Will these be Disco Biscuits songs with new rap sections or entirely new compositions?
They’re all new songs. We do have some remixes from Planet Anthem as well: there’s a “Concrete” remix with Curren$y on it that hasn’t been released yet. And there’s a “Fish Out of Water” remix as well. Ski did a “You & I” remix which is getting released with a video which is just incredible, and he also did a “Sweat Box” remix. But for the [album] we were talking about, it is going to be all original. We are calling it Disco Blue. It may take us 3 more years to get out because it’s that slow.
We have a ton of projects right now. Conspirator is recording an album and the Disco Biscuits did an album that is finished. We started working on it in November and mastered it two days ago. Aron and Chris Michetti and myself are all in the middle of making a Conspirator album right now, so over the last two years we’ve made this remix album, we’ve made the Biscuits album, we made McKenzie’s album, we’re making a Conspirator album and we’re working on Disco Blue. It you balance that with getting out on the road and touring for 4 weeks, it’s just everything goes on the back burner.
For us, when we’re on tour with Conspirator, we can continue to work on the Conspirator album. When we go out on tour in January the studio stuff just grinds to a halt, although now I’ve been carrying the studio with me everywhere I go. I’m at the beach now with my family for the next 4 weeks—outside of Camp Bisco—and I’ve got a little studio set up on the first floor of the house. When everybody goes to sleep at night I just get in the studio. Right now I’m working on a Conspirator remix that’s a 12th Planet song. 12th Planet is a dub-step artist who’s playing at Camp Bisco this summer. That’s what I’m working on today. I’m sitting here, I kinda have a headache.
Sounds like tough living, working on the beach!
Yeah, it’s a hard life. Taking in the sun and listening to dub-step—that can cure the headache. Sitting on the couch here, nursing a headache, trying to come up with some dub-step bass lines for this remix.
Let’s talk for a second about the new Disco Biscuits album. That album is made up almost entirely of older songs you’ve played on the road, correct?
Yeah. We went in and made an album of all songs that are done. Most of them are newer songs written in the past two years, like “Feeling Twisted” and “Portal to An Empty Head.” There’s one song that was written in 2002 on there. There are songs that are older—I know people know “Great Abyss” is on there, which is like more of a 2005 song. We are trying to have fun in the studio. It wasn’t the Planet Anthem style of piecemeal producing tracks. This time around, we’d go in, play the song 7 times, take the best version and Benji Vaughan from Younger Brother did some post-production work. It was definitely exciting to come in and bang out a Biscuits album, and the artwork is incredible.
I don’t know why, but my whole thing is to not hype this album. We would over-hype things in the past, and I think that this time, the music just speaks for itself.
How was that studio process different than the Conspirator process?
The Conspirator album is all new material, much more current electronic music. We’re working with sounds that have been popularized in the last 3 years by artists like Deadmau5, Wolfgang Gartner and Skrillex. That’s the vibe that the album is taking on. It has a little bit of dub-step, but is mostly electro music—mostly 128 beats per minute. It has wobble in it which is and idea that has been popularized a little by Deadmau5, who’s the most popular of all electronic musicians in the world right now and you know, we’re fans. We’ve become fans of that kind of music after years and years of not liking that kind of music. I enjoyed Rusko a lot when he played like Bisco Inferno and we had a good time hanging out. It’s like, first there were jambands, and then there were jambands that played electronic music, then there were electronic musicians that appealed to jambands and then there were bands who played like electronic musicians but more in the jamband realm.
Bassnectar, Pretty Lights. There’s the next evolution—bands playing precise electronic music, which is what Conspirator is becoming. It is more precise than jammy.
Were you moving in this new direction before Michetti joined the band or is this his influence?
Clearly Michetti. I wasn’t really into that kind of music and then Michetti kind of showed me the brighter side of how great Deadmau5 is. We were on a tour together for like 4 months, listening to music, creating music, making music. It was really inclusive, so it was less about what we were listening to and just about techniques that he gained from listening to these musicians that he’s taught me in the studio. He’s teaching me a lot about producing in the studio, I’m teaching him a lot about restraint in the live setting—how to get up on stage and not wail on your guitar the entire time. He’s a virtuosic guitar player. He’s just such a big part of this new Conspirator sound, and we are moving in a different direction really quickly.
Sometime people will say something like, “play the old Conspirator’s style.” They will send me an email or post on Facebook. But if you want the old Conspirator style you need a time machine because we’re not looking back. The new Conspirator is where it’s at—this is the hotness, it’s so much better. It might take some of the fans, with their expectations, time to catch up in terms of where it’s at, but the future is now. It’s exciting because there are so many things that I’ve learned in the last year, so many techniques that I needed to know in order to be producing legit electronic music.
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