Huge new album ‘Love, Death, Immortality’ from the West Coast trio
Interview : Dan Prince
edIT, Ooah and Boreta welcome to DMCWORLD, where in the world are you right now?
“We are at Red Studios in Los Angeles rehearsing and developing our new live show with a team of brilliant, badass creative folks. Sleep deprived and probably too much caffeine.”
You have some incredible fans, indeed – you admit the new album was made after soaking up your fans reaction to your live shows, Love Death Immortality was the result. I think one of the most incredible photos we have seen these past twelve months was your fan who was paralyzed in a snowmobile accident and then trekked to the South Pole and STOOD UP with a Glitch Mob flag. Now that my friends, goes that one step further than a kid having an Avicii tattoo on their arse huh?
“Grant Korgan is such a powerful guy with quite a story. We met him shortly after his spinal cord injury and have stayed in touch ever since. He’s a beast. He got up and has been walking and continuing to do extreme sports around the world when the doctors told him he’d never walk again. He traveled down to the south pole and surprised us by putting a Glitch Mob logo flag in the ground as an intercontinental high 5 for the inspiration he felt from our music. These types of things happening inspire us to dive in even deeper with our fans.”
So, a brilliant new album exploding around the world that has been released with ten accompanying videos. Please can you give us a few words describing each of your Love Death Immortality babies…
Crush
2- Our Demons (feat. Aja Volkman)
Epic
3- Skullclub
Do it now
4- Becoming Harmonious (feat. Metal Mother)
Ritual
Unfuckwithable
6- I Need My Memory Back (feat. Aja Volkman)
Celebrate
7- Skytoucher
Push yourself
8- Fly By Night Only (feat. Yaarrohs)
Wind in ya hair
Soaring above the clouds
10- Beauty Of The Unhidden Heart (feat. Sister Crayon)
Vulnerable
As mentioned, each track comes with it’s own video directed by people you admire and respect. Justin, I know you were honoured that beeple directed ‘Can’t Kill Us’ – can you take a few moments to explain why Mike Winkelmann and some of the other genius’s were chosen…?
“One of the most exciting parts of this process is getting to collaborate with people we admire. The way we work in these types of situations is that we give people the album and let them choose what they’re most inspired by. When we sent Beeple the album, he instantly gravitated towards ‘Can’t Kill Us’. It’s exciting for us to give people some core direction and vibe, and really let them be themselves inside of a creative framework. That’s also the way we worked with Aerosyn Lex who did the album cover – we gave him our extensive mood boards, the music, and had long discussions about the vision. He came back with a huge suite of options and we narrowed it down from there to something we felt was right.”
Man, I have interviewed some mighty artists over the last 25 years, I’ve put up with silences, one word answers, even guys getting up and walking out of the room half way through. But boy did it make me chuckle when your press company sent me an e-mail with the Glitch Mob Interview Rider of what not to ask them. Love it! But it leads me to the question…years ago as struggling musicians, if we’d have told you that in six years time you would be telling journalists what you will and won’t be talking about in interviews, what do you think your response would have been?
“Ha, yeah we probably would not have believed you. The reason we block out certain questions is because we want to encourage people to ask thoughtful questions (like you have here), and not the same thing over and over again that people can find out about on Google. With a good interview, like a good conversation, we’ll be learning new stuff about ourselves at the same time and not talking about how inspiring the Beatles are…”
Your last tour ripped the shit out of you, three years on the road is enough for anyone! You rented a place in the mystical Joshua Tree where internet and cell reception was patchy, coyotes ran wild and you were sober for the whole time. What are some of the memories from your time spent there you will never forget?
“Joshua Tree is a magical place. And a strange place. It has this creepy Twin Peaks thing going on that is a lot of fun to live and create in. The desert is a very dry, desolate place while at the same time being very alive and full of life. It’s the perfect place to write an album and dive into creativity. One of the funniest things that happened was when a scorpion came into the house and was hanging out on the wall, we posted on Facebook from the slow internet connection and asked our fans to name it. They named him Herbert, although Stabby Goodnight was a close second which we were rooting for.”
Incredibly the whole of the album was made on a single computer in a living room without a single piece of analog gear. This will come as a big shock to the thousands of aspiring producers reading this thinking they need a million dollar studio to record in…was it as simple as it sounds…
“To us, it all has to do with how well you know your gear and your setup. We were able to achieve a full sounding album in a non-treated living room all in Ableton. A lot of pros say that you can’t get good results out of Ableton, but we think it all comes down to how well you know your gear. It wasn’t as simple as it seems, though – it took a lot of work and experimentation to get the album to where it is now. But you do need patience and perseverance, as with anything that requires extreme attention to detail. Some of the songs were at version 250-300 by the time they were finished, meaning they had been each revised a few hundred times. It took that level of insanity for us to push ourselves to learn how to get the sound we wanted. That is more important than the gear you work on.”
