On the track “Fever,” Ivan said, “It’s funny, we’re both struggling to answer this question. It just kind of happened – but that seems to be a trend in our music making. We don’t think too hard about the tune before it’s created – we just create, and hope for the best I guess. We were happy with out it came out, so we wanted to put it out.”
Regarding their future plans, they said, “We have a project coming out soon, and we’ll be doing some more touring in the fall. We don’t want to give away too much yet.”
Conor listed Beck, Mavis Staples, and Flying Lotus as his dream collaboration choices. “These are three artists that I’ve found great inspiration from over the course of my life and would be honored to work with them,” he said.
Ivan picked Kendrick, J Cole and Nas as his immediate dream collaboration choices. “We have so much respect for so many artists within a bunch of different genres, so we could truly go on and on,” Ivan said.
This year, they won the Grammy award for “No Problem” with Chance The Rapper. “We were all there at the awards ceremony when it happened. We all lost our minds. I don’t really know how else to say it. I think Conor and I realized that day that the sky’s the limit,” Ivan said. “Chance put a lot of trust in us and gave us a shot and that would have been fulfilling enough. To have won a Grammy with him is surreal,” Conor exclaimed.
Digital Transformation of Music Scene
On the digital transformation of the music scene, Conor said, “Technology, and specifically the Internet, has allowed music to be accessible wherever and whenever you want. When we were kids, we had to make sure we picked the right CD to play with my Walkman on the bus ride to school. Today, I can download someone’s vinyl collection off a blog post and download it to my phone via iCloud while on the train. We’ve come a long way in 20-so years in a way no one expected.”
Ivan added, “We both went to jazz school, and generally what is taught there is that you need to record a CD with ‘heavy hitter names,’ send out hundreds of physical copies of CDs to jazz radio stations, play shows that you have to convince your 15 friends to come to when we figured out that all we needed was the Internet, some hard work, and a community around you to support you, we were genuinely shocked. Jazz music is taught in such a bubble, that we truly had no clue until we were right out of college.”
On their uses of technology in their daily lives, Conor said, “For me, modern technology can sometimes be overwhelming. Lately, I’ve been getting into hardware gear like synthesizers and sampling old vinyl with a turntable. At the end of the day, I always work in Ableton to fully realize or sometimes entirely warp the original ideas. I enjoy fusing modern technology and analog gear from the past to create something fresh.”
Ivan continued, “I use technology the same way that most people our age do, but some weird things I use technology for might be my Bluetooth speaker / shower head (which has saved my life), my Nintendo DS, I know the switch came out already but I’m waiting on the upgrade, and my laptop stand that keeps my laptop cool while we play our sets.”
Ivan’s advice for aspiring musicians is as follows: “My advice is to practice your craft, but also remember to have fun. Don’t get caught up in what’s popular or what you think people will like. Your unique voice will be the best guide and will be with you forever,” Conor added.
For their fans, they concluded, “There’s not much for us to say. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. This song we tried to take it back to our roots. So this was for y’all.”
To learn more about Brasstracks, check them out on Facebook.
“Fever” is available on Spotify.
