Pretty Lights has definitely crossed over into the mainstream electronic world in the past two years. Pretty Lights drummer Adam Deitch recently sat in with you at Brooklyn Bowl. In certain ways, his evolution from funk music to hip hop and electronica is similar to your personal growth?
D: He just joined Pretty Lights. But even before that he’s been doing, he’s definitely a mentor of ours and it’s great to see him like doing that kind of thing too.
In advance of your winter tour you also released a series of remixes. Can you talk about some of the producers who worked on those songs?
D: Yeah, we got a new remix coming out at the end of January to support our tour. Wiz Khalifa remixed “Black and Yellow,” a new hot track we have. We’re going to release that. We’ll remix and then do the big tour. We got another EP coming out probably late spring/early summer. We’re working on that stuff already. And then a huge spring tour, spring/winter tour.
Would you say the EP would be a continuation of the style of A Place Behind the Moon or a conscious departure from your current sound?
D: You know, there’s so many styles within electronic music—there’s the wobble dubstep sound—the Pretty Lights type of stuff—and so many different types of music—I’m really trying to take a lot of these things and throw them all in the pot and then, with our instruments mixed in, really create a new genre within that genre. Everyone says things like, “dubstep means it has a wobble bass and electronic means this or that.” But I don’t want to have borders with electronic music. I just want to put it all out there in this one thing and create something new. That’s really the goal that we’re shooting for: a new sound that is something within the genre.
One of your best known covers is a remix of Aloe Blacc’s “I Need a Dollar,” a song better known as the theme from How to Make it in America. You even gave it away as a free download. What is the story behind that particular remix?
J: Our manager and I were watching that show every week—we were both obsessed with it. He’d wake up every morning and listen to that tune. And then he came and to Dom and said, “You should do a remix of the tune. It will pop off. Everybody will love it.” It is just a great track. It sounds like was made 20 or 30 years ago and it sounds like there’s samples in it already. It’s got all the old school funk flavor in it but it was just made a couple years ago.
D: Yeah, he said to me, “Man, I wake up, I go into the office every day and I turn on this song and the office is getting down. You should remix it.” We gave it a shot.
Dom, with Big Gigantic taking off, do you still find time to play with The Motet?
D: Not so much anymore—here and there, a little bit. As this thing’s taken off I’ve been trying to put all my energy into it. But those guys are some of my best friends and totally supporting and love me and vice versa. We do it when we can. It is kind of like a collective like Antibalas
Though you both grew out of the jamband scene and play jamband festivals, a good portion of your audience is more rooted in the electronic world. What percentage of your audience would you say comes from the improvisational world?
J: It’s pretty interesting because some of these kids got into jam music from their older brothers and sisters and stuff like that, but a lot of them don’t know anything about String Cheese, Phish and The Dead. But they instinctively are somehow connected to that music. It they grew up 10 years ago they would love it. It’s because of where things have gone in the scene. I don’t want to say we’re carrying a torch or anything like that but we’re trying to keep some of that spirit in our music. The music keeps evolving, and we want to keep those aspects that we loved of that kind of music around—I think that’s what kids pick up on. They love DJ music but they also love that we’re up there interacting with each other and you don’t know what’s going to come of it.
D: I think it’s the reverse thing too. A lot of kids at our shows just listen to pop on the radio and then they heard about Pretty Lights and then they heard about us. But we’re a jamband so it is kind of like a reverse coming into the scene.
It’s like, so we’re here, and a lot of these kids they just listen to like pop radio and then they heard about Pretty Lights and then they heard about us and they’re like oh but they’re a jamband. It’s like a reverse coming into the scene.
The festival scene’s changing too. The [previously electronic-centric] Winter Music Conference down in Miami has all these bands from our world and Coachella is expanding. Bonnaroo’s always been a staple but, still, they’re getting those pop acts or there’s more indie acts but it’s cool because everyone’s doing the festival thing. Everyone’s catching on.
You have quickly jumped from playing after show parties to marquee venues. Has it been challenging to translate your sound to these bigger stages?
D: We are really stepping up the production side of things—this spring tour is the first time we have a real production so we’re going to do it up right and have something different and cool. You know, everyone’s got the LED walls so we’re like, “We don’t need that shit.” So we are hoping to create a vibe with our lights and stage setup.
J: We’re trying to have big summer. We’re going to have a big spring and that’s really coming up soon and then we’re going to be out and about this summer—hard. Just trying to hit all the festivals and party. We did a lot of festivals this past summer—we played Camp Bisco. We thought our set was gonna get rained out and, miraculously, the storm cleared like right before and all these people came out of nowhere. That was cool. We did a big Summer Camp show and Wakarusa.
D: Yeah, when we started rehearsing we always said, “Who cares what people think. Let’s do this and just have fun.” That’s it. Done.
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