Sharing The Vision: An Interview With Angelo Moore and The Brand New Step

By Staff | January 21, 2026

Angelo Moore, the legendary frontman of Fishbone, has reimagined his artistic identity through his collaborative project, Angelo Moore and the Brand New Step. Working alongside San Francisco Bay Area musicians Jim Greer and Kris Jensen, the iconic musician forges an innovative path that moves beyond his ska and punk roots. This ensemble intertwines diverse musical traditions — ranging from neo-soul and funk to electronic dance and hip hop — to create a soundscape that is both sophisticated and experimental. By incorporating unconventional instruments like the theremin and blending live beats with insightful lyricism, the group provides Moore with a fresh platform to display his unmistakable charisma. Since its inception, the band has produced several albums and delivered high-energy performances worldwide, proving that Moore continues to be a boundary-pushing force in contemporary music. We got a chance to catch up with Kris, Jim and Angelo.

While Angelo is best known for Fishbone, The Brand New Step is decidedly a very different venture. How does the creative process change for the band when you’re leaning into more electronic groove-based tracks compared to the fast, chaotic energy of Fishbone?

Kris Jensen, guitar: From the birth of the BNS we wanted to write & record music with Angelo that he had never done. Take Angelo into new musical landscapes. Sorta of a Thievery Corporation / Gorillaz direction. Also, I can’t play fast ska punk guitar.

Jim Greer, keyboards/production: Honestly we just kind of take it one track at a time. Angelo is such a musical chameleon, and one nice thing about him is he is extremely lyric and intention forward. He’s gonna write what he thinks and communicate that is sort of equally important in his mind as what the whole band is doing. It seems like maybe Fishbone is how it is partially because it’s Angelo’s thoughts which are a tornado. So making a pile of tracks in the more trip-hop, beat-driven realm really challenged him in some ways. He would want some direction and is usually pretty open to ideas, and it was nice to have him be open to things. Sometimes working on music is just sitting there for hours kinda trying stuff, and with him it’s always an adventure.

Angelo Moore, vocals/saxophone/theremin: The creative process was a challenge in the beginnings of the BNS because I myself didn’t believe in pre-recorded tracks or samples being the priority elements of a song. On the contrary, I believe in the use of the actual instrumentation with real instruments being the priority source of building the musical piece. And letting the sampling and pre-recorded tracks be the minor accessory to the music. For example I always thought "why use a pre-recorded drum track when we have a drummer?" But, as we continued to work together we learned to compromise and maintain our individual musical integrity when it came to equally incorporating real instruments and sampled instruments. As far as the BNS contemporary lane and Fishbone’s edgy alternative lane there was such a vast difference in the two that was no comparison

Your latest album "Perceptions" feels like a culmination of the band’s decade-long journey. What was the core perception or message you wanted to challenge or highlight with this specific body of work?

Kris: How people perceive Angelo, others and ourselves. Also, Sensory Perception: the five senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch). The album design and the photo of Angelo when he was 5 years old. Really started the process for this record. I designed the record before we had all the tracks.

Jim: Kris has always wanted Angelo to kind of sing his life, his origins, his thoughts. Some of our best songs - Endless Possibilities, Gratitude, Side Trip to Jupiter- come from Angelo kind of finding other parts of himself to open up. The world sees Angelo as this kinda hyper-political ska-punk master of ceremonies, but we see him as a kind of afro-futurist, beat poet, musical wizard. So this record is heading more in that direction. I feel like it’s kind of the third album in our little trilogy. Sacrifice, Centuries of Heat, Perceptions. A lot of guests, tours, traveling, shows, and studio sessions happened.

Jim Greer and Kris Jensen have been part of this project for over a decade now. How do they help filter the Dr. MadVibe energy into the polished, soulful sound that defines the band?

Jim: Kris was the first to suggest the idea, and I was hot off a big record when I contacted Angelo’s manager at the time ( Foster the People, Torches). So when I hit them up they were like “Sure, Angelo would love to come see what’s what”. Then to be honest, both Kris & I are kind of Northern California, free spirits, very little drama, super open-minded, and that first session was really fun. I take a lot of pride in making artists feel safe, and it’s surprising how often their own bands are kind of more difficult than we might know. According to Angelo, being in Fishbone always came with a lot of rules, and we have a kind of “no rules” approach. So I think that really helped. You could feel that he appreciated that.

Angelo: Soul is the main ingredient in all of the different genres that I play whether it be the soulful polished music of the BNS with the heart aged alternative sound of the Missing Links. I always make sure that no matter what it is, it's soul music. Jim and Kris are polished contemporary elements to the BNS.

The theremin is such a signature part of Angelo's sound, but it’s rarely heard in funk or soul. How does the band approach him playing the air in a way that feels melodic and rhythmic rather than just experimental?

Kris: The theremin is great when we’re performing. I think it adds great texture and depth to our songs. Angelo is really quick and skilled at it. With that said we use it sparingly in the studio.

Jim: What’s cool about it is that if you dust into a song, then pare it back, you’ll get some sounds that most people are like “what’s that?” and they probably assume it’s some sort of guitar or keyboard. It can be used to GREAT effect, when building up big parts of a song, it’s a great thing for dynamics. And he has this way of making it into a sort of drum too, which is really cool. It’s a crowd pleaser too. Everyone loves theremin. Angelo is shockingly good at it.

Between the eMERGENCY heARTS remixes and the recent Killaweed rework, the band's music is constantly being reimagined. What is it about the songs that makes them so flexible for different electronic producers?

Kris: Good question. Not sure. But I love when people want to make remixes of our material. We’ve had a lot of great remixes. I should make sure they’re all accessible.

