“There are some things that really fascinate me,” admits Sonny Moore. “One of them is The Fast And The Furious Tokyo Drift, I know it is a terrible film but a big part of me absolutely loves it.” An unfeasible adoration of questionable cinema may explain how Moore managed to wreck his first car a mere two weeks after purchase. The accident, an 85 mile per hour collision with a highway barrier, became a talking point amongst friends and a metaphor for his recent life experience.
It was May 2007, it was the second crash he had walked away from that year.
But this story does not start there, it starts with a thirteen-year old Moore in a streetpunk band called The Riots with friends he met at thrash shows in the grimier parts of inner Los Angeles. In continues with an ambient rock group named Hazel-rah that lasted until he was contacted by a group called From First To Last. Approximately 30 months and 400,000 record sales later, Moore became a solo artist and bought a car. The accident soon followed.
However, Moore did not find his freedom by accident, nor was he bereft of ideas when the time came to step out on his own. “When I first left home and school to do music I had a lot of restlessness and energy,” Moore admits. “I had lost that and I desperately wanted to feel that again. I needed my own space to find the urgency that used to drive me. Writing in my bedroom, making beats on my computer inspired me so much then I hit a wall, I knew I had to get others involved who could inspire me.”
Moore called in some friends to help him figure out the details. He gathered musicians who understood that first week sales and last week’s news have nothing to do with the creation of music. Together, they put skin on the bones and made songs. Articulate and expressive songs. Songs that braced the space between the electronic and the cinematic. Songs that sounded like the collision of Moore’s musical past and the potential brightness of his future. Songs that simply sounded better than good.
Sonny became a band.
“The guys creatively brought so much to my songs,” he adds. “I wrote the basic song and we reached through the glass together. They added so much to everything and helped me take my songs to places I never imagined.”
That gets us here. To this place, where this story does not end. Sonny is opening another chapter in his life. Something that builds on his past, something that has the energy and urgency of thrash, the texture and consideration of the experimental, the eloquence of the electronic and the shock of the new. Sonny is the rhythm of the ringing in your ears as your car crashes into a barrier. Sonny is the sudden jolt of an ephemeral adrenaline rush and the immediate warmth that follows. Sonny is the soundtrack to getting up and walking away. Sonny is what happens next.
-Andrew Kelham
