TxE Tetherball

TxE Drops New EP – “Tetherball” // New Visuals

On Monday a little gem dropped in Portland, Oregon when TxE released TETHERBALL, a spicy tribute to 90’s hip hop.  A flurry of great beats and tasteful lyrics; this project came as a huge surprise to me, personally.  I always expect nothing less than great music from TxE, and they do not disappoint.  But, this project is so creative, I don’t think fans really saw it coming.  Recorded over a period of  only two days, with the help of Noah Porter and DJ Celsius, this is absolutely an EP to check out.

“We had two days to kill, so why not make some new music?  It’s always fun creating and figuring out what sound and style we want to go for next,” says Epp.  “Tetherball” was a spontaneous project, but the process came naturally, and in no time the three members of TxE, (Tope, Epp and Calvin Valentine), were ready to release the product of their effort.  When asked about the recording process, Calvin Valentine responded, “We make most of our songs from scratch.  I’ll just start messing with some drums, keys, or a sample and if I see everyone diggin’ it I know its a go.  It’s a really open process we all just throw our ideas around and get to work.”  And Tope agreed, when he said, “The creative process behind Tetherball felt really natural. I think a lot of times we push ourselves to use a lot of diversity in production when we’re recording a project, but for Tetherball it was pretty straight forward; boom bap break beats, old school references with a new twist.”

“We are all huge fans of People Under the Stairs, Tribe Called Quest, OutKast, Del La, Pharcyde and all of the other great 90’s acts.  We chose to make our ode to that era of music.  Once we came up with that concept, it was all a go,”  Calvin Valentine relates, about the influence of this new project.  “Noah Porter was a big part of the record also.  In assisting with the on-point 90’s music video and album artwork.  He really killed it…  I want to make sure and give credit to Celsius for making the project what it was with his scratching. Nowadays people forget how important a good DJ is to maintaining the integrity of hip-hop.”

Check out Noah Porter’s video to TxE’s track “Swing Set” below, and download “Tetherball” HERE.

As always, you can find TxE on Facebook, and of course Twitter.