Bliss N Eso (20/12/2013)
Bliss N Eso are a group you simply can’t ignore. They have gone from strength to strength without seemingly putting a foot wrong. The trio have been trailblazing through the globe, touring relentlessly and recording with passion and honest often lost on other modern rap/hip-hop artists.
Their latest album, Circus in the Sky, has achieved gold here in Australia and will soon reach platinum status with no doubts.
Bliss N Eso are also a part of the massive Big Day Out 2014 bill and will be laying down their insightful and powerful rhymes and beats to huge crowds; that’s a given! The 59th Sound caught up with Max Mackinnon aka Eso, to chat about the year ahead.
“Bliss N Eso love to perform. Period,” Max says on the topic of performing at Big Day Out. “Whether it’s a cramped little venue in some shanty town out in fucking whoop-whoop or if it’s a festival date. Especially since Big Day Out is world famous! All the international artists I’ve performed with at the festival always say just how incredible it is like there’s a lit rocket up the crowd’s arse or something but they love it!” the rapper laughs.
But why wouldn’t he be excited to come back, especially since what happened last time!
“I got on stage and half way through I said, ‘You better bring my girlfriend out.’ I got down on one knee and proposed to her in front of fifty-five thousand people! All my mates were messaging me saying, *in mocking tone* ‘Thanks for making ours look bad you dickhead. I did mine at the pub!’”
“To play with these great national and international acts is so humbling that we get to kick it in the same area. Looking forward to burning one down with the old Snoop Lion and seeing my mate Perry Chapman on stage. And if you don’t know who Perry Chapman is, that’s Pez’s real name; that’s right, Pez’s name is Perry Chapman and it rhymes with Eric Clapton!” he jokes.
Recently the band smashed into five-hundred thousand Likes on Facebook and Eso couldn’t feel better.
“It’s amazing man!” he shouts before taking a trip down memory lane. “We would sit in our DJ’s apartment his parents’ owned and he’s scratching away and Bliss and I are free styling to the cows came home. And to go from that to where we are now we are extremely humbled by it.” The band has come from almost nothing to international stardom. As Eso puts it: “We kiss the ground. This is the dream.”
Through all this commercial success however, he cannot help but pay tribute to what really matters. The music itself.
“Music is no competition. It doesn’t matter if you’re not the best in the world or you’re not in number one position; it doesn’t mean your music isn’t changing lives or making a difference to the world. The awards don’t define an artist. It’s nice to get one but I still don’t know who’s voting in the end!”
Speaking of awards, an album that is without a shadow of a doubt going to get some is the group’s very own Circus in the Sky. Eso was delighted to give some insight into the album concept and its coming to be.
“Fantasia. [The title] means like the inside of the mind flipped inside out. We’ve had so many different people on this album. There was a posse song with 360, Seth Century, draft, Pez. We had all these different people and colours and moods on this album that it felt like it was all one big rolling circus. So I imagine this old school train on this track and the track bends up and the train goes whoof! Then it explodes and there’s fucking dick and pussy on the moon!” he shouts laughing. “It’s supposed to be what you’re mind takes it to be,” he says now more serious.
“I don’t know deep you are into physics but if you connect all the stars in space, that actually looks like the brain. We’re inside ourselves inside ourselves! You just gotta have fun with this life is what I’m trying to get at with this idea. Motherfuckers walk around like, ‘My coffee was [too] hot this morning, I’m having a shit day today!’ And so I say, ‘Dude, I could poke you in the eye and you’d be having a worse one! You’re complaining about nothing!’”
As you can tell just from looking at that, slightly abstract description, the concept is already much deeper than a lot of rap and hip-hop out there today. It’s all about sex and drugs and girls. But Bliss N Eso took the positive route with their music, making inspirational and thought provoking music. But as Eso tells us, he wasn’t always that kind of person.
