Sitting Down With The Guys of Keys N Krates at Moonrise Festival - A Daily Beat Exclusive Interview

August 27, 2014 -

Sam Rodriguez

In honor of Keys N Krates' recently released single 'Are We Faded,' (which absolutely blew me away and deserves your hard earned $1.29), we are including our interview with the trio during our visit to Moonrise Festival in Baltimore. Read our interview below, check out their single and show your support for this truly talented group!

DB: Is it your first time in Baltimore?

KNK: Yes

DB: How do you guys like it so far?

Tune: So far it’s great, we kinda drove in, went to the hotel and came here so we haven’t seen a lot.

DB: Are you guys headed out tonight?

David: I mean how late is this festival going to?

DB: Until 11

Tune: Yeah. Maybe.

David: Until 11? We’ll have to feel it to see how we feel after 11. Right now we’re just kinda walking around, checking out some of the sets and seeing what’s going on here.

DB: Yeah there’s a lot to see, it’s great. So I was mentioning to you guys earlier that I saw you guys at Webster Hall for the first time and I immediately became a fan. I thought you guys were great and it had to with the live music you guys were playing, but I think it also had to do with for me at least, with the chemistry. I think you all had this great chemistry on stage and I was wondering if that was something that came naturally or it was something you guys kind of had to build on?

Keyes N Krates

David: That’s interesting, no one’s ever brought that up but that’s cool that you observed that. You know with Tune, we’ve been playing since we met in college so it’s been a long time. We’ve pretty much gone from different bands together so Tune and I, there’s a chemistry there. And I think when we met Greg we all just sat in a room and jammed for like six months straight before we ever did a show. So we really put in a lot of work to try to figure out our vibe. Then obviously after all that, and all the time we spent together, I think we all share the same kind of philosophy on music anyway so that chemistry has gotten stronger, obviously over time and the more we play together.

DB: And what were some instruments that you first played on?

David: I used to play trumpet

Tune: I played saxophone

Flowinsky: I played saxophone.

Tune: Did you? I’d love to see that.

Flowinksy: I did but I was really bad at it.

David: I think we’re working really hard on our saxaphone/triumphant duet so stay tuned for that. 'Horn Trap' is what it’s going to be called.

DB: [Laughs] We will! So, how long have you guys been together now?

Tune: Seven years.

Flowinsky: Goddamn.

DB: How many festivals have you done together?

Tune: A lot.

David: That’s a good question.

Tune: On average I think we do say, ten a year for about five years. So we’ve done fifty together.

Flowinksy: I think more than that.

Tune: You think so?

Flowinsky and David: Yeah.

DB: I think you guys are learning more about each other here..

Tune: [Laughs] We’ve just never had to talk about it or done math together.

David: We also can’t tell the estimation of a crowd either. We can’t tell if there are 300 people out there or 3000, we’re horrible at stuff like that.

DB: Aside from being bad at math, you guys still have really great chemistry and it makes it really fun to watch from the crowd.

David: It’s gotten so bad that we go to restaurants, one person orders something and the other two are like “Oh, I think I’ll have that,” “I’ll have that too” and we pretty much end up eating the same meal. [Laughs]

Keyes N Krates

DB: Do disagreements happen then guys?

KNK: No, never!

Tune: That s*** never happens, we agree on everything and everything is like roses and rainbows.

David: Straight sarcasm.

Flowinky: People ask how we make music and I say we just sit in a room and argue until a track comes out.

David: Put it this way, the times we actually do all agree are so far between that we actually notice it and we’re like, ”Well, that was easy.”

DB: And where’s home? Where’s the studio?

David: That’s Toronto.

Tune: It’s a small little space, we go there everyday we hangout there and we either produce tracks or we rehearse.

DB: Sometimes do you guys just chill, order chinese and say “this isn’t happening today?”

David: I bought some chicken rotisserie, some caribbean curry for everyone once. Having curry in the music room, trying to touch computers and stuff isn’t the smartest thing in the world but we did it.

DB: Of course you did. So my last question for you guys before I let you go enjoy the rest of Moonrise is, coming into the Electronic music scene were you guys intimidated at all or were you nervous about being this live act?

Flowinsky: We still are, all the time.

DB: Really? But you saw that crowd out there, they loved you!

Flowinsky: Yeah, I know but today at a festival is the perfect example, there’s some guy hitting play on a CDJ the s*** sounds loud as hell, it sounds great and we roll up and we’re like “Oh, man there’s not enough space for us to set up on stage. Oh, my god like is this even gonna happen?” There’s more elements, there’s more moving parts I guess. So, it is constantly like something can go wrong and that always sits in the back of your head. I think that when you’re just doing a DJ set there’s not a lot of variables, there aren’t a lot of things that can go wrong. So you know when you go in and there’s a tent full of people, like today, you know you’re just going to go in and smash it but with us, you never know.

Keyes N Krates

DB: But still what happens on stage is something truly organic and I can only hope that the community has welcomed you in. Do you feel like they have?

David: We’re slowly feeling that way. Again, we do feel like everyone is here and we’re there which is a good and bad thing. But yeah, I think it’s been a long time but I think finally we’re starting to get that welcoming that we wanted. And the crowd seems to be responding to our stuff live. But it is nerve-racking, you never know if something is going to break or not. You know? But, that’s also why we do it too. That’s the thrill of it.

Flowinksy: We have been pleasantly surprised how much people care that we’re doing it live and how much like they ride with us for that. Which is super awesome, because we kind of don’t expect that many people to care. We’re kind of like, “this is the way we do it.” We make tracks that we hope they like and then do our live show the way we do it, because that’s how we’ve always done it. We hope that a small amount of people care but we’ve noticed a lot lately that the majority of our fans really do tune into that and that’s been super cool and rewarding for us. I think the possibility of something going wrong or not being perfect is always going to create a different anxiety, especially when you’re playing on both sides of something that just sounds perfect. A DJ set always sounds pretty perfect unless the guy is a terrible DJ. When we play with other bands it’s kind of refreshing cause we’re like “Oh, they didn’t sound perfect” or they had to stop or something. There’s feedback, you know? When you play next to DJs that doesn’t happen you have to be on point, you have to be perfect because nobody cares.

DB: It sounds like the pressure is on.

David: Yeah.

DB: Well, thank you guys for taking the time to sit down with us. We loved your set and we’re hoping to catch you guys live again very soon!

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