Deep in the heart of London City there’s four creative geniuses hard at work on a mission to wow the world with their (various) collective talents. From making music with Amy Winehouse, to photo-documenting Kanye West’s tour, the MoonRunners are at it all! Reya El-Salahi met up with the ambitious four-some to find out if there’s anything they can’t do…

Who or what are the MoonRunners?

There’s Tokio – who plays piano and produces (a graduate of The Royal College of Music, who’s skills can be heard on Mr. Hudson’s Straight No Chaser), Lyracis – who sings, raps and also produces (and appeared on Channel 4’s music documentary Chancers), Moimojo – our photographer and graphic designer (previously commissioned to take pictures of Kanye West’s tour) and Tommy – our video producer (who’s work has appeared on MTV).

How did you come together?

We formed unexpectedly a year ago; Mo and I (Tokio) have known each other for what seems like forever (since we were nine or something). We both left our jobs around the same time, I visited him shortly afterwards and have found myself living with him ever since! I’d seen Lyracis on the T4 programme Chancers and later found he was a close friend of a friend. Lyracis ran into Tommy at the Apple Store, got talking and there we have it… The start of the MoonRunners!

Individually you’ve already had some pretty impressive success…

Yup! I’ve been lucky enough to tour the globe with Mr Hudson supporting acts like Kanye West and Amy Winehouse in stadiums, at major festivals. Lyra has obviously been on The Chancers working with Matthew Knowles, while the other guys are starting to get noticed for their artistic skills by doing photography and film making for other acts.

Is there anything you can’t do?

No!

We hear you’re on the look out for new members?

I’d love to have a female on board; doing what, I do not know! It’ll make a nice change of scenery from this lot!

What’s the name all about?

It’s from the classic 1980’s film, The Warrior.

In The Warrior, the MoonRunners gang wear silver space suits with purple vests and moon necklaces (!), whereas your style seems pretty geek-chic; are you big fashionistas?

We don’t watch others to generate ideas! It’s all about feeling comfortable and being you! If people think we’re cool then I guess we’re those cool guys!

Is it true you count the likes of Mr Hudson, Estelle, The Game, Chris Brown, Sean Kingston and Ja Rule among your friends?

I wouldn’t say they were all close friends but they are definitely on the MoonRunners radar.

Have there been many highlights over the past year?

The love we have received world wide! When you have a girl from Bangladesh emailing you out of nowhere expressing the love she has for MoonRunners, that’s straight up MoonRunning right there!

What inspires you?

At this present moment…the ups and downs, the good and the bad, happy times, sad times; all those kind of things.

What’s keeping you busy at the moment?

At the forefront is our album, then comes the single, music videos, photography, and a few projects we can’t yet disclose! It’s all happening for us at present!

Is it true you recorded and edited the video for Feels Like Magic in a total of four days at a cost of £55 (due to parking tickets)?

Yes! We managed to do it by utilising whatever we had around us calling in favours, smart planning, gorilla filming (aka without permission or permits) ingenuity  and most of all just going out there and doing it (aka MoonRunning). The City is our play ground we just go and have fun and see what happens!

We’ve been Twitter stalking you, and you seem to spend a lot of time social networking!

It’s early days, but saying that, there are a lot of worldwide fans reaching out to us. Thank you World Wide Web!

Where would you like to be this time next year?

I would love for the Moonrunners to have a top ten single and album in the charts and about to embark on our first sell out tour!

For more check moonrunnersuniverse.com

Tags: Hip Hop, Interviews, MoonRunners, Pop, R&B