A great thing you said recently…“Being so D.I.Y. allows total creative control. We can do whatever the fuck we want and that’s so much fun. We don’t really answer to anyone. We don’t have to send anything up any chain.” So would you recommend this to other bands out there, why does it work so well for you guys?
“It all depend on the artist. For us, it makes sense to be independent. We enjoy all aspects of the process – the creativity, the live show, the art, the fan interaction, etc. We all do everything. And to make this work you have to be willing to wear many hats. If you’d rather just focus on writing music, then this path may not be good for you. But if you’re down for the extra work, it’s a very rewarding process to have your hands in everything related to the music. It’s all part of the big picture.”
Be brave and stick your heads out. What is each of yours favourite track on the album…?
“Honestly it changes from time to time. If I’m feeling melancholy I’ll listen to Beauty of the Unhidden Heart. If it’s time to get pumped and run up a hill, Skullclub or Our Demons.”
You have us all vey excited over in Europe about your forthcoming tour when you’ll be hitting the likes of Paris, London and Prague. You spent a lot of time getting comfortable with a big stage at the larger events in the States, utilizing the space to it’s full effect. So how are you looking at the European dates, a lot of these venues are much more intimate…?
“There’s something so invigorating about playing smaller, more intimate venues. Like we’re all having a house party and sweating together. We get really high off of that. Last time when we were in Prague, it was one of the craziest shows ever. There were mosh pits, stage diving, all kinds of crazy shit. People in Europe really understand electronic music and have for a long time in a way that Americans are just starting to. We have always felt like people got us in Europe way faster than they did in the States.”
How do you see your role as a performer rather than just as a DJ benefiting the electronic genre as a whole?
“There’s a lot of world to be explored in the live performance realm of electronic music. As the performance technology evolves, there’s going to be a lot of new exciting things happening. At the moment, we’re exploring and experimenting because the way we want to perform can’t be bought from a store. A lot of our new live setup is custom hardware and software. The tech is so powerful now that we can do things today we couldn’t even do a few years ago. I can’t even imagine what will be possible in another few years. DJing is an art form unto itself. We’re in a different category, though. We’re more like a regular band that plays with electronic elements. It’s very different. We love DJing and still do it at after parties or festivals if they can’t fit our production, but it’s more exciting for us to actually get to play our music. It’s more fun for us to be on stage actually triggering notes, and when we get into it like that it’s also more fun for the crowd.”
What are you really looking forward to the most about hitting our wee continent…the weather, our food…?
“Europe is the best. We love it there. Some of the best food in the entire world, we’re huge foodies. The people at the shows and the friends we make through traveling are really special. Last tour, on the last show night we were forced to go drink mint vodka all night at a crazy underground bar in Poland. It was so much fun even though we had to get up at 5AM to get on a plane home. They wanted to show us how they enjoy life and we love the new perspective. Traveling and seeing new places is a gift.”
Throw some names at us of artists you’ll be listening to on the tour bus…
“Phil Collins is a tour staple. Yes really. FKA Twigs. Lots of reggae and dub – Collie Buddz, King Tubby, Gregory Isaacs. Techno – Ricardo Villalobos, Daniel Avery, Worakls. Drake.”
‘Drink The Sea’ was a very introspective album for you. How do you feel about it now three years on, do you still feel you’ll be able to throw it on in 20 years and it’ll still stand up?
“Absolutely. We still listen to it quite a bit Because it is off in it’s own little oddball world, I think it will stand the test of time”.
An interesting thing you once said…“In electronic music, there’s a lot of cynical music or skepticism or party heavy sounds, or sarcasm.” Can you elaborate on that please…
“We’re creatively driven by emotion, by people’s lives and stories, our own lives. We love music that touches the soul or tells a story. There’s plenty of electronic music out there that does that very well. Although, it seems right now it’s also popular to focus on partying, not giving a fuck about anything and making a joke out of everything. And that has it’s time and place — sometimes it’s useful to just party and not think. There’s nothing wrong with that. Our music also has a party element, especially the new record. But it’s more there as a supporting element for us. The emotion and the story is at the core of what we do.”
I remember reading an interview with you a while back where you admitted that you take your social media fan connection with your fans very seriously. You have suicidal fans contact you, soldiers stationed in Afghanistan reaching out…do you till have the time to commit to some fan love these days?
“Absolutely. We spend time each day interacting with fans on various platforms, reading their stories and paying attention to the people that are looking for a true connection. We don’t have time to respond to everyone that reaches out, but we give extra attention to the heartfelt messages.”
And finally, couldn’t finish the interview without reverting back to the list of questions not to ask! So guys, how did you come up with the name, who are your influences, what is your favourite colour, what was your first pet’s name…
“Tacos?”
Cheers guys. See you in the rain in London!
“Thanks Dan, this was fun.”
