Hank and Cupcakes are a NYC duo that plays sweaty and groovy indie pop. If Cupcakes (the girl) provides driven drumming and soulful vocals, Hank’s bass is in charge of everything else – a role that the 4 string instrument rarely takes upon itself. You wouldn’t call Hank’s style “minimalistic”: the man can deliver at once melodic riffs and low frequency lines, mastering left hand dexterity, right hand picking authority, and huge array of filters, flangers and followers to make one of the freshest signature sounds I’ve heard in the bass world. Some bassists will use distortion and call it a signature sound, occasionally turning on a filter for a specific part of a song… Hank seems to dive into filter mode head first for nearly all of his playing, and serve up different shades of filtering – read Benjamin Wigler q&a with Hank here.
