The Honey Claws are four friends you’d want in your late night corner. Their hardcore hip hop dubstep makes Junior Boys look like a child and Duppy nothing more than Katie Couric’s playlist. Beatbox and microphones be damned, these basement music addicts have the ability to keep you going all night long with their brand of electronic sampling bliss. Using tools like the Junkbox to make their brand of mash ups (a tool to mold 5 tracks together simultaneously, smoothly, and in key) The Honey claws have made a name for themselves by brining what use to only be a studio perfected art to the live floor. We sat down with them to discuss bootlegs, finding their sound, and turning as many tables in as short a time as possible.

Pensatos: Your most recent endeavor, the Bathroom Break Series, intends on giving DJs some time away from their post. What has the feedback been like from any DJs using your new tracks?
Bear Claws: They seem to be pretty popular among the internet music blog community. Our homeboy Eddie likes em too!

“Thomas has kind of a more sampled street edge, Ben’s is quite jazzy and soulful, Traey has a classical background, and Jon is a songwriting machine.”

If you could spend your 10-15 minute break doing anything you wanted (other than use the bathroom), what would you do?
I’d have to say probably hanging out with each of our girlfriends respectively…

How complex is this “junkbox” that you’ve created and explain how it came to be?
Its actually a pretty simple concept, but the way it’s set up is completely unique and catered not only to our live shows, but to a hightened dj experience as well. We kind of came up with it as a solution for how to play all of our electronic music live. At the same time there was also a need for a device that could play a wide variety of music styles with more precision than say serato or cd players.

Bathroom Breaks Series is quite different from your previous work. What caused this shift in musical style? I assume it has something to do with the junkbox and the powers it holds.
Honestly, Bathroom Breaks is an extension of several different things we have done in the past. We had an old label called Knockin’ Boots that was kind of a bootleg label. So we’ve always liked bootlegs and mashups and stuff. The junkbox came into play as an instant mashup machine…. So we kind of just saved the good mashups and recorded them.

“Australia and New Zealand are always hype! We even ended up on a couple 3 day long benders!”

How would you define your style?
Honey Claws is an imalgumation of all of our different styles. Thomas has kind of a more sampled street edge, Ben’s is quite jazzy and soulful, Traey has a classical background, and Jon is a songwriting machine. What you get is a mix up of different approaches to music. It’s quite fulfilling that way.

How did your Australian shows turn out and how would you compare it to other tours you’ve had?
Australia and New Zealand are always hype! Its like our home away from home. This time around was especially exciting with a few festival performances as well as cool night club gigs. We even ended up on a couple 3 day long benders!

Is there any kind of music that particularly inspires you?
Everything really, you name it..

What got you interested in mashup music?
We love to mix music and always have. When mixing records, Thomas and Ben use three turntables a lot of the time… ableton allows you to mix even more stuff together… so it’s always been there. we kind of focus on using good songs to do it… not all the cheesy obvious stuff, but good, solid, timeless songs that work really well together.

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