INTERVIEWS
“I Feel More Alive”: How ACRAZE Achieved Chart-Topping Success Through Sacrifice
Imagine going from the opening slot at Exchange L.A.—performing to a near-empty venue—to headlining and selling out the following year. For 26-year-old DJ and dance music producer ACRAZE, this was reality. Before becoming the red-hot “Do It To It” artist we all know and love, his music production journey started on a much different path. In an exclusive interview with EDM.com, ACRAZE admits that growing up, he “was not very musically inclined.” But his interest was piqued during his senior year of high school, when he knew he wanted to become a DJ. ACRAZE then went on to release his first original production, “Pull Up,” in 2017 via 4B‘s MACA imprint. It’s now a far cry from what fans have come to know and expect ...
Claudia Lennear, The Inspiration Behind ‘Brown Sugar,’ Regrets Song Leaving Rolling Stones’ Live Set
Claudia Lennear has been a witness to some peak moments in rock and soul. First as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, she’s sung backup on classic recordings and toured the world, shared stages with former Beatles and Bob Dylan, and was the inspiration behind David Bowie’s torrid 1972 epic “Lady Grinning Soul.” Just as famously, Lennear has been widely credited as the inspiration behind the Rolling Stones’ increasingly controversial classic rocker “Brown Sugar.” Founding bassist Bill Wyman confirmed her role in one of his books, and she’s always taken pride in that, calling the track “one of the greatest rock songs of all time, and not because I had anything to do with it.” Lennear was still an Ikette when she dated Stones frontman Mick Jagger in 1969, the same period the song wa...
Meet the Songwriters Behind the Best Song on Lindsey Buckingham’s New Album
When Lindsey Buckingham released his self-titled record in September, the media frequently lauded “Swan Song,” the fourth track, as a standout tune. What’s more, Buckingham himself told Newsweek that it’s one of his two favorite songs on the new record. But when Blinker the Star founder/frontman/songwriter and record producer Jordon Zadorozny (whose credits include producing Chris Cornell and a songwriting credit on Hole’s Celebrity Skin), first heard “Swan Song,” he felt like he was starring in an episode of The Twilight Zone. “My thought was, ‘How do I know this song, and why do I suspect that I have sung it before?’” says Zadorozny over the phone from his home in Pembroke, Ontario, Canada. Zadorozny was driving around running errands on a Saturday afternoon when he began streaming Bucki...
Why Disney+’s Hawkeye Takes Place at Christmas
The upcoming Disney+ series Hawkeye is set apart from other MCU adventures by a number of factors, but here’s a big one: It’s officially a holiday story. The series begins in the days before Christmas, with O.G. Avenger Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) trying to spend some time with his family — until, of course, things go sideways. This marks the first major MCU project to be set at Christmas since Iron Man 3, and as part of an extended interview with Consequence, head writer Jonathan Igla (Mad Men) explained that the series being set at Christmas was something that came out of early conversations in the writers’ room, as they established a structure for the season where each episode represents one day in the week leading up to Christmas. As Igla says, “I love the compressed time frame and th...
JVNA Finds “Hope In Chaos” On Stunning Debut Album: “It Became a Journey of Discovering Myself”
While you might think you know JVNA, one of the most promising young producers in the electronic music space, you’ve never heard her like on Hope In Chaos, her bombshell debut album. Fittingly, the record was self-sung, written and produced. Out November 19th via Violet Arrow, Hope In Chaos is a melodic bass masterpiece, tapping into the 22-year-old at her deepest and darkest for an aural journey of epic emotional proportions. 12 tracks carry us through a transformative coming-of-age opus with impressive momentum, narrated by lyrical brilliance à la Taylor Swift and Halsey. Opening single “Chaos (Prelude),” for example, thunders along with an orchestra of drums and strings. “Total spiral in my mind…searching for an unknown sign,” JVNA rif...
Director Mike Mills on His Gentle Drama C’Mon C’Mon: “I Think I’m Always Writing About Love”
To see a Mike Mills film — Thumbsucker, Beginners, 20th Century Women — is to be steeped in a deep pool of empathy. He’s an acutely sensitive director, his works feeling less like didactic authorial statements than loose, open meditations that allow his actors to take the lead and guide him along gently interpersonal journeys. His latest, C’Mon C’Mon, is no different, though Mills focuses his eye this time on the electric, unpredictable relationships between adults and children. Here, we get something akin to the avuncular, A24 version of the Adam Sandler comedy Big Daddy: a childless thirty-something man (Joaquin Phoenix’s jocular but forlorn Johnny) suddenly thrust into a situation where he must unexpectedly look after a precocious young boy (the spectacular Woody Norman, playi...
