With this highly acclaimed foursome having a combined age of 78, The Age Of L.U.N.A are a fresh young bunch of talented individuals who have begun to conquer the world of UK Hip Hop. Having shared their track ‘Six Feet Deep’ earlier this year, we were hugely impressed by their dynamic and cultured sound on the mic and our Urban Music Editor Matt Tarr went down to have a chat with the group…
‘Six Feet Deep’ was the first track that we heard from you here at Gigslutz, so tell us a little bit more about that track…
Daniella: We wrote it really quickly and then thought “this is quite a good track actually!”. For me, the chorus was about the end of a relationship that doesn’t work anymore when you were so deep in love, or six feet deep in love.
Butch: When Daniella laid down the chorus, me and Kai put our own perspectives onto the track of what six feet deep meant to us. So for my verse I speak about the things that you love so much, you’d die for or go six feet deep for, whether that’s loving a female, or this music, so that was my take.
Kyote: For me, my verse was about meditating with a female but it relates to six feet deep from a death point of view. Meditation is a form of freedom and death is also about being free. I hate to make it about that but, yeah [laughs].
Considering the sounds we regularly hear within Hip Hop at the moment, your music has a real throwback sound and is reminiscent of classic Hip Hop that was so common in the nineties. What were you listening to at the time you created tracks like ‘Six Feet Deep’?
NK-OK: A lot of Jazz music; thamonious monk, charlie parker, art tatum, oscar peterson, stanley carroll 100%. Most of them were Jazz pianists and with the hi-hit swing in ‘Six Feet Deep’, it’s got a bit of a jazz break but I just made it into a Hip Hop thing. Also, a guy called Mellow Z helped me arrange the drum beat because I wanted to go down the jazz path and knowledge-wise, he knows even more than I do.
The visuals for the ‘Six Feet Deep’, which saw you guys cycling around London on bikes, had a really personal feel about them. How much input did you have with the video?
Butch: One of our close boys was the director for the video and because of that, we wanted to capture who we really were. That’s our home area in West London and it’s us just having fun and chilling in the ends. We had a video prior to this for our track ‘Indigo’, which was fairly similar, so we wanted to stretch that idea to give the audience an idea of who we really are.
DJ Semtex has been a champion of your music from very early on, how does it feel having such a respected name supporting you publicly?
Daniella: That started with ‘Memory Lane’. It wasn’t going to be released but because DJ Semtez put it on, we were like, well ok then!
Butch: Because of who he is and what he’s done, we couldn’t believe it. He’s shown a lot of support to us from the beginning so 100% gratitude to him.
Will the rest of the music that we hear from you in the near future follow along the same sorts of sounds or will you look to switch up your style?
Kyote: It’s definitely gonna be Hip Hop cos that’s us.
Butch: We’re still learning ourselves as artists and developing. The music comes from loads of different backgrounds through all of us and we each bring different types of music, so you’ll definitely hear our inspirations and who we grew up on our tracks.
Are there any artists that all of you agree on and can say that “this/these artist(s) influenced all of us”?
Butch: I don’t know if we have one that we all agree on.
Daniella: We do have mutual inspirations but I can’t think of just one artist that we all just love. But that’s what makes it interesting because we’re all so different.
What can we expect from you for the rest of 2015 and when can we look forward to hearing a mixtape/EP/full length release from you guys?
Kyote: There’s a mixtape in the works that should be out this year and there’ll be a few more videos that we’ll be releasing. There will also be loads of live shows and festivals and we’ll be opening for DJ Premier and Royce Da 5’9”.
Butch: There are a lot of shows popping up so we’re just rehearsing to make sure we get our set perfect and make sure the audience enjoy it.
The debut mixtape from The Age of L.U.N.A, Live Under No Authority is available to download for free here and you can also stream the project in full below. Make sure you follow the guys on Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date on all the latest info on shows and much more from the guys themselves.
Matt Tarr
@MattTarrJourno
Matt Tarr
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