CULTURE WARS RELEASE NEW SINGLE"HUNGER"
Following their viral TikTok hit "Leave Me Alone", Culture Wars return with their fresh new single "Hunger" off their forthcoming EP teche. "Hunger" was written and recorded at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, TX, and features a rocker side compared to their last single with heavy guitars, synth and bass. Mixed by Grammy award winning Manny Marroquin (Post Malone, Kanye West, Imagine Dragons).
Inspired by seeing New Order live in Houston, the band recorded a series of demos in 2016. Those demos eventually morphed into Culture Wars’ self-titled 2017 debut EP. The lead single “Lies” eclipsed 2.2 million Spotify streams followed by “Bones” peaking at #43 on Alternative radio. In 2019, they retreated to the famed Sonic Ranch Recording Studio in Tornillo, TX, which sits on a massive pecan farm thirty minutes outside of El Paso directly on the Mexican border. Over the course of “drunk summer camp,” as Alex describes it, they brought teche to life with producer Caleb Contreras. The isolation, yet intimacy of the locale seeped into the push-and-pull of the music.
“The studio is very representative of what the band has become,” he elaborates. “That place has been so crucial to everything we’ve written and recorded. The electronic elements are organic, because we used all vintage gear. Very little is coming synthetically out of the computer. We had all of these classic guitars and synths at our disposal. At the same time, we made food and had bonfires. Everything impacted the music.”
The 2021 single “Hunger” twists and turns through warbling bass, shimmering synths, and a hypnotic high register hook before dissolving into a cathartic drum and key freak-out punctuated by otherworldly guitar. “I was at a weird place in my life,” said Alex. “For me, it was a release of energy. Retrospectively, ‘Hunger’ could be about distancing yourself from emotion in a relationship where you’ve had to disassociate due to dysfunction.”
They recruited ten-time GRAMMY® Award winner Manny Marroquin [Kanye West, Imagine Dragons] for mixing and put the finishing touches on the EP just as the Global Pandemic set in. Throughout the next year, they teased out teche. “Faith”, which Alex describes as “a rock song, an electronic song, and country song,” hinted at the scope of the project. Meanwhile, “Leave Me Alone” quickly approached 1 million Spotify streams as it generated a flurry of activity on TikTok fueled by videos from mega-influencers such as Bella Poarch, Nessa Barrett, and Sienna Mae. Not to mention, it landed on the GRAMMY® Award-nominated Bill & Ted Face The Music Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and ascended into the Top 30 at Alternative Radio.
In the end, Culture Wars progress by continuing to challenge themselves—and even have a good time in the process. “This is music that makes us happy,” Alex leaves off. “We set out to make music that makes us happy and feed off the energy from each other, and hope that one day that energy is reciprocated."
“Hunger" is available on all platforms now.