If you've been around dance music in Western Canada in the last year at all, you've probably come across Moontricks. The duo, Nog and Sean, are out in these mountains and streets, making downright sexy bass music. They've become festival favourites, pleasing audiences of all stripes. (Anyone else get trapped in the line outside of Lucky Bar during Rifflandia? Goodness gracious.) It's not hard to figure out why their appeal seems so universal - the combination of deep, ultra-silky basslines and live instrumentation (Guitars, banjo, harmonica) is both new and familiar, futuristic and rustic. The fact that this all brought to our ears by two super-nice dudes is just a goddamned treat, really. It took me awhile to get these deservedly busy cats on the phone for a little chat, but I finally managed to do it, as they prepare to hit the road to help the masses thaw out from the winter and start getting ready for the warmer, sexier summer nights ahead. Go out there, see Moontricks on the road and wind up your waists.

1. Do you guys remember the first album you bought with your own money?

Sean: It was probably one of those order 10-CD club things, probably. I just remember some of the early stuff was Green Day, Sublime, Rage Against the Machine.

Nog: I tended to have mixtapes for the most parts that were just raided from my parents' collection. I don't think it was any album in particular.

Any particular song on those mixtapes that made you wanna get after it more?

N: Marvin Gaye. There was a tape that had Marvin Gaye's “Heard It Through the Grapevine.” That was a good roadtrip tune.

S: Classic.

2. When is the last time you did something for the first time?

S: That's a really good question. Ummm, we played Canmore. <laughs>

N: Yesterday I was out hiking and came across a cougar that had crawled up and died in this cave and was frozen solid in the back of this cave. It has icicles coming from the ceiling of the cave down over it. There's been a cold-snap for the last month and so there's this rock-solid cougar in a cave that we came across. That's the first time I've done that.

I don't prepare properly for much in my life. Things move around me in an unpredictable blur and usually I'm more than content to move in whichever direction the wind decides to go. However, the exception to this rule is with live music. I like to be prepared when entering a new live setting. Whether it's researching an opener I've never heard of or scanning through festival guides and cherry picking some names that haven't before crossed my radar. (Though I suppose in this case it's sonar.) With this in mind, I asked my good buddy and Guide to the Cosmos, Hingle McCringleberry, to give me some new music to investigate. Much of what he gave me just sort of bounced off of my ears but there was one album that caught my attention, Mad Liberation by Detroit's newly reigning funk-soul brother, GRiZ. The album blasted my ear-pussy with its unrelenting soul and grooviness. All I want in this new music I'm learning about is FUNKY BASS and this motherfucker delivered it to me in spades. Don't believe me? Fuck you. Listen for yourself.

Full Mad Liberation Album Download Available at: http://www.mynameisgriz.com Mad Liberation is a collection of songs that I have been working on for the past year that ranged from mostly original compositions to varied sample work (retro vinyl recordings and new all original recordings); digital synthesis that took me weeks to master; to live instrumentation tediously and soulfully recorded by myself and some of my very good friends.

The main problem came when I was looking at the schedule for Shambhala's final night. GRiZ was to play at the EXACT same time as pretty legendary indie rappers People Under the Stairs. This wasn't going to do. I am a Hip-Hop guy to my core and one of the big reasons I agreed to come on the journey to Shams was that there's always a fairly big Hip-Hop headliner. I would have to sacrifice the only DJ I knew anything about because, well, fuck, I couldn't be missing People Under the Stairs.

So, after Hingle and another member of the crew met me at Five Alarm Funk (A story for another day!) a compromise was made - I would go with them to watch the first half of GRiZ's set and they would come with me to watch the final half of People Under the Stairs' set. Seemed fair. Well friends, let me tell you...we never did make it to People Under the Stairs. GRiZ delivered even more than Mad Liberation promised. I was captivated watching him bounce around behind his equipment and by the time he jumped out from behind the gear with his saxophone in hand, I was in love. The fun(k) was infectious. GRiZ, unlike some of the people I saw spinning and sampling through the weekend. was a wholly engaging personality, incapable of letting the grooves go by passively.

I can't speak for what People Under the Stairs did that Sunday night at Shambhala, I wasn't there. But from what the rest of our crew told us, we had made the right choice by staying to watch GRiZ's set in its entirety. (It's still tied in my head with Wick-It the Instigator, but that might have as much to do with Wick-It being a gangsta-ass motherfucker as with the music.) It was the unexpected musical detour of the weekend and I don't regret it one bit.

And that, dear readers, is the story of how electro-funk defeated my love of Hip-Hop, even if only for one night. Only at Shambhala.

5 Questions with Rags #46 - Moontricks

The Shambhala Journals - #3 in which my love of Hip-Hop is, quite surprisingly, tempered by an electro-soul DJ.