at all. We had the initial idea but we focused on other music at the time and we kind of pushed “Woke Up Late” to the side until we were in the studio with Six60. We played them the rough version that we had and they were like” “why aren’t you guys recording this one?”. And we just finished it quickly.
Shaan Singh: I thought that it was the best pop song that we made.
Matt Beachen: I remember putting up the announcement of the song and it got the least amount of likes on Instagram and no one even cared (laughs) and turns out…
Matt Beachen for On The Move
@ Jonathan Benbaruk exclusively for On The Move
On The Move: How did the collaboration with Hailee come about?
Shaan Singh: My mom called hers and I said “should we do this?” And she said yes (laughs)
Ben O’Leary: We were on tour with Camila Cabello in Europe and they are friends and someone from Camila’s team showed some of our music to Hailee’s team and she just got in touch with us and asked if she could be on the song, and we said of course.
On The Move: You are all from New Zealand, what can you tell us about the industry and the artists there?
Matt Beachen: Very interesting question.
Shaan Singh: There are a lot of cool artists from there. Do you know Bene?
Sam Thomson: Fortunes, Montell2099, SACHI…
Ben O’Leary: There are SO many!
INTERVIEW BY PAM CHARBIT PHOTOS BY JONATHAN BENBARUK EXCLUSIVELY FOR ON THE MOVE
