Culture Wars 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."