This is a fan forum to discuss Darren Criss\'s career and his public activities, including his theater, film, and TV projects, his music and musical performances, charitable work, interaction with fans, and interviews.
DaisiesAndLilies wrote:
Aubrey (@imchrisdaily on Twitter) won one of these Google Hangouts.
Soooo…. [see-no-evil monkey emoji] [goofy emoji] Thanks @DarrenCriss and @Chuck_Criss for talking to us! Made my entire life pretty much. @weplaycomputers
She added this, about why Darren hasn't done much music since the Listen Up tour:
X
ABS-CBN wrote:
Darren Criss teams up with brother to form pop band
March 30, 2017
Former “Glee” star Darren Criss has teamed up with his musician-brother Chuck to form an independent alt-pop band called Computer Games.
Their EP is called "Lost Boys Life" and Billboard is already predicting that its lead track "Every Single Night" will be one of the songs of the summer of 2017.
Growing up both musically inclined, the Fil-Am boys always planned to create music together. But as Darren went to do Hollywood projects and Chuck also became busy with his band Freelance Whales, the opportunity to do so didn't come up till now.
“We've always grown up playing music together and creating music together and that's sort of the backbone of our relationship. Unintentionally fell into these separate avenues that kind of kept us from doing this thing that we always meant to do. Now that the dust has settled a little bit with myself with things like 'Glee' and him with Freelance Whales, they've take a bit of a break, it seemed like the right time to fulfill our promise that we made to each other when we were teenagers,” Darren said.
Darren explained their songwriting process.
“Chuck is an excellent doodler, he can make these paintings of ideas. Chuck has this free-form sense of creation whereas despite what people might think I'm a very relaxed, chill kind of guy but when it comes to the creative process, I'm very specific. So when Chuck has all these ideas that could be verse or chorus or lyric, I like going in and surgically putting it all together and finding the nose, the mouth and the face,” he said.
The singer-actor considers this project with his brother, which was produced independently, as a birthday present for himself.
“I turned 30 and there's this sense of okay, what do I have to prioritize in my life?” he said.
"Lost Boys Life" is now on Spotify, iTunes and Apple Music.
Last edited by Poppy on Fri Mar 31, 2017 6:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
Last edited by Poppy on Fri Mar 31, 2017 6:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
gleekto wrote:gleekto:
Glee star Darren Criss releases new music
March 31, 2017
Darren Criss is one of those annoyingly talented people with plenty of options.
After playing Blaine Anderson in the popular musical TV show Glee, he’s been the star of Broadway musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and will soon appear in Glee creator, Ryan Murphy’s TV show American Crime Story.
He also wrote songs for Glee, including the Emmy-nominated This Time which featured in the show’s finale.
But, as a solo artist, he hasn’t always been happy with the music he’s made.
“The past several years I just felt so weird and uncomfortable with the stuff I was making. I didn’t feel right about it,” Criss told AAP.
“If I put it out I wondered if I could live with this forever. So I finally turned a corner and thought ‘I can just start over’.”
After years of sharing songs via email with his brother Chuck, a member of indie rock band Freelance Whales, Criss thought maybe it was time they finally teamed up and made music together.
“It dawned on me that we kind of owe this dream to ourselves, that we’d been sort of holding off, like to our teenage selves,” he said.
The Criss brothers got together to release an EP under their new group name Computer Games.
The EP features an infectious dance-pop number called Every Single Night, that conjures up a late 80s, Miami Sound Machine-inspired soundscape.
“The name, Computer Games, is a nostalgic concept because we played computer games as kids and the music that we make now is quite literally a computer game,” he said.
“It’s this playful thing we’ve been working on, on computers, but it also sounds like something we did around the time that those records would have been popular - the Peter Gabriel and Miami Sound Machine, late 80-s early 90s dance records.”
* Computer Games first EP Lost Boys Life is out now
March 30, 2017Amnplify wrote:
Interview with DARREN CRISS of Computer Games
Pauli - You've joined forces with your big brother, Chuck to form the band "Computer Games" and have released an EP "Lost Boys Life." How did you come up with that title?
Darren: For the band or the title track?
I was thinking title track, but you can give us an answer to both if you like!
Well “Computer Games” started because Chuck and I have been playing together our entire lives, since we were teenagers & it was always a dream to do some sort of group together, . . . and throughout the years I had been writing stuff and sending to Chuck and Chuck would write things and send them to me and it got to a point a couple of years ago where I was trying to figure out what sort of music I wanted to put out there and Chuck and I had a few songs together and it just seemed to work. I said to him, look man, this isn’t just you or just me, it’s the two of us and we’ve always wanted to do something together so why don’t we just make this the project, so here we are a couple of years later and we came up with the name “Computer Games” because it has a lot of relevance to us nostalgically, we grew up playing computer games, more than video games and as we got older, Oregan Trail & Sim City slowly turned into electronic music programming, so the music we’ve made for this project is literally a result of our computer games, so there you have a fun name that’s nostalgic and it has a double meaning with how we sort of communicate with each other now, you know Facebook, social media… we all play computer games these days.
I know you performed the lead single "Every Single Night" at iheart radio, will you be performing the songs live alongside Chuck?
Yeah, we’ve done a few shows already. This is a very small operation, you know it’s only a small humble EP, there’s only three songs. We have a bunch of other songs that we’ve been working on that I think and hope are the best yet to come, but for this first initial flash, we wanted to just give out a little taste of what we are and see what the reaction is and go from there. So whether it’s a tour or another record, we’re just testing the waters to see how people will react and we’ll go from there.
[. . . ]
Mate you're a true triple threat. You sing, you dance and you act. Do you have a preference of which one you enjoy more?
They’re all the same to me. It’s all story-telling, it’s all connecting dots between yourself and another person. It’s getting people to come together and be a part of something bigger than themselves and that’s all it is for me. Whether it’s telling a story on stage or being in a band or in a play or on television, it’s all a part of connecting human beings together.
Speaking of television, you've recently been cast in American Crime Story; Versace. Have you started working on that yet?
No. I’m excited for that, but no, we haven’t started working on it just yet. I’m looking forward to it though.
Billboard wrote:
10 Great Pop Songs from March You Might've Missed
4/1/2017
. . . Plenty of other great pop songs sneaked in under the radar. Here's a true "playlist" of ten of our favorites -- no April Fools, promise.
[. . . ]
Computer Games, "Every Single Night"
There'll be a built-in cult for Computer Games thanks to the involvement of Darren Criss and brother Chuck, but you don't have to have been a Gleenatic to get hooked on "Every Single Night." The song is pure mid-'80s pop punch, the kind that brought Steve Winwood a higher love, got Phil Collins to take off his jacket and still has Lionel Richie going all night long (all night) -- pretty impressively studied for a couple of guys who weren't even alive when The Breakfast Club came out.
Darren Criss Fan Community » Darren's Music and Musical Performances » Music by Computer Games (Darren and Chuck's Band) » Music by Computer Games (Darren and Chuck's Band)
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