#moonfuries

[moonfuries-blog]

Check out the preview of "Black Holes!"

Set to release everywhere on May 1. Are you ready for this?!?!

[vicradio]

Alright guys, round two (or three?) of the "Bands you probably haven't, but really should have heard of" series of interviews! This round I present Moon Furies, an electronic rock band based in New York/Chicago. How does one accomplish that, you ask? Well, I asked them that. Don't you worry.

I reblogged earlier about Moon Furies upcoming residence at NYC's Pianos with Fish Doctor! If you're 21+ (or have some sort of id that makes it seem as such...), you should definitely checking it out for three Monday nights starting July 16th! These guys, I hear, put on SOME show and their music WILL make you want to dance. Trust me.

But anyway, like Summer Cult, I had the pleasure of tweeting/e-mailing with Moon Furies over the past few weeks and, although they took their time with their answers, they were CERTAINLY worth the wait. Definitely take a listen to Survival, the posted song off their EP "Not Earth," and check out Andy's fantastic interview responses! While you're at it, you can check them out on twitter, bandcamp and facebook and I recommend that you do!

VIC Radio: Start with some basics, how did your band come together? Where did you all meet and how did you FORM as a group?

Andy: Moon Furies basically started at the beginning of time... I met Jim when I was 4, and we have been goofing off ever since. Sammy on the other hand joined Moon Furies this past February. BEST CRAIGSLIST FIND EVER! Prior to Sammy joining, we had played out with a couple different drummers between our brief time in Chicago (2/2011 - 9/2011) and New York (10/2011-Present).

VIC Radio: What are your biggest musical influences? How did your sound come to be? Does it fall together naturally?

Andy: Hmm... Well, we tend to draw influence from a wide variety of artists; The Beatles, MJ, Daft Punk, Ratatat, Miles Davis, John Williams <---ALLLL ANDY, Blink 182, Green Day, Moby and some older Miike snow. When we first started creating our music though, we knew very little about the 'Electro Rock' genre. We were probably only familiar with a handful of groups that even touched on what we were doing, which made it interesting because we had a very unbiased view of what could be done musically and how to do it. I'd say it definitely falls together naturally. If you can write, you can write.

VIC Rado: What's your songwriting process? Lots of coffee and a pen and pencil? A laptop and a spark of inspiration? Late night, early morning? Do you find your sounds just come to you or do they take a lot of development to reach a final point?

Andy: Our songs typically take substantial development. While the bones of a song rarely change, the subtleties in how different parts connect and build typically take quite awhile to get just right. And when we say take a while, we aren't kidding, this means hours and hours and hours and hours of playing the song, until we LOVE every single strand of it. We typically only introduce a laptop into the songwriting process once we want to start fine tuning structure and layerings. Main melody's and song concepts are usually derived from just jamming out on acoustic guitar or a piano/synth.

VIC Radio: What would be your DREAM tour? To be a part of and to go see.

Andy: Sondre Lerche & Andrew Bird. Granted, our genres are a little bit different. However, they are amazing live performers, and I feel like they'd both be really interesting people to spend a couple months with. Jim: I would really like to tour with Reptar or WALK THE MOON. Those two bands have a high energy, fun show that never gets old, and I feel our show would get on swimmingly.

VIC Radio: I noticed that your hometown is Chicago, but you're based in Brooklyn -- how did that happen? Which city do you prefer to perform in? Andy: Well, we first formed Moon Furies while living in Chicago. Jim and I both went to college there. At the end of this past summer, we completed a project where we performed 100 shows in 100 days and donated all the proceeds to cancer research at a local facility. Following this, we became extremely motivated to really try and do this full time. We felt it would be easiest to do this if we were based on the East Coast and toured regularly through the Midwest. Each city is very different to us. In Chicago, we have tremendous friends/fans, and it is hard not seeing them every couple weeks. On the other hand, it's exciting playing clubs in New York that helped break so many of our favorite artists.

VIC Radio: On that note, what is your favorite place to perform? What kinds of shows do you like -- small and intimate? Big and bustling? Any sort of preferences? Do you get crazy at your shows? What kind of performers are you? (I like to cram a lot into my questions... do your best, haha!)

Andy: Honestly, going to a Moon Furies show is a unique, fun and crazy experience. We are usually pretty chill before a show, but once the music gets moving and the people do, we lose it, and go crazy. A review once cited us as being a "muppet on crack" at a live show. I think we'd prefer big and bustling the majority of the time, but small basement shows are always a blast as well. Our last "small and intimate" show was in Beloit, WI and it resulted in the loss of clothes and on stage make outs with half the audience. It was quite humorous to look to my right and see Sammy, our drummer, making out with a girl while not losing a beat. Whether we are playing for 1 or 1000 people, nothing changes, we go all out, rock hard as we can, sing as hard as we can, and that will never, ever change. We live for live shows. They're what keeps us working so hard everyday.

