afropunk + metal

afropunk + metal

On April 23, Mr. Chris came through to rock an Afropunk themed edition of the metal show. If you’re not familiar with Afropunk, here’s a summary.

Now a massive music festival, Afropunk emerged as a movement for greater inclusion in punk and other heavy music. The stories of African Americans navigating the scene were captured in the 2003 documentary, directed by James Spooner.

Afropunk has expanded since 2003 from a focus on people of African descent in punk rock to incorporate noise, indie, metal and rock music, as well hip-hop, soul and electronic. The 2017 festival featured, for example, Erykah Badu, Fantastic Negrito and Black Pantera, as well as acts like Miguel and Janelle Monae.

However, Afropunk’s roots are in bands like Bleed the Pigs, which have typified this emergence beyond punk.

Houston’s Oceans of Slumber, which recently toured with Epica and Myrkur, might be considered as part of the Afropunk universe. They’ve been included on BlackPunk! and similar Youtube channels. The band released The Banished Heart earlier this year.

You can check out Mr. Chris’ playlist, if you missed it. He’ll be spinning more soon.

third twin interview

third twin interview

The Third Twin

is a mysterious musical duo that is rapidly gathering notoriety on the Internet. Initially rumored to be Daft Punk releasing songs that Disney deemed not good enough for the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, T.T.T. has released a plethora of original music that has earned them the right to be quickly accepted on their own merit. This duo has released 17 songs on three albums (at the time of this article) through free media outlets like Youtube and Last.fm. They’ve recently begun work on their third Internet album, titled Live, which consists of a series of live concerts through Justin.tv with a new track released at the end of the show.

After debuting The Third Twin on KTRU, I was lucky enough to be offered the opportunity to interview them via email so that Houston – and the World – could become better acquainted not only with the artists, but with the message of The Third Twin Project. Let me preface this interview by saying that English is not their first language and that I did my best to convey the sentiment, if not the exact verbage of their words. (Although, their answers are mostly unchanged.) Now, I’d like to share that interview with you….

What is your relationship to music? Can you describe the “philosophical-musical project” that is The Third Twin?

Our relationship in the music world began when we were children. My Father worked a lot with old Synths and another DJ machines (1970`s equipment).
In our home it was easy to find some Bass or some Electric Guitar, too. Nowadays, we work professionally with the music to transmit ideas for The Third Twin (TTT) Project.

TTT project is a “secret project” to check if the world is ready to change to another and better world. We not are here for a simple coincidence. The actual system is old, like the Feudal System was in the past. Capitalism is old now. TTT project is to check to see if this world is ready for a new change.

What influences your music? Which bands do you enjoy?

Our music is not influenced by anything, we don’t like to listen to other music because it could in fact change our concept of music. So we try to avoid
listening to other bands but sometimes that is not possible. Funky, Disco and French House are very primitive and emotional styles that we consider very interesting.

Can you describe the process of your sound creation? How do you know when a song is complete?

This is very strange and complex. All of our tracks speak about some emotion or issue. The process? Me or my brother begin with some idea about the Voice or Bass, later
when somebody finishes this level the other person takes this “skeleton” of the song and begins to add the Drumm, Sounds, (it is not only adding instruments, sometimes
the key is to add the exact feeling or emotion) but ultimately this song is circulating betwen 2 brains (myself and my brother). A song is completed/finished when at
the end the song speaks by itself.

Thank you for the live concerts and free release of music. Will you always offer your music for free? Do you feel that all music should be free?

No problem, (TTT project offers the music free and the project is open) music is a tool more powerfull than words, for example. So TTT project aims to change the ideas of this capitalist system. We pay for everything nowadays, cinema is not free, music is not free; Capitalism has put a price on things that really are free.
TTT always gives their music away for free, the final consumer decides if s/he wants to pay for an official disc. People who pay for our music are only the people who want our stuff in their homes like the people who pay for an original Van Gogh picture. But everybody has the right to enjoy Van Gogh for free in a museum.

Is “save the animals, and most importantly, all human beings work together” just a tag-line, or do you truly believe the sentiment?

The true designers of the world think it’s time to update the system. The world-system is updated periodically. Think about the discovery of fire. The First and Second Industrial Revolution. The Information Age. Currently, The project assesses whether TTT is the time of another great system change. This change is characterized by respect for animals and raw materials. Ending hunger, reducing working hours by half, using some ‘drugs’ beneficial for the new system, a new product production system … etc. If people reconsider these, they will marvel at the quality of life that can be achieved with slight changes in the system.

What can we, your fans, do to save the planet?

The first step is to ask a couple of questions like, “When were our lives better? Before, in the feudal system with the Kings, or now, where almost everyone has a home, a car and fresh food on the table?”

The next step would make the current system as we know it seem as archaic as though it were from the Neanderthals.

Supporters of the project are listed and assigned a code. Basically the fans / supporters are classified primarily as:

  • Fans: bearers of the idea.
  • Philosophers and political contributors and problem solvers for the new system (part of global financial system production. Laws, value systems, occupation and allocation of global labor… etc.)
  • Illustrators and maintainers of the system (working on the new form of communication with a single world language)

TTT manages these people and gives them a working section where everyone does what he does best.

Do you feel that your music will help to shape the future of mankind? Are you the “Wyld Stallyns” of the coming “Teens” decade?

Our music does not just pretend to outline the key points of change. Our mission as artists is to “set/programming people through the ear” and do something similar to maternal gestation with the sounds of the arteries feeding blood flowing.

You mention that you don’t want your personal identities to take away the focus from your music or the The Third Twin Project, but surely your relationship to other artists has had some influence on your ability and desire to create music. Do you think that you are a product of your environment, or is T.T.T. what you were born to do? Could you imagine yourselves as anything else in life?

Our identity must remain secret – our age, ideas, etc … TTT project spends much money on security and privacy. We only represent the project, we are just the visual image. We are abstract, as if we had simply taken the body of a pair of twins to do the testing and screening of humanity.
Moreover since we were born to state looks like someone waiting for us to give this work, we take it seriously. As we’ve grown people have appeared in our lives that made us make the right decisions for the TTT project.

What are your plans for the future? Can you describe the up-coming studio album and anime?

We must differentiate between two parts, some people are very interested in the philosophical part, the search for intelligent life (Arecibo observatory), the discovery of new forms of energy … so this is the part of the TTT project where we do not have much knowledge.

The other part is the artist part, people who wants to be part of the TTT project lists, interested in music and Yvan and Virgil as a new Mozhart of this Era. But we only consider ourselves as simple workers of The Third Twin Company.

Now we have ordered more music for a new project called: “Live” that is characterized by being more direct, more repetitive and a straightforward connection to primary emotions such as the “EUPHORIA”, etc …

In this section illustrators are interested in taking the project to Comicon, we are currently working on it but we know nothing more.

Finally, what would you like to tell all of KTRU and The Third Twin fans out there?

TTT project is growing up day by day, we think that even a saccharin tablet needs at least a few seconds to be diluted in a glass of hot water.
It’s the same with the TTT project, People are currently discovering TTT and in a short term the TTT project will be huge.
TTT needs people who really want to change all so if you are a fan interesed in these ideas: you are welcome to the TTT project.