Once the improvisational is documented—whether it’s for professional release or just for your own archives—and it has a name and an identity, do you ever try to return to those themes?
Not really. I mean, if anything in the theme world, certain sounds that Travis might come up with on the keyboard happen almost by themselves. By the time he goes through all the different accompaniment parts it really turns into a different song. So, we might have a couple of times a night where there’s sort of a Middle Eastern sounding section or a couple of times that are kind of a reggae sounding section. But, you know, it’s pretty hard to pick out some similar themes and recreate them and since we don’t practice any of that stuff it can’t help but be different, you know? And we’ve had some people ask us to do some songs off the records, and we probably couldn’t do it even if we tried.
Finding that right sound and all the different individual parts all of a sudden sounds like so much work to re-learn all that stuff. Almost like in that sense it would be fun to have a backing track and not think about it at this point. But, you know, our thing is just doing everything live and in front of people.
One thing that you’ve done live and in front of people is, kind of, you were a drummer for many years and I know Travis played guitar but now he plays keyboards and a lot of different effects that were new to him when the band when the band first started. As he’s kind of, discovered new, um, maybe just become more comfortable on his instrument to be found that it shifted the band’s sound in one way or another?
Sure, yeah, absolutely. Especially with that keyboard thing and especially when we started playing dubstep there was a renewed interest in, like, “how the hell do you get that sound, and him trying to be like a scientist and figure it out. Both of us really were tweaking synths and seeing what’s going on. But he would really dive in and get a really nice sound system set up so he could, you know, really go from what he’s hearing on the records. It’s like a whole other art form with sound design and stuff. There are guys in the movies that just do sound design a lot because it’s a bitch. It’s a bitch to dig into, manipulate and stuff.
When did you guys first discover dubstep? I know it’s such a huge cultural thing at this point, even like Britney Spears has a dubstep remix now.
We can pinpoint it to an exact moment. In 2008, we did this festival called Shambhala and there was a DJ named Skream who was playing there. And Skream and Benga are kind of like the originators of dubstep. But when dubstep was around in the early 2000s it was very mellow. Like if you were at a rave and you went to the dubstep tent it’s all couches and people like…
People lying down…
Yeah, all super blissed out and getting a warm massage by the bass things. But Skream kind of graduated it into this aggressive sound. And when that aggressive sound hit it’s kind of like the same thing that happened to the drum and bass, all of sudden everyone’s just trying to be gnarly and dig in. It’s had its evolutions…
But anyways, in 2008 we saw him do this one drop that just leveled the place—3,000 people up on this stage called the Village, which is one of the best sound systems on the planet. And it hit so hard me and Travis weren’t in the same place but we were at it at the same time and we both remember that exact one, like “Did you see? What was that?”
And after that show—it just so happened that before Shambhala I downloaded this dubstep mix by this guy SPL out of Portland—he just instantly became one our biggest influences because it was like two and half hours of just such a great set. We listened to that thing over and over and over between Shambhala and our next gig which was like Whitefish, Montana. So we were like, well, let’s try it on the next gig and see what happens. And we kind of didn’t have it together, but it felt so different when we hit that first drop because in the States they hadn’t heard any of that. Bassnectar was bass orientated but it wasn’t gnarly wobbles and stuff like that. So it was pretty cool to see it in Canada. We both thought, “it’s really going to do something in the States or why hasn’t it come to the States like that.”
It was the calm before the storm…
Yeah, so that was very impactful. At least to be like, let’s do it even if nobody else is…and there’s almost still no live bands doing dubstep. We kind of pride ourselves on feeling like we sort of, I don’t want to say discovered it, but dove into it early and were able to perform it live. It’s been a fun journey.
And the next year at Shambhala we saw Excision and he did a kind of legendary set out there, too, where it was just like the best of thing the whole weekend. Bassnectar is king out there and this dude just destroyed everything. It kind of just ruined the weekend for everyone because it was kind of like nothing quite got to that level again [Laughter.]. So we felt like that was more reaffirmation that it was going to be a good journey for us.
It is funny, the first time I think I actually heard of Bassnectar was when he was on Jam Cruise with Michael Kang in 2004 or 2005.
2005, yeah! That was my first Jam Cruise. And it was billed as Kang with Bassnectar—Kan was kind of the draw. I was on the boat with Kyle Hollingsworth, playing in his band.
Right, I was like who is this other guy and how did they, you know, get together?
Yeah, exactly. And what a unique sound! Because that shit was only on the playa at Burning Man and West Coast.
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