Tonstartssbandht

If you’re boogieing groovy on the East coast, what better way to step up your game than by taking it all the way to Eastern Europe? Originally hailing from Florida, that’s exactly what brothers Edwin and Andy White, aka Tonstartssbandht (tone-starts-band-hut) thought.

Interview by Julien Van de Casteele, photos shot by Samuel Monkarsh in New York, USA

Is Eastern Europe the next level shit?

It’s definitely a strange place for Western underground music. I guess it’s the next level shit, it’s the next one over geographically… Russian culture is really not at all present in the mass consciousness of the West. Whereas there’d be more of the West present in Russia, in the sense that there’d be kids picking up on what’s happening. Because Western culture and art are this pervasive global thing – in an imperialist way but also in the way that it’s too late to look back because it just already is what it is.

What’s the story behind your general success in that part of the world?

It was just straight-up random internet shit. We first learned about it when we would Google our band and find our names on Russian kids’ live journals. It’s funny because it happened before we even thought we had fans in France or in the UK. Eventually, these kids got in touch with us offering to bring us to Russia. It started really small – we had a tiny Russian tour – then the next year, we did more Russian cities and some extra shows in Ukraine, where we met our friends from Belarus who took us home for some shows. Then it all took off from there. Now we have life-long friends there, so we’ll always look after them.

How different is the audience in Eastern Europe compared to Western audiences?

People are definitely inspired and very energetically involved. Everyone you meet there is some sort of artist. I mean, it’s similar here, but over there it’s even more pronounced. They all know each other from all these creative outlets. While we’re playing, everyone is super engaged in the show and dancing, which you can find all over, but it’s consistent in Russia and Ukraine. Not to make it sound like it’s a competitive thing, but they do let loose a lot more, but in a really good way, not in a fucked up-way. Those are the best shows. It’s the closest to the band-audience experience that we shared at those early shows that we had in Montreal when it was just all of our friends. They really open up, so we open up too

What’s next, boys?

We should probably mention we have a new record, a live double LP, that we’ll be promoting while we’re in Europe. Last year, I recorded every one of our shows in Europe, and at the end of the tour we had 13 hours of shows. I recorded them all multitrack on my computer and we brought it down to 80 minutes. The record is called Overseas and it’s gonna be released on a record label out of Baltimore called Company.

Tonstartssbandht play Poortgebouw, Rotterdam on 9 May alongside Jerry Paper, Ensemble Economique and Monck. The show is free for Subbacultcha! members.