“I was raised on gangsta rap. I was in love with the energy. I didn’t exactly relate to the pistol packing and smacking bitches but the power of the music was ridiculous. My parents would say, ‘Don’t you listen to too much of that. You’ll turn out a thug.’ But I thought, ‘It’s not like that. I’m not gonna turn out like that.’ Don’t you worry mate, in high school I was calling girls bitches and trying to be a hard-c**t. It doesn’t go anywhere. I learnt how the power of that music made me want to be like that. To come to the realisation that’s not me, to find the power to put down a rhyme and put your voice out there was great. It made me realise that I could make music with that same affect but not to make you want to go kill someone, but to go and hug someone. You want to destroy or build it. Turn that gun to a microphone”
“We don’t record and write like a lot of artists do. A lot normally write the stuff and they’d bring it into the studio and record. We pretty much make a base and do it all or a chunk of it there. We did stuff in shanty houses in Frankston. We did some in a huge house in the Macedon Rangers, at a penthouse in a hotel on the Gold Coast, some in Orange County. It was like grabbing all these pieces of the puzzle and writing around the world so when we got home we could sit back and look at the finished project and make adjustments. But it’s just pure fun. That’s what it has to be though. Whether it’s the rush of writing new music, I love it. If it’s playing a show, I love it. Making a video, I love it. My missus will call me vain sometimes like, here I am, on a phone, talking about myself to someone who’s writing it down!” he chuckles. Bringing himself back down he ends it with, “It’s just gotta be fucking fun!”
Having been in the business for years and years the band is no doubt skilled at what they did. So; just how do they make their songs like they do? Better pay attention to this one aspiring rappers!
“This is the best question I’ve ever been asked because that is exactly what we were asking when we started this thing. It was like, ‘Fuck, I wish we could just ask Wu-Tang or whatever!’” He then paused; either for dramatic effect or to stimulate his point, that’s up to you. “You write…the lyrics…to a beat.” He says almost darkly. “You have to have the beat and you listen to it and ask yourself ‘What does that make me feel? What do I want to say over this?’ If you write lyrics then a beat, you’re flow is going to be all over the shop. You just chuck that beat on loop and keep wrapping over that to get the rhythm and flow right. The other way around will just put your flow and time off. There will be too many words for that bit and maybe not enough for that other one. When you write to the beat; boom. You’re on par.”
To finish up the interview, Eso gave a big mouthful on how the Gold status of Circus in the Sky has made him feel.
“It’s a big fuck you to the system!” he booms. “You told us we couldn’t do it because we’re not black or American. You don’t look the part; shit like that. But we picked this project up and we didn’t put it down. And people want to back something, and be a part of something. It doesn’t matter what you dress like or some bullshit. There’s too much boxing. You go to school and wear black and you’re a Goth. There’s all this boxing. We said fuck all that. If we can do it, you can do it and here we are with a Gold number one record. It feels like fucking fuck yes! Yes sir! That’s right!” he screams before bursting into giggles.
But of course as usual, Eso would just like to say; “Thank you to all the fans for helping us make it. Just thank you.”
Matty Sievers
Bliss N Eso are also a part of the massive Big Day Out 2014 bill and will be laying down their insightful and powerful rhymes and beats to huge crowds; that’s a given! The 59th Sound caught up with Max Mackinnon aka Eso, to chat about the year ahead.
“Bliss N Eso love to perform. Period,” Max says on the topic of performing at Big Day Out. “Whether it’s a cramped little venue in some shanty town out in fucking whoop-whoop or if it’s a festival date. Especially since Big Day Out is world famous! All the international artists I’ve performed with at the festival always say just how incredible it is like there’s a lit rocket up the crowd’s arse or something but they love it!” the rapper laughs.
But why wouldn’t he be excited to come back, especially since what happened last time!
“I got on stage and half way through I said, ‘You better bring my girlfriend out.’ I got down on one knee and proposed to her in front of fifty-five thousand people! All my mates were messaging me saying, *in mocking tone* ‘Thanks for making ours look bad you dickhead. I did mine at the pub!’”
“To play with these great national and international acts is so humbling that we get to kick it in the same area. Looking forward to burning one down with the old Snoop Lion and seeing my mate Perry Chapman on stage. And if you don’t know who Perry Chapman is, that’s Pez’s real name; that’s right, Pez’s name is Perry Chapman and it rhymes with Eric Clapton!” he jokes.
Recently the band smashed into five-hundred thousand Likes on Facebook and Eso couldn’t feel better.
“It’s amazing man!” he shouts before taking a trip down memory lane. “We would sit in our DJ’s apartment his parents’ owned and he’s scratching away and Bliss and I are free styling to the cows came home. And to go from that to where we are now we are extremely humbled by it.” The band has come from almost nothing to international stardom. As Eso puts it: “We kiss the ground. This is the dream.”
Through all this commercial success however, he cannot help but pay tribute to what really matters. The music itself.
“Music is no competition. It doesn’t matter if you’re not the best in the world or you’re not in number one position; it doesn’t mean your music isn’t changing lives or making a difference to the world. The awards don’t define an artist. It’s nice to get one but I still don’t know who’s voting in the end!”
