When you think about the picturesque Blue Mountains you mind doesn’t exactly think about Australian Hip-Hop. But that might be about to change with the rise and rise of Thundamentals. I recently caught up with them and got all the basics from a group who describe their music as ‘smoked out hazy Mountains party preach-hop’.
So who are Thundamentals? ‘Jeswon and Tuka kick all the raps. DJ Morgs and Tommy Fiasko make all the beats and itch all the scratches.’ So tell us a little bit about Thundamentals’ history. ‘We have been playing together for about 4 or 5 years now.
We were all good friends to begin with who all had a mad appreciation for hip-hop and we just started collaborating on music together. A big part of it was just keeping ourselves entertained. There isn’t too much to do up in the Blue Mountains other than get creative and come up with your own sources of entertainment. The name is a bit of a reflection of our music. We’re out to start a thunda in ya mental! Plus the Blue Mountains have a lot of rain and thunder. It just fits right.’
You’ve just released a new EP, what can people expect to hear from it? ‘All kinds of flavours. Thundamentals appreciate many different styles of music and I think this EP is a reflection of some of the sounds we dig. There are influences on the EP ranging from dub to eastern sounds. But we always got the heads covered with some straight boom bap stuff too. We think the EP probably has something for everyone.’
So what was it like putting it together? ‘Pretty straight forward really. We had been performing together and making songs for a few years and when we had saved enough cash to pay for getting it recorded, we decided on which were the best songs we had going and this EP was born. Boom!’
If you want to see Thundamentals live they are doing a huge gig with Spit Syndicate and Pegz in Melbourne on October 25th. For all other gigs and information check out www.myspace.com/thundamentals.