Oregon Music News

Serious Business is getting slightly more serious. Serious about recording an album. Serious about making music videos. And serious about guerrilla performances… coming to an alley near you this summer!

The dippy electro-party rap group began a year and half ago as a duo with Danny Diana-Peebles contributing half of the vocals and Jason Mampel providing the other half along with programming electronics and modeling Mickey Mouse attire.

The duo wrote their first track “Freezer Burn” together and soon developed a reputation for silly, entertaining energy in their live performances. (Listen to the “Freezer Burn” demo below and expect a cleaner cut of it on their new album.) Many a concertgoer has left a SB gig shaking his or her head and declaring, “Now that’s my kinda stupid.”

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With themes ranging from homoeroticism to sweet treats, the two vocalists work back and forth with their rap conversations where the humorously lewd lyrics build off one another to a sampled synth bumping climax.

Then a year ago, Jeramie Moran was hanging around Serious Business gigs, and, “He’d [Jeramie] always ask us if we ever wanted a live drummer,” says Jason. “For a while we were really apprehensive; we wanted to be all electronic. But then we tried it out and it was ten times better for the energy live.”

Watch their video for “Hot Damn” and download the demo here:

The trio of PDX transplants have been busy around the Portland electro-dance scene rocking small venues like Rotture, Someday, Holocene, Valentine’s, Backspace, Ash St. Saloon, Dunes, Slabtown, The Know, The Artistery, and of course, plenty of house shows.

What’s your take on house shows?

We love house shows!

Your act is pretty hilarious, sometimes homoerotic and always party banging–which obviously comes through in your live show. How seriously do you take your business?

Jason: We’re serious in the way that we’re dedicated to our music but it’s not like we want people to cry when they hear our album.

Danny: We definitely want it to be fun. I always wanted to make party music, stuff that makes people feel good. That’s my goal, to make people just let go and not worry about stuff and have fun while they’re listening to it.

Who writes the music and lyrics?

Danny: I write all my own lyrics and then me and Jason sometimes come up with things together, kinda build off ideas. Often Jason has a concept and I build off what he comes up with.

You have a lot of lyrics that go back and forth where you’re building off each other.

Jason: Definitely.

Danny: We like to keep it interesting without being two separate [rappers]. We like to interact with each other.

Who creates the beats and samples?

Jason: I do everything on Fruity Loops, a really old and ghetto program, then I have analog software synthesizers that I use.

How has adding a drummer changed things?

Jason: Adding a live drummer has [made us] become a little more dance-y.

Has it changed the way you write songs and beats?

Jason: We sort of have steps. It’s more of a live thing for Jeramie’s drums. I’ll write a beat, then take it to Danny and we’ll write lyrics, then take it to Jeramie and he’ll do live drums over it. We don’t really all sit in a room and write songs together, it’s more of like a project that we piece together.

So Jeramie’s drumming is only in the live setting or will you have live drums on the new album?

Jason: We’ve been recording at Vault Studios and we’ve never recorded with live drums before. Since the way we write is atypical, that wasn’t really working for us because we were just placing the live drums over the electronic drums. Now we’re sort of in an experimental stage where we’re gonna do it ourselves and do a hybrid thing where we do cymbals and hi-hats on the real kit mixed in with electronic drums.

So you stopped recording at Vault and you’re doing this on your own. Where are you recording now?

Jeramie: We have a practice studio in Portland [where we're doing this].

The album will be titled Heartbreak & Milkshakes and it will be out sometime this summer, right? What’s the title mean?

Danny: It’s actually on one of our songs, “How To Become Rich and Famous,” and it embodies the feel of our songs. They’re kind of based on sad experiences or things that people could perceive as negative but we lighten them up. Our mission is to lighten people up a bit and have fun with our music. Yeah, we’re talking about breaking up or being sad or being losers or whatever but we do it in a way where there’s a milkshake with a cherry on top [laughs].

Jason: Pinning fun and sad together is a constant theme that runs through all our songs.

Listen to the demo of “How To Become Rich and Famous”:

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How many tracks are on the new album?

Jason: Between 8 and 11.

How many old? How many new tracks? Are you re-recording your demos?

Jason: Yeah, we’re re-recording all the demos we’ve already released. All the songs have been written already, it’s nothing new, it’s songs we’ve been playing live.

How do you plan to release it?

Jason: We kind of have an idea right now about doing a coloring book.

Danny: We’re kind of thinking of a fun book idea and have a digital download card with it… something more interesting and a way to interact with the songs in the way that we imagined them. We definitely like having a visual element to go along with the music. Haven’t really decided or formulated it yet but we’re trying to put together a nice package that people will want to buy rather than just download it.

Do you plan to do all this yourself? Have any help?

Danny: We’re thinking we’ll just do it ourselves, even the illustrations. It’d be cool if we did it ourselves, put our own really into it.

Describe your sound in a sentence.

Danny: Serious fun for everyone.

Who are your influences?

Jason: CSS, Yelle, bad ’80s music like Tears For Fears.

Danny: Spank Rock and old rap influences like Wu-Tang.

Jeramie: MGMT, Ladytron, Peaches.

Favorite PDX bands.

Very International Love, Sistafist, Copy, Fake Drugs, Cloudy October.

Anything else going on? Videos?

Jeramie: We’re in the process of laying out the set-up of our new music video that we’re going to try and shoot at the beginning of the summer.

What song is the video for?

Danny: It’s gonna be for “BFF.”

Jason: Our friend Minh Tran is gonna direct it.

Danny: And we actually just lined up with Bystander Productions and they’re gonna do another video for us. We think that’s gonna be for “Freezer Burn.”

So you might have two new videos out this summer

Danny: By the end of summer.

Jason: In the summer we’ll be playing Electropolis II in the end of August probably with Vanimal [and a bunch of others].

Danny: Lookout for some road shows, that’s in the works.

Jason: We’re gonna go guerrilla.

Danny: Yeah, we’re gonna do some guerrilla shows over the summer as long as Jeramie’s down for that.

Jeramie: I’m always down.

You’re gonna wear a marching band get up?

[Laughs]

Danny: Yeah, we’ll figure some stuff out, we’ve got some plans.

You can catch Serious Business with Sistafist at the Pride “Wrap-Up” Party at Rotture on June 20th and at Valentine’s on July 5th. Look out for both videos to be released with their album in August.