Okapi Sun

Biography Dallas: Vocals, Keys, Strings, drums Leo: Vocals, Keys, Guitar, Drums ELECTRONIC TRIBAL DANCE PARTY The OKAPI SUN combine Dance, Electronic, Samples and Tribal Beats As our live set intro states: "When you are receiving this message, it is 13 billion light years later. In a time, in a place, on a planet, somewhere in the universe two creatures were sent to earth in the form of Okapi Sun. We have been brought together tonight to experience their sound. Read more on Last.fm …read full bio

Biography Dallas: Vocals, Keys, Strings, drums Leo: Vocals, Keys, Guitar, Drums ELECTRONIC TRIBAL DANCE PARTY The OKAPI SUN combine Dance, Electronic, Samples and Tribal Beats As our live set intro states: "When you are receiving this message, it is 13 billion light years later. In a time, in a place, on a planet, somewhere in the universe two creatures were sent to earth in the form of Okapi Sun. We have been brought together tonight to experience their sound. And in the unity of the Okapi Sun Tribe let's go crazy. Stare into the Sun, stare into the Okapi Sun" Let the dance party begin! Okapi Sun wants to have fun. Okapi Sun wants you to have fun. Okapi Sun wants to dance. Okapi Sun wants you to dance. The deep meaning of it all: Do you know what an OKAPI is? It's an animal living in the Ituri Forest in Central Aftrica. It is related to the giraffe but also looks like a horse and has zebra stripes on it's butt. You could say it appears like a mixture of all these different animals together in one. Like an Okapi, the world is a mixture of so many different people, races, beliefs, religions...and we're all here on planet Earth together...mixed as one. coming together to be one like the Okapi, fuels the idea and concept behind the music. We just want people to have fun. When we have fun, they have fun and vice versa. We just kind of want people to come together and dance and celebrate life as it is. The Sun: Without the sun there wouldn't be a dance party…at least not on this planet! The Story: Leo and Dallas met in Berlin a couple years ago in a club. Leo was living in Berlin finishing her music studies. Dallas was out traveling through Europe. They met in a club in Prenzlauer Berg and connected through their interest in music. After traveling all over the US Leo met up with Dallas shortly after and decided to stay with her in San Diego. They became close friends both playing in other musical projects and local bands while finishing their music studies. They both applied for the same job on Craigslist. A job at a local recording studio offering a creative assistant job. They thought that they were going to help out in recording sessions but in reality they ended up "lumberjacking" which meant painting walls, sound proofing the studio, moving heavy equipment, cleaning, repairing amps, etc. while doing all this work they were talking about making a fun dance project where they can let loose after their day jobs. They fantasized about being creatures from the future sent to planet earth in order to start a dance party throughout all parts of the world. After work they would gather all the instruments they could possibly play and Leo had some loops on her laptop. They would experiment with different sounds and just let loose and let the music be whatever it wanted to be including the lyrics. A freestyle form of writing as a creative outlet from their boring day jobs. Songwriting wise it just clicked between the two.Leo usually comes up with drum loops and hooks and melodies while Dallas brings in sweet harmonies and hooky synth lines. They both sing and record all of their jam sessions while in the studio. They later go back and mold their ideas into simple pop songs. "It's not about trying to be cool or hip. It's about having fun and expressing yourself in a way that makes you happy. Music lets us be ourselves without any social rules". We just want people to realize that life is too short to get all caught up in drama and if they like us or not, we don’t want people to pretend that they are cool or something, we are just like everybody who wants to dance and have fun. The Sound Electronic Tribal Dance Party euro electronic music meets american dance pop with a splash of tribal OKAPI drum and bass Okapi Sun uses Drum Loops Okapi Sun plays keys, guitar, bass, drums, viola, loops and sings Okapi Sun uses the vocoders as a choice of effect like a guitar player chooses different effect pedals for a certain guitar sound. Okapi Sun wants to experiment with the sound of the human voice "We thought it sounds interesting to add harmonies, auto tune and lots of effects on our vocals." "We love that the vocoders make our voices sound like we are not human and it's so much fun to mess around with it. Most of our songs got inspired by weird vocoder harmony autotune settings over a drum loop." Okapi Sun plays all the instruments and creates all the music Okapi Sun gets sugared up on sweet lattes and chocolate, locks themselves in their practice room, puts on a drum loop and starts messing around with whatever instruments they can play. Okapi Sun layers synth lines and hooks and also free style writes lyrics as they come out in the moment. Okapi Sun loves pop music. Okapi Sun loves simple hooks and harmonies Okapi Sun are Aliens sent down to Earth from the future in order to create a dance party. A worldwide celebration of life!. http://fauxsociety.com/okapisunjustwantstohavefun/ FS: Who do you feel is an artist that isn’t using autotune properly and some artists who are? OS: Who’s using autotune correctly? Okapi Sun! Who’s using autotune incorrectly? Okapi Sun! The Bio Dallas Dallas plays: Violin, keys, synth, guitar, drums, sings Mother: African American Father: Hispanic Parents were both in the military while she was growing up, so she moved around quite a bit. Mother sang and her father plays guitar. She's played the violin/viola for 18 years. Classically trained violist for 12 years. BA in Music/music education Past musical experiences include various orchestral performances, solo recital, various performances with Louis XIV and string performance on Anya Marina "Whatever You Like". 3 official SXSW apperances Leo Leo plays: Piano, guitar, bass, drums, synth, sings Mother: german/Czech Father: french/american Grew up mainly in Germany and France. She traveled a lot with her family. Father and grandfather are artists, mother plays piano. She grew up with classical piano training at age 6 and picked up guitar and bass as a teenager. She started writing songs at an early age. After high school she studied Music and moved to Stuttgart and Berlin. 2009 Main Support National Tour with Killers playing keys and guitar for Nervous Wreckords 2011 National Tour 2011 San Diego Music Award best Pop Album several of her songs featured in movies 4 official SXSW appearances several west coast tours from 20092013 Facebook; www.facebook.com/OKAPISUN Website: www.OKAPISUN.com Twitter: OKAPISUN Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.

…shrink me down again