Interview: ALERT312 Invites Us on a Journey with Their New Album

Chicago based ALERT312 has just released their full length, The Upside Eternal. The project features guest spots from familiar names like Propaganda, Taelor Gray, DJ Efechto, MRENC, Jay Cabassa and Catalina Bellizzi.  

Hallels: Thanks so much far doing this fnterview with us. Tell us who is Alert312 and is there a significance in calling youselves Alerts312 ?

ALERT312 is Boogalu and Moral One. Two Chicago natives that believe in using art and music as a medium to communicate hope as found in the Gospel.

The name came from a passage in Ephesians 3:18 "Stay alert be persistent in your prayer for all believers everywhere." When we first started, we simply went by ALERT. But try to google search ALERT nowadays, you'Il get a whole bunch of stuff before coming into contact with our music. So a year or two later, we added the 312 as an ode to our native city of Chicago (312 is the Chicago area code).

Hallels: Haw would you describe your style of music?

The music we make is percussive. Drums and ethnic percussion - congas, bongos, tambourines, timbales - is at the core of what we do. Our music is also very live, we use a lot of live Instrumentation: live bass and guitars, live pianos and drums and analogue synths,

We find much fulfillment in playing and performing what we make,not simply programming and sampling what we make.

Hallels: Your new album is entitled "The Upside Eternal," what does the title mean?

The Upside Eternal is a record about living in the here ard now. yet hoping and longing tor our future in the eternal. The record is bookended by 2 songs, the first song being, "Local" ard the album closer, "Eternal'. Everything in between is a musical journey exploring the realities of the local present - both the good and bad - and our hope in eternity with God our heavenly father.

Hallels: Is it important to understand life as a journey?

Every day, we as people have the chance to grow. Now what we choose to grow in is a very important decision for each of us. As believers in Jesus Christ we choose io grow in our reflection of Him. In the journey of The Upside Eternal we try to exemplify our reflection of Jesus in various aspects of our life journey. From living in a corrupt and decaying city we love -- Chicago; to facing some very dark and emotionally heavy times as explored in, "The Darkest

Night", to havlng a desire to spend time with God in, "Dwell All Day."  Every day we all have these journeys and we tried our best to exemplify that in this record.

Hallels: Yau have quite a number guest artists end producers working with you on this new record, tell us a little bit more about them.

This was something that was a major goal for us in this project. Everything we've done up for this record has mainly been done in house: Moral One held the music down ard Boogalu predominantly rapped with a couple few exceptions here and there.

The common thread in the handful of artists we featured and the musicians we invited to play ard produce on The Upside is that everyone had a proper view of their craft -- they use to make Christ known, not themselves. And they inspire us in their art and music they make, they're all excellent in their craft,

MRENC is a one of a kind artist based out ot Lakeland, FL He inspires us to be more punk. Taelor Gray is a rare breed in CHH. A true talent who is grounded in his cratt and not trying to be famous, and that's refreshing,

Jay Cabassa is a vocalist we've been trying to work with for years but never had the right opportunity and song to do it. So we decided to give him his own song on our record. He's that good,

Catalina Belllizzi is a long time collaborator of ours, and we kept the wheels turning on this record, She is doing a very cool work with her organization Young Lady, make sure to check it out.

And DJ Etechto & Propaganda is our Humble Beast family, What more can we say!

Hallels: What are a couple of songs on the record that you are most excited about?

That's like trying to choose your favorite child. Ha.

But one song that was a unique joy to create was the album closer, "Eternal".

Moral One had the idea to close the record out with a classical reinterpretation of the album opener "Local." So we gave a friend ours a rough draft of "Local" and he came back a couple weeks later with the beautiful piece you hear today and assembled a super talented string quartet that performed the piece for the album. This song was a bucket list song for us. Being in the session nearly brought Moral One to tears. He's emotional like that.

Hallels: For our readers who would like to know more about you and your music, where can they go ?

You can download "The Upside Eternal" for FREE at our creative label home, HiFi Native,

And you can keep up With us daily at Facebook, Twitter and Instagrarn when you search

@ALERTS12

 

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