In the past two years, Boulder, CO livetronica duo Big Gigantic has jumped from playing STS9 after-shows to packing marquee venues like New York’s Bowery Ballroom and Boulder’s Fox Theatre. The group, which is comprised of onetime Motet member Dominic Lalli (Production/Sax) along with Jeremy Salken (Drums), Big Gigantic is one of a handful of groups that walks the line between the jamband and rave crowds thanks to a series of carefully produced beats and a knack for old school organic improvisation. In January, Jambands.com spoke with Lalli and Salken about their new recording A Place Behind the Moon, the rise of the Boulder electronic music scene and why Big Gigantic is really Michael Travis’ “fault.”
Let’s start with some background information on how Big Gigantic first came together in 2008. Dominic, some readers may be familiar with your work in The Motet but when did you and Jeremy first start playing together as Big Gigantic?
D: The first time we actually played together was on Jam Cruise a few years ago. We were also roommates for a while and, after the fact, I started making electronic music. I was playing some electronic music with Dave and Garrett from The Motet but I wanted to get a whole new thing together. Jeremy was this killin’ drummer around town, and we’d play a bunch of funk gigs around Boulder. He was the perfect guy for the job because he didn’t have a fulltime band. We just started rehearsing and got our first gig with Rootz vs. Murph at Trilogy in Boulder over two years ago.
J: Yeah, I was doing merch. for The Motet and I was Dave Watts’ drum tech-ish—basically just following The Motet around. They also played in Kyle Hollingsworth’s band and I came on Jam Cruise with them. That was the first time Dom and I actually played together—in the Jam Room with Kyle Hollingsworth. It is all [String Cheese drummer Michael] Travis’ fault, really. Michael Travis didn’t want to switch the drum kit around in the Jam Room so he said to me, “You should just go and sit in.” I was like, “I get to play with Kyle Hollingsworth?” It felt like the coolest thing ever. And then Dom and I started a band. Now I get to play with Dom all the time [laughter].
Big Gigantic’s live approach falls somewhere between a DJ and a livetronica band. How much of the band’s show is pre-recorded?
D: It’s basically a mix between a straight DJ setup and an electronic band. I have a DJ setup where between tunes I can play a little bit and then we can seamlessly jump into a jam and we are a jamband. Then we can jump into a remix of some a cappella track and then back to another jam with some saxophone or keyboard solos. Jeremy really helps the ebb and flow and helps move everything along.
The last six months we’ve been touring a ton—we put the album out, A Place Behind the Moon, and we did a bunch of shows or after shows with Sound Tribe this summer. Then we sort of put the album out in the fall. And then we’ve just been touring pretty much all over since then.
In terms of the studio sessions that yielded A Place Behind the Moon, given that, as you just said, you are halfway between a DJ and an improvisational band, how do you capture the live/jamband feel of your sound in the studio?
D: It’s just captured in the production. I do a lot of the production work myself so I really try to capture the blend of that DJ type music with our live sound. I feel super lucky because we’re just different. So many people just DJ but we are also band.
Though Big Gigantic is touring nationally, you grew out of the Boulder, CO electronic music scene. Boulder and Denver have really emerged in the past five years as the hub of the livetronica circuit. When would you say that scene really started to take shape?
J: You know, that whole thing started coming in when Michael Travis and Jamie Janover were doing Zilla back then—all these little, little side groups started forming and people started going for this jungle or house sound. DJs started coming in and becoming a big thing and then I think musicians were like, “Let’s do this too but let’s add what we do—the acoustic instrument aspect to it.” That’s what we’re trying to do—kind of make it a blend of the two worlds.
D: It is crazy if you look at someone like Pretty Lights, who started out in that Colorado scene and just blew up. Some of it comes from U.K. when dubstep got big and everybody started latching onto that—Pretty Lights started playing in our buddy’s place in Four Mile Canyon. My buddy used to have this canyon house, and he’d have these house parties. It was three years ago—Pnuma Trio and the Motet played a New Year’s show in Fort Collins, and he played a late night show at the bowling alley and then, six months later, he was selling out every room. In Colorado there’s a huge audience for that type of music—everyone’s on that train and loves DJs. You can go out and hear that type of music every night.
J: A lot of it is after-shows. That whole circuit started, and I think that spawned it. Sound Tribe did a five night run in Boulder in 2007 and there were after shows every night. That was the first time I remember that vibe and that became a staple in a lot of band’s touring schedule. That’s how we got a lot of fans—playing a show after Tribe. All these kids that were already pumped would come and dance ‘till 3-6 in the morning. That got the scene going.
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.
