New Plague Radio – The Beeswax [Interview]

Describe your sound in three words

Unpredictable, tumultuous, subversive.

What is the story behind your name?

We were trying to come up with a name at the beginning of the pandemic, and it felt like every news channel you turned to was describing some horrifying new plague. On top of that, our songs tend to sound disarmingly different from each other, a lot like flipping radio stations.

You blend Hip Hop with Rock in a very interesting way. Tell us a few things about your creative process.

We function with a classic rapper/DJ dynamic, but if the DJ didn’t show up so the rapper hired an experimental punk band instead. We try really hard to take the sounds we grew up listening to and combine them in ways we haven’t heard before.

Main influences?

In no particular order, The Beastie Boys, Slick Rick, The Sex Pistols, Lightnin’ Hopkins, The White Stripes, and Digital Underground. On top of that, theme parks, horror films, and 90’s cartoons.

What would you change in the music industry?

To be honest with you, I don’t think we understand the music industry intimately enough to be able to describe what needs to change about it without making broad sweeping statements we can’t really back up. Us being unfathomably famous would be pretty cool.

Do you have an artist that you would describe as a hidden gem that we should know about?

Chief Redeye loves the work of Disney animator and set designer Claude Coats, Donovan is really into the artist Ai Weiwei, and Devin thinks that any rap fan who isn’t listening to Busdriver is doing themselves a huge disservice.

Future plans?

We’re gonna marathon Masterchef for the 27th time and try to finish storyboarding this music video we’re working on. Something about Chief passing out at a poker game and waking up in a ball pit surrounded by children’s toys. We think it’ll look cool, but it’s mostly just an excuse to shoot each other with Nerf guns.

Thank you!

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