THANK ME LATER w/ Balu Brigada
Here in Germany, New Zealand is mostly famous for it’s breathtakingly beautiful landscapes that we all know from the movies. But of course there’s much more to it. There may not be many of them, but New Zealanders seem to have quite a lucky hand for worldwide successful music: Lorde, Ladyhawke, The Naked and Famous, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Kimbra, Brooke Fraser and the Finn Brothers aka Crowded House are just a few who gained international success and the Beasley Brothers are just about to join the club.
At home, the relaxed and smooth sound of the Auckland based duo has been compared to Rex Orange County, credits that will probably make every musician even more relaxed and smooth. Speaking of: the name actually is a reference to the good-natured bear from The Jungle Book, who is known for his talent in always avoiding any kind of stress and focussing on the bright side of life. To avoid being sued by Disney, the Band changed the name from the original Baloo to Balu – a funny move for any German, considering we all grew up with exactly this translation of that lovable lazybones.
The multi-instrumentalist brothers Henry and Pierre deliver a catchy mix of Pop, Hip Hop, R’n’B and Soul that they call „Sunny Swag“ and, honestly: that is exactly what it sounds like. We asked the two charming Kiwis for a playlist of all their favourite tunes, they were hooked immediately and sent us a collection of songs by Rosalía, Remi Wolf, Mac Miller and Mura Masa, as well as The Strokes, Haim and especially two artists, that obviously are a huge inspiration:
„We tend to inhale a broad variety of genres and cherry pick elements from each of them to utilize in our music. For the most part, we listen to a lot of groove-orientated pop, hip hop and psych rock. Our favorite artists are the ones that push their sound to the very edge of prescribed genre boundaries and create something unique: Artists like Frank Ocean and Tame Impala. When we write for Balu Brigada, I (Henry) find myself gravitating towards cadences and phrases that might be reminiscent of Frank Ocean’s songwriting, and Pierre has always been pretty obsessed with the groove and production of Tame Impala, so trying to blend those elements together is an example of how we might draw from the artists on this playlist, to create our own flavour.“
Thanks to Henry and Pierre for a very thrilling playlist – enjoy: