Forest Thump Duo Bonds Over Love Of Music
Electronic music knows no borders. There are no walls to cross, no boxes to confine in and no rules to follow, you can do whatever you want. Abandon the techno rhythm and add rhythms of the world? Naturally. Add some Celtic music and maybe a saxophone? Why not? Putting a live violin on a bed of drums and bass? Yes.
In this world live TJ Hyland and Denon Jones: Hyland is an electronic music producer from Albuquerque, and Jones is a fiddler from Durango known for his work in local bluegrass and Celtic bands. Together they play several local live shows with Forrest Thump, the area's new electronic music duo, playing what Jones describes as "violin rich electronic music", as well as releasing monthly singles on all services. local streams.
They met while students at Fort Lewis College and bonded over a mutual love of electronic music, which they had nurtured since their teenage years. Their mutual love for the genre led them to create their own.
"I started DJing and doing it at house parties and started doing it semi-professionally and then I decided I wanted to learn how to make this music," said Hyland.
"I love classical music," added Jones, also a classically trained musician and teacher. “Conducting an orchestra is enjoyable and fun, but I don't want to play live as much as I want to play the violin or record electronic music.
So far, the duo have released three dancefloor-ready, yet subtly earthy and psychedelic singles. Their latest album features local musician Sam Kelly's sax, with his friends playing beautifully alongside Jones' electric violin. But studio releases aside, they're a live duo, perfect for club gigs, where their songs can take on a whole new sonic texture through extensive improvisation.
"We write the melody of the song, so there are times when I don't play the melody. We mix, master and release our tracks with violin, but when we play them live, we have a non-violin version of the piece, which gives me a chance to play," Jones said. "I would never play it as a course because it's not as fun. Every time is different; we improvise and then we have a lot of unreleased pieces that we play live and play and improvise and change It's fun to challenge you to find different covers of electronic songs to play that you thought wouldn't fit on an electric violin Then we give it some effects and let me go to town on this track and I can do a bunch of cool stuff.”
Call it an ongoing music career. With a DIY mentality, as well as influences the duo hear outside of the music they create, they aim to push the boundaries of electronic dance music.
"We've talked about adding all the other strings I can play, maybe adding some, doing more live stuff with TJ and doing more live sampling, call-and-response, so our set will continue to evolve and experiment," Bluegrass and continue his day job teaching music and playing the fiddle in Celtic bands, Jones says. “It's not that I'm sick of bluegrass, and I still love Celtic music. But it's cool to do something like that and bring a Celtic touch to electronic music. hasn't been done much, so let's find some other unique ways to create something new."
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and station manager for KDUR. Contact him at ligett_b@fortlewis.edu.