Interview with Desperate Electric

Hello! Thanks for your time today! You have a new single out titled ‘For Me’. Can you share more about the song with us? How long did it take you to write it? 

‘For Me’ was actually a fairly quick song to write. Kayti had the concept and most of the lyrics done ahead of time, so I (Ben) plugged in a few chord progressions I really liked, and we jammed the ideas together for about an hour until the melodies fell into place with the chord changes. The emotion and feeling of the music matched the raw lyrical content so well that we knew this song was one of our new favorites. 

Who are your greatest musical influences as a band and why? 

We have such a wide variety of influences that it can be hard to find any continuity in them. I think our greatest influences are always artists that are inventive, and make strides towards creating new genres or mashing up existing genres in a new and exciting way. Two of my favorite vocalists are Frank Sintatra and Frank Ocean, while some of my favorite songwriters are The Beatles, Queen and Nirvana. Kayti’s influences have some overlap with mine, but are predominantly more pop or country, such as Ariana Grande, Christina Aguilera, The Dixie Chicks or George Strait. 

How did you first get into music? Do you remember the first song you wrote? 

From a very young age, I was obsessed with making noise. Once I discovered the piano and found out the noise I was making could be pleasing, I was even more hooked. Music really found a direction for me when I watched ‘School of Rock’ at 9-10 years old. Being close to the same age as the kids in that movie, it really clicked for me that I should be rocking out and working on my own music. The first song I wrote was when I was 13-14 years old, and musically, it was heavily influenced by Queen’s use of non-diatonic chords. The lyrics were about The Scarlet Ibis, a short story by James Hurst. A very depressing story for a kid to be writing about, but I guess that’s art?

What genre of music do you consider your work to be? 

Desperate Electric’s work is predominantly Pop, but with an aggressive amount of influence from our eclectic backgrounds. There are alot of more challenging chord progressions that arise from my experiences with Jazz, Soul and R&B, and our vocals and harmonies tend to come from our background in chamber choirs and for me, barbershop choruses and quartets. Many of my rhythmic tendencies come from my teenage obsession with metal, hard rock and pop punk blending with my more recent affinity for funk and dance music. The result is something I like to think is truly unique and ideally approachable for a wide variety of music listeners. 

If you had to pick one artist to collaborate with dead or alive – who are you picking? 

I’d love to get into a recording studio with Frank Sinatra, Mac Miller and Kimbra. I respect the musicality and vision of each of these artists and would love to see what kind of sonic revelations would result from this specific combination!

Tell us where we can get your latest single and where to find you on IG.

You can find the single on any streaming platform, Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, Soundcloud, Amazon, anywhere! You can find us on Instagram @desperateelectric and all of our music is linked there also! Press: bsquaredmgmt@gmail.com

End of Interview