Speaking of awards, an album that is without a shadow of a doubt going to get some is the group’s very own Circus in the Sky. Eso was delighted to give some insight into the album concept and its coming to be.
“Fantasia. [The title] means like the inside of the mind flipped inside out. We’ve had so many different people on this album. There was a posse song with 360, Seth Century, draft, Pez. We had all these different people and colours and moods on this album that it felt like it was all one big rolling circus. So I imagine this old school train on this track and the track bends up and the train goes whoof! Then it explodes and there’s fucking dick and pussy on the moon!” he shouts laughing. “It’s supposed to be what you’re mind takes it to be,” he says now more serious.
“I don’t know deep you are into physics but if you connect all the stars in space, that actually looks like the brain. We’re inside ourselves inside ourselves! You just gotta have fun with this life is what I’m trying to get at with this idea. Motherfuckers walk around like, ‘My coffee was [too] hot this morning, I’m having a shit day today!’ And so I say, ‘Dude, I could poke you in the eye and you’d be having a worse one! You’re complaining about nothing!’”
As you can tell just from looking at that, slightly abstract description, the concept is already much deeper than a lot of rap and hip-hop out there today. It’s all about sex and drugs and girls. But Bliss N Eso took the positive route with their music, making inspirational and thought provoking music. But as Eso tells us, he wasn’t always that kind of person.
“I was raised on gangsta rap. I was in love with the energy. I didn’t exactly relate to the pistol packing and smacking bitches but the power of the music was ridiculous. My parents would say, ‘Don’t you listen to too much of that. You’ll turn out a thug.’ But I thought, ‘It’s not like that. I’m not gonna turn out like that.’ Don’t you worry mate, in high school I was calling girls bitches and trying to be a hard-c**t. It doesn’t go anywhere. I learnt how the power of that music made me want to be like that. To come to the realisation that’s not me, to find the power to put down a rhyme and put your voice out there was great. It made me realise that I could make music with that same affect but not to make you want to go kill someone, but to go and hug someone. You want to destroy or build it. Turn that gun to a microphone”
“We don’t record and write like a lot of artists do. A lot normally write the stuff and they’d bring it into the studio and record. We pretty much make a base and do it all or a chunk of it there. We did stuff in shanty houses in Frankston. We did some in a huge house in the Macedon Rangers, at a penthouse in a hotel on the Gold Coast, some in Orange County. It was like grabbing all these pieces of the puzzle and writing around the world so when we got home we could sit back and look at the finished project and make adjustments. But it’s just pure fun. That’s what it has to be though. Whether it’s the rush of writing new music, I love it. If it’s playing a show, I love it. Making a video, I love it. My missus will call me vain sometimes like, here I am, on a phone, talking about myself to someone who’s writing it down!” he chuckles. Bringing himself back down he ends it with, “It’s just gotta be fucking fun!”
Having been in the business for years and years the band is no doubt skilled at what they did. So; just how do they make their songs like they do? Better pay attention to this one aspiring rappers!
“This is the best question I’ve ever been asked because that is exactly what we were asking when we started this thing. It was like, ‘Fuck, I wish we could just ask Wu-Tang or whatever!’” He then paused; either for dramatic effect or to stimulate his point, that’s up to you. “You write…the lyrics…to a beat.” He says almost darkly. “You have to have the beat and you listen to it and ask yourself ‘What does that make me feel? What do I want to say over this?’ If you write lyrics then a beat, you’re flow is going to be all over the shop. You just chuck that beat on loop and keep wrapping over that to get the rhythm and flow right. The other way around will just put your flow and time off. There will be too many words for that bit and maybe not enough for that other one. When you write to the beat; boom. You’re on par.”
To finish up the interview, Eso gave a big mouthful on how the Gold status of Circus in the Sky has made him feel.
“It’s a big fuck you to the system!” he booms. “You told us we couldn’t do it because we’re not black or American. You don’t look the part; shit like that. But we picked this project up and we didn’t put it down. And people want to back something, and be a part of something. It doesn’t matter what you dress like or some bullshit. There’s too much boxing. You go to school and wear black and you’re a Goth. There’s all this boxing. We said fuck all that. If we can do it, you can do it and here we are with a Gold number one record. It feels like fucking fuck yes! Yes sir! That’s right!” he screams before bursting into giggles.
But of course as usual, Eso would just like to say; “Thank you to all the fans for helping us make it. Just thank you.”
Matty Sievers