Richardine Bartee
Certain recipes taste better when you don’t know what’s in it.
The night before the release of their Unfinished Business EP, Fly Moon Royalty gave me a call to discuss their new release, their unique sound, and upcoming show dates. FMR is a Seattle-based electrosoul duo that makes music “with a very grown feeling” and it is sometimes “provocative”. It consists of soulful vocalist Adra Boo and musical maven Action J who produces, deejays and emcees. They met in 2009 at a small diner in Seattle in which they were both employed.
I had worked there before. He was one of the newer faces. He said that he produced music and I was in a band that needed a producer. We literally just started talking [about] music and it would turn out that we were talking music everyday, and making music and collaborating.
Since, they’ve supported and opened for fellow Seattleite Macklemore, Slum Village, Robert Glasper, Nneka, Allen Stone and last but surely not least, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings.
Whenever we make our music, writing or composing, we are moving on what’s going on in life. So when he wrote that [DNA] song, it was [created for] a whole other beat. It was going to go on something different.
According to Adra’s description, they are in the process of experimenting to make their sound [more] dynamic through vocoders and hot boxes. They’d be “cool sounds to add to what they do”.
If you ask Fly Moon Royalty about the story behind their name, they might ignore you. With that said, this is the response I was able to get:
Certain recipes taste better when you don’t know what’s in it. It’s way more delicious when you don’t even know. We had a different name before. We were ‘Sugar Water Purple’ but there’s also a band in LA called ‘Sugar Water Purple’. They had it longer and their manager hit us up to ask us if they can keep it. They’re a dope band and it would just be better that we both didn’t share the name.
When asked to describe Fly Moon Royalty‘s sound, Adra said, “That’s probably one of the harder questions because I feel like we have Soul, we have some Hip-Hop, we like Funk and Electronic Music. It’s a little bit of everything we like, but most people call it “electro soul”.
When listening to their new record titled “DNA” which was premiered on NYLON Guys, it evokes a Daft Punk spirit meets Dilla (or Detroit music styles). It’s an aurgasm.
What’s next for Fly Moon Royalty, you might ask?
We’re gearing ourselves up to release a new full length project at the end of the year. We’re really proud of what we make. We like the music that we make. Hopefully people are like, ‘This is my anthem right here. Like, this is my life!
Fly Moon Royalty’s Unfinished Business EP is now available on iTunes.
For more Fly Moon Royalty, just click here.
