When you first listen to Sensual Harassment, one might think they came from the Cosmos. Put together with analogue Star Dust, synths, and mirror balls, meeting Sensual Harassment means a more tethered humble experience.
Bushwick Daily made contact of the music kind at the very hip Wythe Hotel bar recently. “We’ve never been here before,” lead singer Todd Thomas says as he scopes the bar with wide eyes in amazement. “Everyone is so nice,” agreed Mike Sherburn. “We feel we’re going to get kicked out,” they both said at various points, which actually soon manifested into reality. Alien mind trickery, or just good ol’ North Carolina boys who like to make noise?
Looks like both. Their recently self released EP,“Escape from Alpha Draconis” speaks of the human psyche, alien life forms, and interplanetary space love. All the while resting on the sweet soft sounds ranging from deep dark rooms of lost love and redemption, to dance floor packing beats. As our photographer Cheyenne Sophia snapped photos; a very playful Todd and Mike started improvising with props of skeletons and books. One begs to ask if these two were joined at the hip in the Carolinas.
“We didn’t know each other in North Carolina. Mike went to high school with John (Barclay).” Barclay of Trip House and Bossa Nova Civic Club scenes; casually mentioned to Thomas about Sherburn. Thomas immediately flew to North Carolina for a sit down and dragged him back to New York.
“How did this go?” we ask Mike Sherburn. “I hate New York,” he stoically says. We stand on the corner outside after being asked to leave by a wagon circle of security from our touchy feely photo session. He then shifts feet and says, “I love New York, because it taught me a lot about that point of where you can’t do it anymore, but you do it anyway. A lot of people don’t know how to keep on going.”
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And keep on going, they have. If you check their Soundcloud and website, you can see the progression of their sound, look, and vibe. The lead song off their EP “Disco Heart” has an accompanying video by Joel Hernandez (arguably the next David Fincher) that brings the no holds barred sexual tension of disco nightlife into fruition. No strangers to the studio or putting in work, they have some pretty intense production skills. They recently did a remix of another pretty stellar band Dead Leaf Echo‘s single “King Maker.”
With stars aligning right, these two push the envelope with tour antics of blacking out – and waking up in a Virginia hotel tub. Todd laughs, hands in his pockets, owning the moment, “Yeah, I turned into the Joker.”
Bringing them back to their North Carolina roots, they simultaneously agree on the moment when the stars literally aligned above their heads. “Nashville driving,” Sherburn says. On the way home from tour driving through Nashville, they pulled over and laid down on the ground. Thomas getting the same wide-eyed look as earlier in the night, “On our backs in the middle of the night, grown ass men staring at the stars…You don’t see that shit in New York. We got mad homesick.”
Thomas’ work on a book to Mike’s other musical collaborations prove these beings are hard-working gentlemen with humble roots, which makes their final destination very possibly on another level beyond the stars. Check out their album, and all things social media before they blast off.