2) Who would you say are The Contortionist’s five biggest musical influences?
Collectively, we have a vast range of influences that go from classical to county to jazz, and of course rock, particularly progressive metal and 90s rock, but as far as the influences that cross over into our work as The Contortionist, I’ll try to boil it down to the artists that we all tend to get psyched on together, and that, to me, are fairly apparent influences in our recordings. I’ll say Deftones, Between The Buried And Me, Radiohead, Brian Eno, and, predictably, the almighty Meshuggah.
3) Who would be on The Contortionist’s dream tour?
I could easily answer this with any of the bands above, and we have had the pleasure of playing with a couple in some form, most notably being BTBAM, who we have done many tours with as well as recorded with their producer Jamie King, which was a formative and developmental experience in itself. But, a ‘dream tour’? Let’s go with Pink Floyd from 1974, Radiohead from 2001, Tool from 2001 (or truly any time period), Alice in Chains from 1993, King Crimson from the 70s… The list could go on forever. As far as bands more relevant to today, Coheed and Cambria, Circa Survive, Deftones, Mastodon, Karnivool come up all the time.