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Where are you from and what got you into music?
Karen and Monika (me! I’m writing this interview!) grew up watching the skyline of NYC from the shores of CT, and our lives were always very musical. Our dad plays bass, guitar, and our mom sang. Our whole family was in community musical theater at one point. I had piano lessons when I was little and I HATED it, but Karen was so jealous that she taught herself mozart level piano while no one was looking. Then I picked up my dad’s guitar and learned how to play the Scooby Doo theme song and that was about it, I was totally hooked.
Who inspired you to start playing music?
It was kind of an accident. Karen dropped out of her prestigious composing school in Hartford and moved into Brooklyn with me. Neither of us really took a career in music together seriously until other people around us kind of convinced/encouraged/demanded it. So really it was our friends and family that inspired us, I mean, I can remember everyone who was at our first show, and the fact that anyone at all thought we were good enough to take a whole night out of their lives and experience this crazy music we made up together, and then gave us a HIGH FIVE after, wow, I think that was enough for me to say, “yeah this is so totally worth it.”
Do you skateboard ? If not, what other sports are you into?
No, but I (Monika!) skate inline, and I play a bunch of street hockey with my friends. I also practice Muay Thai and BBJJ. We’ve both been big skiers since we were kids.
If you weren’t doing music, what would you be doing instead ?
Karen would probably be composing for movies, and I know that’s still music, but, there’s just no escaping it for her. Monika would be probably be philosophizing at an obscure community college, or teaching English in Burma somewhere…
We all have thousands of dreams in our lives. What is the biggest dream are you working hard towards?
Complete Global Enlightenment.
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We had this list of terrible band names first, and then we were going through them and The New Tarot just fit. I think it represents this grand reawakening and reformatting of older ideas to new concepts that our global culture is currently experiencing, and also touches upon my own infatuation and flirtation with the occult.
What makes your music stand out differently than other music out there?
Growing up, we were raised on a musical diet of Green Day, Nirvana and Eminem from our mom, and our father gave us ELP, YES, and Zeppelin, and although we both developed our own tastes and styles, I think you can hear a lot of that musical base in our writing. We don’t ask a lot of our melodies and songs, and we kind of just let them be what they want to be, so we’re able to play around with a lot of genres.
You guys just dropped a new single. Tell us about it and how did you come up with the name of the song “Solid Sun”?
I wrote Solid Sun in a hotel in LA, watching the sun streak through the smog, and I was kind of just questioning the universe a little, wondering questions aloud. It just struck me how “solid” the sun appears and how much we depend on it’s rising and falling and stability, but it’s really just this giant ball of gas and light and there’s nothing solid about it whatsoever.
Where do you think the music industry is going – more mainstream or going to where it use to be underground?
The industry is taking itself places it’s never been before. It’s a totally different climate out there from what we’re used to as a culture. I think we’re just starting to see the fall of conglomerate music, because people are starting to get tired of all their music sounding the same, and because “real” artists; artists writing their own music, have become fewer and further between. Music will steadily become more personalized, more localized, and I don’t think we’re going to have an authentic international power star like Amy Winehouse again.
Anything you want to say to the upcoming musicians out there?
Keep playing, and get used to finding euphemisms for explaining your career choice to your relatives. thenewtarot.com – TEZ
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