Local superstars PowerUp and Espea have worked tirelessly to produce an EP that will satisfy your bass needs. You might have caught Brandon “PowerUp” or Jono “Espea” at a live show before, but this time it’s different. Instead of listening to one of their sets at the club or at a show, they are bringing some fresh beats from the studio to your speakers. For the EP release they have teamed up with PDX label Beatrox Records.
While we have a vast and amazing artist talent pool in the Northwest, we don’t have many artists that get to the studio to bring us some amazing tracks. Brandon and Jono break that trend of just sticking to the decks and instead got to work in the studio, producing some bass heavy sound. We wanted to find out more about their debut EP Over the River so we chatted with Brandon and Jono to get some more details and to see if there was anything else we should expect.
[divider]5 Questions With PowerUp & Espea[/divider]
1. How long have you and Espea known each other and when did you decide to work together to produce music?
Espea and I have known each other since my very first gig years ago. He actually taught me how to set up a mixer, and helped jump-start my interest in production. Jono (Espea) and I created a bass group before either of us had any idea of what that would take called Carpe Noctem however we both had different avenues in music we were starting to walk down, and he was living in Bellingham so we decided to just work together on a project to project basis.
2. How did you get to work with a Portland-based label like Beatrox?
Well this industry is so closely knit, an industry friend “KG3” actually suggested I send my track over to TJ at Beatrox when he caught wind of it. A few days later, I saw an email hit my inbox and TJ happened to be headlining as Party Girl over at Volume Nightclub.We met up and well now we are here!
3. What has been the inspiration for the EP, Over the River?
When we got together, our first conversation was bass heavy complextro. I built out the leads for both the track and Jono came back with the crazy bass sounds, the rest just kinda fell into place. (What music project ever ends up exactly as you plan.) The names and themes came from the idea that the tracks presented a bit of the heaven and hell vibes so I started digging for dark fairy tales and found Hansel and Gretel originally part of the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s collection AKA (Brothers Grimm). And so we came up with Brothers Grim and Gretel.
4. Were there any other artists or songwriters that were involved with Over the River?
Our EP. Over the River was just Espea and I, however we have a few projects such as a remix for Go Periscope and we are working with a couple local vocalists, but we are keeping those a surprise!
5. The EP is out later this month, are there plans for a follow-up or a full length album?
We originally planned to release about five tracks, however we didn’t feel that the others matched the dark vibe Gretel & Brothers Grim had, but those are definitely in queue to be released soon!
The EP Over the River is out now on Beatport Pro and Itunes so go purchase and check it out. Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter or leave us a message below!
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