Crookers - Big Time Crookers
Andrea Fratangelo and Francesco Barbaglia are actually Phra and Bot, who are actually Crookers. 3D’s Rezo chats with the Italian stallions of bounce.
You guys met in a record store, right-
I had my little corner of strange music. I didn’t sell so much so I had a lot of time to waste in the shop. One day Phra came in and we started talking about the records and things; we were already producing separately on our own and thought about doing something together. We liked similar music and so it worked for us and that’s why we are still doing it.
What styles of music were they-
We were into the hip hop scene. We felt like the best thing we could do was bring the hip hop feeling into house music. We had inspiration from people like Basement Jaxx – people who put a lot of different styles into electronic music. We wanted to make music with three or four different styles that we liked. For us it was always a fun thing; we always wanted to play different styles and try to make it fit and create something new. That inspiration allows us to do different things and keep it different.
You’ve already released two EPs, Knobbers and Mad Kidz. When’s the album due and what can we expect-
We have some tracks down already and there are a few more to be put down. We are getting some vocalists in there too – we are terrible singers so we needed people in to sing and rap on the album. We will stop our touring schedule in December so once we’ve done that we can call on the many ideas and beats that we did so we can put it all together.
In terms of the style, it is going to be a sample of what we’ve done before – but not necessarily 100 per cent like what we’ve done before. It won’t be strictly dance and club tracks; we want to make something that is more fun to listen to because we really didn’t want to make an album of all dance tracks. We have many people signing and featuring so it will be something different. It might be hip hop, dance and house but even something different like a gypsy style, something you can enjoy in the car, this is the concept that we want to create.”
So what can we expect from your Australian shows- You were here earlier this year, how was that-
In March it was strange because we had a lot of people knowing us for our tracks and we didn’t realise that on the other side of the world people knew our songs. The fans down there in Australia were very informed about these things, which was very good.
This time it might be different because we will do some more in the way of festivals – but I’m excited because down there it is summer. We will be playing some of our tracks and some tracks that we mainly picked up during our travels around the world. Expect half of it being our music and the other half being our good friends.
WHO: Crookers
WHAT: Plays Stereosonic at Manning Bar
WHEN: Saturday 22 November
MORE: stereosonic.com.au