it’s just…a Purple Crush

photo by jocelyn baun

I recently chatted with the lovely Isla from the band Purple Crush, Not familiar with them? Find out more and see Videos below.

In 2006 sweethearts Jared and Isla, of the electropop band Purple Crush embarked on their first U.S. tour. As they traveled by car from city to city, a fluorescent colored phenomenon spread before their eyes. “We saw this thing happening. We began to notice that it was the same in every city. Kids were dressing the same and wanting to hear the same music. We saw this movement happening that was very youthful with very high energy, very neon” says Isla. Purple Crush were in the right place at the right time as this newborn movement tore through underground loft parties and hip clubs in major cities the world over.

While they are best known for the countless remixes of Isla’s clear pop vocals against Jared’s electro beats, Purple Crush have gone through a variety of sounds. The married hipster-couple met in college, ironically enough on the dance floor. Isla was going to school for dance and Jared for music. It wasn’t long before the two began experimenting with the latter. The evolution of Purple Crush is not linear and cohesive but rather wild and in the moment. Earlier songs of theirs were more rock influenced, later more R&B, then hip hop. The duo even went through a funk phase.

In 2006 the energy of electro would direct Purple Crush. “We heard and saw this thing and it was like let’s jump on this. That’s when we recorded Welcome to emo club. It was: let’s make an album of music for this group of peple” says Isla. This was the year of blog house, and it was the blogs that made Purple Crush. “When we started friendster hadn’t even been invented yet. The only person i knew of that was doing Internet stuff was Prince while he was separating from his label. We felt like we could see this new world that didn’t exist yet. It wasn’t until someone blogged us, that this huge door opened. Through myspace, blog connections and message boards I was able to book tours.”

Purple Crush’s live shows capture the heartbeat of the scene. Isla owns the stage decked out in purple lacquered on leggings and tiny tops. Her dancing incites energy; she combines her classical training with club moves. “My aim with our live shows is to inspire people to explore their bodies more. I like to get people so heated that when the DJ takes over they are just experiencing dancing and their bodies in a whole different realm” Says Isla. This passion for dance enters during the writing process, as they often write with a dance move in mind. “The dance for shopping on the dance floor would be during the line ‘peel it, peel it’ I do a version of the butterfly. It’s like this old school dance where you move your knee in and out, your pelvis makes this waving motion” she explains.

While it’s the blogs and electro scene that have given Purple Crush their push, the duo are beginning to grow from their bloghouse roots. Their last album “Blog Party” was to be a kiss goodbye to the blogs. “It just started to kind of kill the song, it got so abstract- just remixes over and over, I loved that but we miss those 80′s pop songs that make you emotional and want to dance at the same time.” For their next record Purple Crush are working on perfecting pop songs and getting back to more song based music with live instruments. Isla’s vision is more artsy, less “hypebeast.”

This new direction for Purple Crush is apparent in their cover of Kate Bush’s “Running up that Hill (A Deal with God)”. Isla’s poppy take on Bush is sparkling and heartfelt. The track remains powerful, and even becomes danceable as Isla proves in the video. The cover was a more personal break from their usual dance tracks. “We were listening to hounds of love alot, there were a lot of things going on in our life that we were recovering from and that song in particular helped us. It just made sense to cover it” Isla says.

Isla is inspired by legendary female singers such as Annie Lennox, Madonna and of course Kate Bush but she also finds inspiration in the new artists such as Santogold and Hercules and the Love Affair who are on the song based direction that Purple Crush are edging towards. “I think bloghouse does want to grow up” Isla says. Isla and Jared are growing, they are moving towards an underground retrieval of pop music.

“Pop music has been dominated by mass produced 18 year olds, back in the 80′s and 70′s people didn’t care as much if the artists were super hot, it was the music that mattered” Isla says.

Isla is openly a fan of Madonna and Britney Spears, having even covered songs by both artists, but she admits that they are part of the problem, “Everyone is trying to hold onto this blond, totally toned ideal. It’s so boring. Look at Britney, she shaved her head, we all know she has short hair! Yet she insists on putting these extensions in to look like she did when she was 21. I want evolution here” Isla says.

The music industry notoriously makes it hard for anyone new to step in; this seems especially true for unique women artists in the past decade. It is as if the strong, visible women artists from the 90′s scared the Industry and in turn the mainstream away from revolution. Isla is hopeful though, “If everything is the same it is inevitable that something new will come along” She concludes.