VIC Radio: I have to ask -- how did the name "Moon Furies" happen? Where did it come from? Andy: Moon Furies is a combination of the two gangs from a '70s cult film called The Warriors; Moon Runners & The Baseball Furies. We had really wanted to be Moon Runners, but there were too many other bands who had already Myspace claimed that name. This past Halloween we actually dressed up as The Baseball Furies to see what that would have been like. You check out the photos on our Facebook.

VIC Radio: Do you have any musical guilty pleasures? Andy: Jim. Too many. His weaknesses are Patrick Stump's stupendous voice, the thrilling cliche sounds of The All American Rejects and the back-hair-raising sounds from the Grease Soundtrack. As far as the rest of the guys, they sometimes partake in pop music that's semiembarrassing, but usually Jim trumps all.

VIC Radio: What do you find yourself listening to when you're driving around on tour? Do you have specific car jams? Andy: Ha - well our CD player in the van just gave out, so the next couple tours are going to be quite longgggg. Like Ron Jeremy long. Previously though, we would just listen to whatever mixes we had lying around. A substantial portion of which was from Jim's numerous ex-girlfriends. The girls he dates LOVE to make mix tapes. We probably have over 10 mix CDs from Jim's exes. Jim's favorite driving album EVER is Modest Mouse's 'We were dead before the ship even sank.'

VIC Radio: What would you be doing if you weren't in a band? Was music always your first choice? Did you have a backup? Andy: Prior to doing this full time, I was working as an acoustical consultant where my specialty was concert halls and studio design. I've been lucky enough to work on some of the world's most historic venues; Sydney Opera House, Hamer Hall, San Francisco Opera House etc... I was basically an architect with a specialty in sound. Were I not doing music full time, I'd either become a handy man on some obscure island with a beautiful beach, go back into acoustics, or go to grad school to study mathematics or physics. Jim: I just work wherever I feels like working. I have sold credit cards, worked at a golf course, a haunted house, taught a 60-year-old woman how to make youtube videos, a funland, Little League umpire and have had countless serving jobs. Sammy: I did social work prior to Moon Furies and really enjoyed helping out troubled kids.

VIC Radio: Any favorite (or embarrassing) tour/show stories? Andy: We have so many, but this one is always our favorite. On our drive back from Austin (SXSW) this past spring, we made a pit stop in Memphis, TN to get some food. Jim and I go into this random grocery store in a really bad part of Memphis and Sammy decided to wait for us in the van. The thing is our van has a really touchy alarm system, and Sammy needs to pee at least every hr or two. For whatever reason, Sammy just decides he's going to just pee in the parking lot. However, he doesn't want to have to wash his hands (since we don't have a sink in the car), so he decides he's going to pee with his pants around his ankles. He then proceeds to open the car door to do the duty, and the car alarm goes off. However, his body is in pee mode, so he sticks to his mission and pees with pants around his ankles, car door open, alarm going off, in the first row of the parking lot, while texting Jim "Help, the car alarm is going off."

VIC Radio: What would you say would be your band's theme song? Andy: Hmmm. I'm not sure. My personal one has always been Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. Or perhaps Houdini by Foster the People.

Obligatory VIC Radio questions. VIC Radio: If you had to be a vegetable, which would you be and why? Andy: I'd be corn, because then I could tell corn-y jokes all day long.

VIC Radio: What is your favorite font? Andy: Maybe Juice ITC. Depends on the day really. My least favorite font is Papyrus. That shit needs to die. Seriously. And we will NOT go to the funeral.

(Everyone hates Papyrus. Everyone SHOULD hate Papyrus.

VIC Radio: What would your patronus (or patronuses individually) be? (Or spirit animal, if you'd prefer!) Andy: Pterodactyl Jim: Luna Lovegood. (She is seriously the love of his life.) Andy: Can I have Luna Lovegood riding a Pterodactyl. She is beautiful.

VIC Radio: If you were a DJ, what would your DJ name be? Andy: DJ Kickass. Jim: James Jones' hands - cuz beats would drop all the time! (yes, I know no one but Andy gets this, except maybe a few Packers fans).

These guys are pretty much a riot. I can't wait to see them perform at some point in the city and I seriously think you should check them out. For realz. They're awesome. Clearly.