The Inquisition: 013.2HRs

1. How did you came up with the name of the band? 

We started to call ourselves 2HRs back when we were still senior high school students. We rehearsed for 2 hours before the graduation gig so that’s why we called ourselves 2HRs. Later on when we went to college we were scattered in different universities around Taiwan. We had to spend 2 hours by bus to get to Taichung (central Taiwan) for rehearsal. And so we kept the name. 

2. Do you have a standard procedure of creating a song? Do you just jam around or is there a main riff and the track is build up on it? 

The bassist always comes up with nice riffs and normally we build our songs upon it. Our keyboardist is good at musical theories so he constructs the structure. Our violinist then paint the soundscape of the track, and finally our drummer would think of the grooving and we will polish a track together. This step takes very long. It’s like that we’re constantly revising our songs. One of our fans told us that a same song in a different gig would sound so much different and that was why she liked our gig. 

3. What are your influences and what kind of music do you hear when you are at home? 

KB: I love trip-hop. I listen to Archive. I love their last album “With Us Until You’re Dead.” But their new album kind of sucks. 

Drummer: Metal core, J-rock, indie rock, and etc. 

Bass: Balmorhea, Ólafur Arnalds and some other bands similar to them. But, honestly, I can hardly define what type of music they are. 

Violin: Break beat, trance, chilll house, progressive house, post-rock, alternative rock. 

4. What's the one album you can’t live without?

KB: “Thanks for Reminding Mefrom Sugar Plum Ferry.” The best post-rock band in Taiwan.

Drummer: I think it may be “All is Violent, All is Bright” by God is an Astronaut. 

Bass: I’ll say it’s “Hardcore will never die, but you will” by Mogwai. 

Violin: “Dark side of the moon” by Pink Floyd. 

5. What's the first record you've ever bought ? 

KB: Urgh I think it’s Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by Nigel Kennedy. 

Drummer: I forgot , but I remember that I bought all albums of X JAPAN in one time. 

Bass: The first album I bought is “The Destruction of Small Ideas” by 65daysofstatic. 

Violin: “Masterplan” by Oasis. 

6. Name a band that you would like to share the stage or tour with ? 

Mogwai, we had an unanimous answer on it, lol!

7. Did the internet and specially the blogs helped to spread your music around the world? Name a place (country) that you were surprised to know your music has reached to? 

Yes! Our music video of "Homegazer" was on a fan page called Post-Rock. During that time, a lot of foreign fans came and greeted us. We had some conversations with musicians in Thailand, Spain and other places around the world. Moreover, there are a few people from Côte d'Ivoire that always greet us in French every months. It was amazing. 

8. Do you support the idea of bandcamp where fans can decide the price or services like spotify? 

Sort of, but we think that a fair reasonable minimum price should be set because musicians spend a lot of time working on making good music. They deserve be properly paid. Methods like Pay-Whatever-You-Want should be based on how much you enjoy on it and how much extra would you donate to the musicians for their endeavor instead of paying the minimum price just to get the whole album. That hurts the industry. 

9. Where do you see yourselves in 5 years? 

We see ourselves working on our next project. Might be an album or something bigger. After working on QUASAR, we have come up with some new ideas on making music and stage techniques. Will keep you guys updated on our fanpage. 

10. Is the artwork of an album important nowadays in the digital era? 

Yes, especially it’s harder to sell CDs nowadays since people can stream music for free online. So that an album should be excellent in many ways, which includes better artwork. 

11. What is you favorite album cover? 

Tycho’s albums covers are always great and especially "Dive". By the way we think that The Music’s self-titled album is great too. 

12. It seems that a lot of people are turning on vinyl again. Why do you think that is and which is your preferable media format? 

The sound of vinyl is really warm and in this digital era people are starting to commemorate the good old times. We have an open attitude toward music formats, as long as it’s not poorly transcripted MP3s, we’re fine with it. 

13. What's the most vivid story or moment as a band? 

We remember the first time we were invited to an event called The Next Big Thing Taiwan. This is a big monthly events in Taiwan from Streetvoice. Every month they invite bands to perform in the biggest venue in Taiwan. We remembered that the speakers there are so loud and so great. We perform in a loud volume that we had never done before because it always fed back. But in that gig it didn’t, so we turned up our volume and the smashing sound were overwhelming. That was the first time we released our music video Homegazer to our fans in the big screen behind us on stage while we played the song. It was well-received and the sound crew that day were amazing. We enjoyed that gig so much, and after a month we premiered our album there, another great experience too!

2HRs recently released their debut album "類星體 (Quasar)".

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