Sam Fender Vs. The World
“I think a lot of people try to force positivity out of it. Quite frankly, I thought it was horrible,” Sam Fender says when asked about the time he spent alone during lockdown. Sure, those months proved to be fertile ground for the self-examination threading together his second album Seventeen Going Under, but he’s not suggesting all of his time was spent on introspection and inspired songwriting. In fact, at one point during our video call, he clearly differentiates himself from people who walked out of lockdown claiming they’d survived on “quinoa the whole time,” jokingly retorting “Fuck off, no you didn’t. I ate chicken burgers, drank loads of beer, and took loads of drugs.” But all quips aside, shit was bad. “It fucked up a lot of people’s lives and a lot of people’s mental health. I s...
Angel Haze Shares Track by Track Breakdown of New EP Girl with the Gun: Exclusive
Our Track by Track feature gives artists the opportunity to share the inspiration and stories behind each song on their latest release. Today, Angel Haze peels back the curtain on her new EP Girl with the Gun. Following a five-and-half year hiatus, Angel Haze is back with her new EP, Girl with the Gun. Stream it below via Apple Music and Spotify. During the former Rookie of the Year’s break from the music scene, one of the interests Haze leaned on as a creative outlet to heal from a traumatic upbringing was painting. This newfound love for an outside discipline helped the 27-year-old artist return to a mindset in which she could once again create music for herself — free of outside expectations. Advertisement “Girl With The Gun is the start of a new life for me. It’s everything I...
After Jackson + Sellers Hit A ‘Breaking Point,’ a Country-Rock Superpairing Came Next
The last year and a half led plenty of people to their breaking point — but for Jade Jackson and Aubrie Sellers, one step closer to the edge was a good thing. Though both women were already established as emerging alt-country artists in their own right, each with two solo albums to their name, the dearth of touring opportunities during the pandemic auspiciously brought them together. During last year’s downtime, the pair began working on a songwriting project that’s now assumed a life of its own. Newly minted as the country-rock duo Jackson + Sellers, they released their bluesy, riff-heavy debut, Breaking Point, in late October, and the record has only continued to pick up speed and critical acclaim in the ensuing weeks. Before these two were quarantine collaborators, they crossed paths du...
Joshua Malina on Why He Wants to Offer Unnecessary Commentary on His Past Aaron Sorkin Projects
The relationship between those who make TV shows and those who watch said TV shows has become, thanks to the Internet, an increasingly complicated one over the years. But before stars from Gilmore Girls, Scrubs, and The Office started making podcasts to fuel the pandemic-era thirst for vintage television, actor Joshua Malina and his friend, composer Hrishikesh Hirway, were talking The West Wing on the weekly. The West Wing Weekly, which launched in 2016, featured regular deep dives into every episode of the Emmy-winning NBC drama, with much of the original cast — as well as creator Aaron Sorkin — participating in the discussion. Now, after years of digging into the complexities of DC political drama, though, the pair have teamed up for a new enterprise entitled Unnecessary Commentary, whic...
Mike Posner Reflects On Avicii: “When I Was In the Coldest, Coldest Periods of My Career He Would Call Me to Work”
On a personal level, Mike Posner has likened the loss of Avicii and his father to being doused with a bucket of ice water in the middle of the night. The sobering events resulted in a near instantaneous shift in the Grammy-nominated artist’s perspective, inspiring him to break the comforts of his daily life in ways few would expect—and even fewer would attempt to replicate. Nowadays, pushing aside the cushy comforts of a Top 40 artist is becoming second nature for Posner, who is learning to appreciate the trials and triumphs of each passing moment. Posner summarizes his outlook with “Amor Fati,” a near and dear phrase which translates to “love of fate” in latin. In an exclusive interview with EDM.com, Posner candidly reflected on his rel...
“A Peek Into Our Minds”: syence On Their Sublime “bass pop” EP and Visions of a New Genre
Besides the occasional lab experiment, you typically won’t find anything interesting in science class unless you want to grow up to be—well—a scientist. But when Zach Montoya and Brayden James found each other, it was instant chemistry. Connecting over a shared interest in music production, the duo launched their collaborative syence moniker after meeting in a college science class. Like the molecules and ions they studied, they formed a strong bond, eventually concocting their most potent compound yet: a five-track EP called bass pop. bass pop is not only a breakthrough for the duo, but also a showcase of a new genre, the EP’s namesake. Its goal is to encapsulate a new sound “that many may have never heard before,” according to syence. The five-track record, w...
