With the release of their third artist album, THEM, the duo of Justin Nylander and Christiana Eastman, blend their eighties roots with the sounds of emotional electronica. Creative spirits at heart, they write their own songs, design their artwork, and even direct their own videos. THEM have a clear artistic vision of who they are and its something you should definitely check out.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: So looking at the cover of the CD, it's a bit controversial.
Have you got any flack for the full-frontal nudity?
Justin Nylander (of THEM): People seem to love it, but yes, it's been talked about.
RS: Is that sort of going along with the album title Skin?
Justin: It was kind of a spontaneous cover actually. We were going
for an Annie Lennox-style and then we got in to this photo shoot and
Christiana was really feeling comfortable and we had a good rapport
with our photographer that we've known for many, many years now. We
were just like let's just go for it, it was all her decision actually.
RS: Annie Lennox-style and the Eurythmics makes sense. That
style really translates into your music. There's really a strong 80s
influence, is that the music you grew up with?
Justin: Oh definitely, Depeche Mode, Bananarama, The Eurythmics-
those were the staples of our upbringing and embedded in our souls, so
it expresses through our art instantly.
RS: You even covered an 80s record – Grace Jones' "Pull Up to
the Bumper."
Justin: We seem to have one cover on every one of our albums so far,
and 'Bumper' was one of our favorite songs. It brings back good
memories of just bumping around in our bedrooms, having fun jumping
around on the bed. It seemed appropriate just at the moment because
we always like to reflect back to what made us happy as children. We
have that Peter Pan syndrome where we are forever children in a way.
RS: One thing I really like is that you wrote every song on the
album, aside from the cover. What's your songwriting process like?
Justin: Both of us write. I seem to be the main lyricist and
they're just kind of like little diaries of capturing moments.
Christiana has her input and blends it together with suggestions from
friends. One of our longtime wonderful friends and producers is
Arthur Barrow, who's a great friend in Los Angeles. He brings a lot
to the table with his experience because he's actually Giorgio
Moroder's former right-hand man. We usually bring in our stuff and
just jam to some wonderful ideas and it all just magically seems to
happen.
RS: Is this your second or third album?
Justin: Oh, this one's actually our third. We did have our first
one which we called our little test one back in 2002. W've developed
leaps and bounds from that, so I don't want to over-promote that one.
The one we really call our true debut is Bang, which was in 2004. We
had a lot of fun with it and we're still getting a great response.
Bang from 2004 seems to be picking up its own little cult following
thanks to MySpace and YouTube. So there's many new listeners that
come on find Bang and Skin. With MySpace and the new, everything
seems to be there so there's no date of a release. Everything just
seems to pick up its own steam and as time goes on, a cult-type
following seems to pick up on everything globally.
