DB- Describe your philosophy and ethos of improvisation.

AM- When I was starting to play jazz, there were these books I had which analytically compared mathematics to jazz improvisation. It was kind of a cool concept, there are almost mathematical formulas how to improvise and you can correlate all this stuff but I had problems with that. Improvisation isn’t something that can be taught, it’s something that you feel. You can’t just follow some prescribed method from point A to point B.

What I enjoy about the concept of improvisation is that it’s a moment of spontaneity and that’s what is intended. Whatever is on your mind at the time, that’s what comes through. It’s like when a psychiatrist shows you a picture and you don’t have even a split second to think about it and you just say the first word that comes to mind. That’s what it’s all about for me.

We’re definitely prone to go back and listen to our music. When we do we try to edit and refine it and talk about what works and why it works and what doesn’t work and why it doesn’t work. I feel our music is better because of it although I still feel improvisation is meant to be for the moment.

As for my ethos you’d have to take what’s going on my brain at the time of any particular moment of improvisation to really get to the root of that question.

DB- Given your collective propensity for improvisation, since you are producing this new album yourselves, I would imagine that it has been somewhat difficult restraining yourselves in the studio, where one can spend a lot of time creating and recreating.

AM- For our other albums we went into the studio as a band. Our thought was to go in and get a really good crisp clear recording of what we do live. Yes, we did take advantage of the studio- we threw some overdubs in there and added some instruments that we don’t normally play because we only have two hands. This time though, we really took advantage of the studio.

What we do live, we do live and there are all these tapes circulating which reflect that. This time we really wanted to realize the concept of the studio. We’ve approached this album as if we are building tiles for a mosaic. Conceptually we’re looping stuff, so we’ll set up eight bar or sixteen bar loops and work from there. Then we’re taking these different loops, these different tiles and putting them on top of each other to see how they fit- what works, what doesn’t work and then switching it up. Then we’re going in and adding another keyboard line, another bass line to create additional iterations of the same loop. Of course all these loops are generated from us, so microcosmically we’re doing what DJs do when they remix a tune, with the exception of the fact that DJs are mostly using someone else’s music.

We’re putting down our own loops and making songs out of them. For instance one of the tunes on this album, “Mindless Dribble,” had a thirty minute jam in it because we had all these different ideas and different loops and we pasted them together. One of those things that was once part of “Mindless Dribble,” was this really cool riff and a cool keyboard line. We busted it out in Vegas and then in Burlington and it became known on tour as “the Big Happy.” Well we took that the other day and started manipulating it- removing elements and putting in elements of other stuff and freeing up some room to put some vocals on. Then Barber dropped some unbelievable lyrics over it, put in some crazy effects and all of a sudden we’ve got ourselves this song.

What’s great about it is we’re really able to do stuff in the studio that we weren’t able to do live and then try to transplant that to our live show. Granted because the album’s done on electronic drums we can’t get the same beats out of Sammy and we can’t get some of the sounds because he plays a kit. What we have in the studio doesn’t really sound like the Disco Biscuits that any of knows and this could only be done there. To what extent it can be replicated live is a question but a number of those ideas that we hope to recreate or reconfigure in the live setting wouldn’t even have been there if we hadn’t been working the way we’re working in the studio.

DB- How much resistance was there from Sammy to the idea that the album would be all electronic drums?

AM- At first we really didn’t know where we were going and our plan was to do a combination of both. But then as we got started it sounded weird with both live drums and electronic drums. So once we got rolling with electronic drums we decided we wanted that to be concept of the album, for it to be all electronic-oriented. There really wasn’t any fight with Sammy to put in live drums. In fact the recent fight was whether we wanted to put in a live track and Sammy successfully defended the idea that this album is all electronic so why put something that might be refreshing to hear but would fight the concept.

DB- How have you guys divided the duties in terms of producing the album?

AM- Everybody’s really taking their own crack at producing. Of course Barber has this unbelievable schedule where he wakes up at ten o’clock at night and won’t go to bed until ten o’clock the next morning. So he’ll be in the studio alone, we’ll come back the next day and he’ll say, “Guys, check it out, I’m really not sure how this is gonna sound.” And we’ll be like, “I can’t believe you did this.” It will be unbelievable.

We’ve also made quite a bit of collective decisions in terms of putting together the larger mosaic. Frankly, if there wasn’t pressure from the label we could always put on more tracks and remix to our heart’s content which is what we love doing. We’ll finish up, though, by the nineteenth of January and the disc will be released by mid-April.

DB- Last time out Rob “Wacko” Hunter (Raven, Branford Marsalis) produced the sessions. I’m curious what you took away from that or how he prepared you for your current efforts.

AM- He was very helpful as a producer in terms of working with us on our harmonies, which are not one of our strong suits. He had these really high vocals that sounded great. In fact, Wacko did a little bit of singing on the last album.

DB- Speaking of which, how would you respond to critics who appreciate your instrumental skills but find your vocals off-putting.

AM- It’s not the focal point of what we do. If somebody is going to walk out of a show saying, “Wow they’re cool but I couldn’t really take the vocals,” then they really didn’t get it because it’s not about listening to the harmonies. The lyrics to most of our tunes are extraordinary in my opinion. The harmonies are there and we may not hit them all the time but we sing our hearts out because a lot of these songs have a story to tell and the story just can’t be told just through music, we need these lyrics. That’s our shindig.

DB- Somewhat along these lines, what do you feel is the biggest misconception that people have about the band and your music?

AM- I think the biggest misconception is that we’re a huge party band and it’s all about having fun in the name of the party. Instead, it’s really all about opening up your ears to different elements. We’re taking elements from different areas of our lives that we’re exposed to- trance, techno, dub and all sorts of electronic music but the results don’t sound like anything else that’s going on out there. It a combination of life reflecting art and art reflecting life.

DB- In terms of opening up ears, talk about the inverted versions of your songs. How did those come about and to what extent do you sketch them out before a given show?

AM- We think about it beforehand because it gives us a very light outline of where we want to go with a particular set. For us it has less to do with the song than the set or a show as a whole.

Anyhow, this all came about because we had songs we loved to play and everyone loved to listen to with a number of jams written in. This is not to say the jams were written but that they would take us from one place to another and all of us knew where it was going to come out, at the end of the tune. The new approach gave us a bunch of different angles while still moving from song to song. So if we have to go from the key of G in a 4/4 tempo to the key of E-flat in a ¾ tempo that’s a pretty hard maneuver , something we have to be patient with and something we haven’t explored. It keeps us on our toes where we don’t necessarily know how we’re going to go to the next point. It keeps everyone listening really closely to the others to see if someone’s going to lead you in a direction or play off you in a direction. Everybody has an idea in the back of their head about how they’re going to do it but they aren’t really forcing it upon anybody else.

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