Jim: These guys have come along and wanted to make dub remixes of everything. I think the main thing is that people love Angelo’s vocals, and remixers love it when a vocal is strong. Angelo just has so much personality. As a remixer myself, I usually just toss everything but the vocals and start fresh, and when the voice is strong, you can’t really go wrong. And since our tempos lean a little slower, it opens up a lot of room in the dub realm. We’d hand off stems to anyone who wants to do it, it’s great.

"Side Trip to Jupiter" is described as a bizarre and upside-down romantic story. How does Angelo decide which personal experiences are too "out there" for a standard song and better suited for his spoken-word opuses?

Kris: First off, there's nothing “too out there” for Angelo. Side Trip started with my chord progression. I remember playing it for Angelo thinking he wouldn’t like it or get it for some reason. But, he loved it and we filed it away. The story behind Side Trip is, Jim and I were waiting one day for Angelo to show up to the studio to record. Angelo had a show the night before at Kirkwood ski resort in South Lake Tahoe. When they woke up the next morning to drive to Berkeley it had snowed all night. Angelo was stuck. Once Angelo finally got to the studio the next day, he said he wrote some vocals for my guitar idea. I remember hearing Side Trip for the first time and I didn't know what to think. It was so much to take in. The highlight was watching Angelo record his saxophone part for this song. It was a magical studio moment for me. I think this is the first song he used an envelope filter. Side trip is an adventure into Angelo's lyrical mind. I love performing this song live.

Jim: This is one of my favorite of our songs and probably mostly because playing it live is really emotional. You can’t be in the room with this song and not feel the experience, and when we are really all playing together, it climbs a mountain of its own. Also, it’s one of these things where as a producer/ musician, having now played with Angelo so much, something like Side Trip doesn’t even seem that out there to me any more. It makes the stuff I hear on the radio sound so incredibly formulaic.

You’ve never shied away from political themes. In 2026, do you feel that the role of the musician as a social commentator has changed since the early days of Fishbone?

Jim: That's a question for Angelo really. But I think musicians should be speaking out way more than they are, and I'm mostly embarrassed for the “stars” who have huge platforms and are just staying on the sidelines. To me we’re in 1965 again, like a new Viet Nam, and we need people to speak the hell up.

You’ve featured legends like Del the Funky Homosapien and Stanton Moore. Is there a specific energy a guest must have to fit into the Brand New Step family, or do you prefer the friction of different styles?

Jim: These are people we know as Kris says. So it’s less of a like “will it work or not” thing, and more of a thing of we know these other fabulous musicians and they are all stoked to get to participate with Angelo a bit. The “no rules“ approach helps here, because we just tell our friends to do their thing, then we make it all work, so it’s more just kids getting together playing than something really overly planned out.

Kris: Honestly, all the different guests & players we have worked with are friends or friends of friends. For whatever reason it just made sense at the time to get whoever for a track. I feel really honored to have so many talented people on our tunes.

Angelo famously wrote the song "Gratitude" after realizing he had never explicitly thanked the fans in song during 40 years on the road. What was the emotional experience of performing that song for the first time?

Kris: Jim and I had already had the music recorded for Gratitude. I had written out a couple paragraphs of lyrics and the name of the song. I’m never sure how Angelo is going to respond to my lyrical ideas. But, he liked my lyrics and was able to add and craft this song into a masterpiece, in my mind. The song Sacrifice is another song that happened in the same way. With Sacrifice I had asked Angelo if he had ever written a song about his Sacrifice of living on the road, fame, etc. basically the lyrics “ the stage has been become my cage” is pretty deep. Sacrifice started the journey into more emotional, deep, interpretative subject matter for Angelo. I appreciate that Angelo trusted Jim and I with these kinds of songs. Sacrifice, gratitude, Los Angeles, and a new song that’s not out yet, mighty long way. Also, I want to point out that on Gratitude Claude Coleman jr. from Ween played drums. And on Sacrifice Mike Bordin from Faith No More played drums. Both amazing humans.

Jim: I don't remember playing it for the first time, it was a while ago. But it’s one of my very favorite songs and always kills live.

For a listener new to the band, what is the best entry point into the electro-soul world of The Brand New Step?

Kris: This is a hard one to answer. I’d say just jump in. Having so many different great players (maybe 30 different people) has given the BNS its unique sound of it’s own. We’re kinda all over the musical map. There’s something for everyone.

Jim: If I had to make a 4 song playlist for someone who was curious about it, I'd put in this order: Karma Cashback, Dream Crusher, Soul Searchers, Side Trip to Jupiter. It’s hard because there’s a lot of great singles. But that would be a good start.

Angelo: I feel the best interest point for the BNS is the song Brand New Step which is our first song, video, single. The rest is a fulfilling journey, contemporary soul, R&B, and reggae with various collaborations from artists from the Bay Area, New Orleans, LA, ETC.

What's on the horizon for The Brand New Step - any breaking news you'd like to share with us?

Kris: We have several new songs in various stages of being finished. We will have a new single or two out in Spring. Most likely another album towards the end of 2026.

Jim: We're planning to come up with a concept that’s rooted in a lyrical dimension that would be important to Angelo. Something that lets him put another chapter of his book in the mix. It’s been about 10 years of doing this, and it might be time for a re-invention of sorts.

Links

Official website: http://www.brandnewstep.com

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/angelomooreandthebrandnewstep

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Angelomooreandthebrandnewstep/

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/5h41biOW2lEzL6zKcAHt1N?si=fNxY8nX5RVCAGnhFy_8m0w

Bandcamp https://angelomoore.bandcamp.com/music

Apple Music https://music.apple.com/us/artist/angelo-moore-the-brand-new-step/672432879