Q&A: Chinatown Slalom Brings The Feel Good Energy Your Summer Needs With 'Meet The Parents' EP
THEY’VE GOT AN ENERGY THAT JUST MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD - Chinatown Slalom brings the positive vibrations we’ve all been needing this summer with their latest project Meet The Parents. The EP radiates a sense of warmth and invites the listener into the project more and more with each note. Showcasing the band’s ability to tap into a new sound, Meet The Parents differs from their debut album Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. Meet The Parents keeps an authentic edge their listeners adore them for and represents the best of the band during the timeframe of the making of the EP. Viewing each project as truly a unique opportunity to express themselves and represent whatever sounds they are gravitated to, the band will surely keep us on our toes with each project.
The EP covers a lot of ground, from the sun-soaked guitar feel of “Why’d Ya Come and Act Like That?” to the soothing melody of “You Can Bet Your Hat On It”. With a changing pace throughout the entire project, each track seems to bring the listener to a new scene, always offering an array of creative production elements.
The British band is ready to get back into the world and play shows, and most of all bring the true experience of Meet The Parents to life. With a new sense of optimism across the music industry for the upcoming months, Chinatown Slalom has laid the ground for their new chapter, filled with “kaleidoscopic fun” and melodies that keep you grooving.
LUNA: How are you doing these days as things start to open up in England? Have you gotten a chance to attend a live show yet?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: Right now we are all working lots of shifts to make ends meet. Music is not the most financially secure of careers! We have been to the pub a few times, especially for the England games...but we haven't been to any gigs yet! We’re definitely long overdue a sweaty, dingy rave.
LUNA: Congrats on the release of Meet The Parents! I’m sure it must feel good to have new music out - can you share a favorite moment from the making of the project?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: It is a huge relief. The longer the gap between projects, the more you worry whether anyone will still be there to listen but the tunes do seem to be being received well, although without playing gigs it is hard to really get a feeling for how they’ve been taken. My favourite moment is probably the bit that, looking back, was the worst time. We were mid producing the project in a horribly moldy house. So much so that the ceiling fell in onto Mikey’s bed. We had to move all our stuff out and for a period we were homeless living in our practice room. This is when many of the songs got their initial production demos, and while life was worrying at the time, I think we found a new comradery together, and it reinvigorated our drive to achieve what we set out to achieve.
LUNA: How do you think quarantine shaped the feel of it, if at all?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: Like I said in the last question, during the making of this project we were spending lockdown in a hideous house, with no windows in the living room and kitchen and a serious mold problem. While most the tunes were written before we lived there, I do think something about the space we were in ripples into the mixes. And tunes like “Vitamins”, while it was made before living there, found a new poignancy in the situation we found ourselves in.
LUNA: This project is pretty different than your debut album, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and I really respect your ability to switch things up. Did you all have a conversation about intentionally making that shift, or did it happen more naturally as you started working on music?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: It has always been our intention to make all of our different projects have their own distinctive world and tone. We have some projects that haven't been released and they vary from cowboy soundtrack to hard techno. We really hate the idea of being labeled or pigeon-holed, so whenever people think they have us pinned we want to go in another direction. Just like on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, we view all our projects like different songs from our ‘career album’, each project needs to flow between each other and contrast in a similar way.
LUNA: Sonically, which track best represents Chinatown Slalom?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: I think what really best represents the Slalom is the sum of all the places the EP takes you to. We are all about the journey. Any time we make one genre we run as far away from it as we can.
LUNA: What color do you most associate with this project?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: For me, probably a purple. Although the orange wallpaper on the EP cover does fit perfectly I think.
LUNA: I love the video for “Why’d Ya Wanna Come and Act Like That”, the colors are beautiful and the narrative itself is awesome. What role do you tend to play in the visual side of your work?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: We usually have a distinct image of what we want, and try to meet a director who gets our vision and what we’re trying to make. For that tune, we had just worked with Harry Deadman on the ‘You Can Bet Your Hat’ video, on an idea that was much more our vision and very specific scenes we wanted to capture. It went so well that we put trust in Harry to come up with an idea for ‘Why’d You Wanna Come and Act Like That’. We just said the tune was about a conflict or argument, and his mind ran wild about swimming pools and deep sea divers. We love it!
LUNA: Once live shows return for good, what track would you love to cover and what spin are you putting on it?
CHINATOWN SLALOM: We’re really excited about DJing if we’re honest. It's been a hobby we have enjoyed during lockdown and we see ourselves throwing the kind of rave nights we want to go to with that set up. How about we break into a jazz version of “Born Slippy” for the closing tune?
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