Tortured Souls make happy live dance music
House music all night long, say what?!
Brooklyn’s Tortured Soul just released their second album entitled Did You Miss Me? and they were nice enough to answer some questions about Radio 1′s Giles Peterson calling them “the future of house music” and their fave places to hang in the ‘hood.
Listen to the title track “Did You Miss Me” .
Click through for the interview -
How does it feel to be called “the future of house music”? What does that mean to you?
Christian: It feels great. We respect Giles Peterson a lot, and when somebody with that kind of credibility gives you that kind of nod it’s very encouraging. To us it speaks to the fact that people are yearning for and striving for a level of pure raw intimacy only live music can provide, even in dance music. That’s what we do.
When did you guys start making music together and how do you think things have developed through the years?
Christian: We started playing together about 9 years ago as the rhythm section for a group called Topaz. We toured and played a couple hundred shows over about 3 years – eventually we left the band, but the 3 of us enjoyed our dynamic so we continued to play together, and applied our group feel to Tortured Soul. Now that we’re approximately 500 shows deeper into it and playing music closer to our hearts, we have become even tighter musically.
Where is your favorite place to play?
Ethan: We’re kind of spoiled. We’ve had crazy shows all over the world on every continent, so it’s hard to pick just one. Personally, there’s no place like home. There’s a sort of hometown pride we get when we do a show in New York, that I look forward to every we play here.
Can you tell me the craziest experience you’ve had playing live?
Ethan: The first one that comes to mind is the time we stepped out on stage at the Montreal Jazz Festival. It was early on in our touring days, and one of our first festival shows. We expected a few thousand people and it turned out we were trading sets with the main stage, to a 15,000+ person crowd. We had no idea it would be like that until we were literally plugging in our instruments to play. Needless to say, we were running on pure adrenaline for that show!
Favorite local haunts to hang?
Jason: I guess it would be too dorky to say Main Drag Music, although I do spend some time there. I’m a fan of Spuyten Duyvil, Larry Lawrence…Moto and Trophy Bar are right around the corner from me, so they win much of the time. The best activity in Wburg though is, of course, brunch. We’ve got the best options in the whole city, as far as I’m concerned.
What’s next for you guys?
Jason: We’ve got a bunch of gigs in Europe and midwest/northeast US in May, then some west coast stuff in June, festivals and back to Asia later in the summer. After that we plan to be picked up by a major label, receive mainstream radio programming (through corporate payola), make a series of appearances on TRL, have action figures made, and a Saturday-morning cartoon show based on us…you know, the usual trajectory.
i love you guys keep it up, but remember to send a tex a tex,thanks for doing that.
If there is one group that plays deep soulful house music it’s these guys, they let the listener’s emotions fly away and find themselves in very un-existing situations. The group can really express the feeling of love through the house beat. Vocal, is another thing.