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| Hank and Cupcakes |
| bus to pleasure town |
| by
Susi Muhr |
Butt-shaking and heartbreaking at the same time, Hank and
Cupcakes’ distinctively beat-driven electro-pop bursts with fresh bass
hook lines, sexy grooves and remarkably multifaceted vocals. The duo’s
new album, “Pleasure Town” has hit potential built around their
immediate and straight-forward sound and offers an amazing mix of emotive power
and freethinker attitudes, exploding into stirring electro fantasies. Their
very own signature can be found in their version of Joy Division’s “She’s
Lost Control”, one of the best covers I’ve heard in a long time.
Résumé: Go buy this baby!
Let’s start at the very beginning: When did you
get together as Hank and Cupcakes?
A year and a half ago
Was it your first project, or have you played in other
bands before?
We have been making music individually and together for the last 9 years but
have never done anything that has a resemblance to what we are doing now –
this is undiscovered territory!
Your new EP “Pleasure Town” is out now.
Thinking back, what was the recording process like?
It was very exiting because we recorded in an all-analog process which is completely
different from the way we have recorded until now. There’s no saving takes,
no fixing mistakes and it all has to happen then and there.
Is there any ritual or peculiarity when it comes to
songwriting and recording we should know about?
After the session we usually smother ourselves in maple syrup and go
chasing squirrels in central park.
What’s your very own favorite song on the EP
and why?
We really like all the songs but She’s Lost Control is special
to us because it brought us a step forward in our musical language. Being a
cover song it allowed us to be more of an interpreter, as opposed to carrying
the entire emotional weight of an original song and that’s something we
enjoyed immensely.
What or who is it that inspires you to make such music?
We are usually inspired by strong raw energy of living. It can be anything,
it can be a person we meet in the street, it can be a great band we see, it
can be good food. This project was born from a need we had for creating something
new at a turning point in our life. We had just come back to Israel after living
in Cuba and decided we wanted to head to New York, everything was changing for
us and that inspired us to begin a new musical journey.
Imagine your tracks were chosen to be the soundtrack
of a movie. Which one would it be?
Boogie Nights
I saw you played quite a few shows in Tel Aviv –
how was your music received there? Would you say there are any differences to
your American audience?
It was received really well. The audience in Tel Aviv is great, they
pretty much dug it like they do here (Except for the Hebrew cheering of course!)
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