Australian Hip Hop mainstays and chart toppers, The Thundamentals, will play their first-ever live show on the Central Coast in April.
The boys from the Blue Mountains have been stalwarts of Australia’s Hip Hop scene for over a decade, and will bring their groove-laden and thought-provoking fourth studio album, Everyone We Know, alive, when they perform at The Entrance Leagues Club, on April 28, as part of their Decade of the Thundercat regional tour. The Thundamentals have had an assortment of Australian talent grace their line-up over the years, but at their core, the Thundas, as they are affectionately known by their fans, consist of DJ Morgs, MC Tuka and MC Jeswon. DJ Morgs acts as the group’s producer and is a self-confessed audiophile. MCs Tuka and Jeswon are the songwriters and lyricists of the trio.
Long-time friend and producer, Pon Cho, also helped throughout the production of Everyone We Know. The Wyong Chronicle spoke to MC Jeswon about all things Thundamentals, the success of Everyone We Know and their upcoming tour. The Thundas have gone from strength to strength, and major music festival to major music festival, since dropping Everyone We Know in February 2017. “It’s been an incredible year for us really,” MC Jeswon said. After performing a host of their own shows and being invited to gig at Australia’s major music festivals, Splendour in the Grass, Groovin the Moo and Falls Festival, by the time the Hottest 100 2017 rolled around, Thundas’ fans had a difficult task in casting their votes across Everyone We Know’s beat riddled and emotive track list.
“It was such an amazing feeling to see our track, Sally, come in at number 8 on the Hottest 100,” MC Jeswon said. “It’s our highest ever placing in the countdown, and it feels so good to think that people are listening and that they’re liking what we’re putting out; that it’s resonating with them,” he added. “We’ve been on such a massive wave since the album released. “We got to sell out the Enmore Theatre, a place we’ve always dreamed of gigging since we started in Katoomba, and that was really special. “The response has just been insane from the fans. “The heartfelt messages we get from people about the music is really the biggest payoff you can get as a musician. “It’s just such a retrospective moment when you realise your music is connecting with people,” MC Jeswon said. MC Jeswon went on to explain the concept behind Everyone We Know and confirmed the persona behind their titular track, Sally, is indeed real and she really can’t dance.
“There are 15 tracks on the album, and each song is loosely based on a conversation with someone we know, or are about conversations we wish we had had with people at the time. “It’s a really reflective setlist in that sense. “The idea behind it is that the listener will hopefully recognise the archetypes of the people we are speaking to in their own lives. “Hopefully, everyone can recognise aspects of their own lives in the music,” MC Jeswon explained. “Everyone has that crazy friend that can’t dance or can’t do something but isn’t afraid to wholeheartedly try, and everyone has that relationship that’s in disrepair. “Everyone’s been in love. “We just tried to take these universal concepts but boiled them down into relatable titbits based on our own lives. “This album really is about everyone we know,” he said. Everyone We Know is the Thundas’ fourth studio album, and according to MC Jeswon, is the group’s cleanest production yet. “Writing and production wise, this was definitely our cleanest project to date.
“I feel like we’ve all really honed our skills and know a lot more clearly what we bring to the table, what we like, what we don’t, and what we’re good at. “I feel like I’m a better songwriter now than what I was five, two, even one, a year ago, and we’re all definitely way better performers now than what we were at this time last year. “For us, it was all just about making what we had come together in the most cohesive way possible. “Like a jigsaw. “We just had to streamline our process to get things to fall into place quicker, to make a more interesting whole (the album),” MC Jeswon said. MC Jeswon said a huge part of The Thundas sound was the fact that none of the members is classically trained musicians. “We’re all self-taught. “Music for us was all about discovery and working things out for ourselves. “I think that gave us an advantage because when you’re taught to do something a certain way, I think you have fewer options. “It feels like we are less limited. “We don’t have formulas. “We work off what feels good and what sounds good to us,” MC Jeswon said. “We’re just mongrel musicians, but there’s a lot of freedom in that approach.” A huge part of Everyone We Know was its album cover and associated art, which sparked an exhibition tour that took place throughout 2017.
“The art is the visual representation of what we touched on with the album concept. “Each song is almost like a reflection on a person or interaction, and we wanted the art to reflect that, but not in a super-literal way. “We collaborated with good friend and artist, Benjamin Funnell, of April77 Creative. “Ben’s massively influential within the realm of Australian hip-hop releases for his cover and album artwork. “Each song has its own character and all of those characters are represented on the album cover in a more abstract form,” MC Jeswon explained. “It’s all very surreal and very suggestive,” he added. The visual richness of the imagery inspired The Thundas to make the artwork a more central part of their Everyone We Know Tour. “We combined the idea of a gallery exhibition with a listening party and a meet and greet. “Normally, at a listening party, you just hear the tracks from an album back to back, and maybe you’ll get to ask the artist some questions, but we didn’t like that idea.
“We had each character for the 15 songs blown up on their own poster and hung up. “In front of each poster, were headphones that played the song that that character represented. “Morgs and Tucka were also around throughout to chat about it all too,” MC Jeswon said. “We thought it was just like a really cool experience to combine a gallery with a silent disco and an artist meet and greet. “It was our take on a listening party and it went really well and garnered a lot of interest in the album,” he added. The recurring theme of the album appears to be a connection and the spectrum of human emotion, as top-tier dance tracks, Sally and Déjà vu, can attest, but the theme is also explored, perhaps more poignantly in some of the album’s more downbeat tracks. One such track, Blue Balloons, is MC Jeswon’s favourite. “It’s hard to pick a favourite track, but, Blue Balloons, is a special one. “We wrote it in memory of a fan from the Blue Mountains, Jarrod Sampson-Hills. “He was a young guy, a skater, who passed away under tragic circumstances.
“We had never met Jarrod, but we were invited to his memorial. “There was a moment during the memorial where all Jarrod’s friends and family released blue balloons. “Standing there with everyone having just launched their balloons was one of the most touching and beautiful moments of my life,” he said. The ability to explore and express complex emotions and experiences in their music has elevated The Thundamentals through the hip-hop scene. “This whole album’s sort of like a metaphor for our career. “It was only once we realised that addressing our insecurities and showing our vulnerabilities, that our music started to resonate with people,” MC Jeswon said. “Jarrod is real. “Sally is real, she’s a friend of Tuka’s, and she really can’t dance, but that doesn’t let that stop her,” he said. The Decade of the Thundercat Tour kicked off from the end of February and will see The Thundas visit regional centres and towns across the country.
Source: Interview, Feb 14 MC Jeswon, The Thundamentals Dilon Luke, Journalist