Since its conception a mere two years ago, Big Gigantic (composed of producer/saxophonist Dominic Lalli and drummer Jeremy Salken) has blazed to the forefront of the jamtronica scene with their thick, vibrant tunes that cleverly combine the bounce and energy of electronic music with a jazz and hip-hop soul.
And as Big Gigantic has swept the nation with their silky smooth live show and masterfully produced studio albums, they have patented an intelligent fusion of sound that’s won the hearts of dance floors across the country.
And with the hype generated from their new album, A Place Behind the Moon, their popular remix of Chiddy Bang’s track “Opposite of Adults (Kids),” and a monstrous touring schedule this fall/winter season, it is safe to say that the project has come to be a big, gigantic success.
And with that idea in mind, I had the opportunity to speak with Dominic Lalli about their successful fall tour, the forward progress of their most recent album, and their unique business model that makes sure their beats have the best chance of finding their way into your ears.
I understand you’ve been having an exciting fall tour. What’s made this one stand out?
This fall tour is so special because we are getting to go back to a lot of towns we visited last spring. Getting to see a lot of old friends and having some great turnouts. It’s also been great being on tour with our friends Alex B and Ana Sia.
Did you do anything extra special for the Howl-O-Ween performance in Fayetteville, Arkansas?
We were Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World. We came out to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and then during the show we did a little “Thriller” remix, and it was fun, it was a good party for sure…It was rockin’ in there.
I know you’ve been touring heavily being your most recent studio effort, A Place Behind the Moon. What kind of overall aesthetic were you trying to achieve with the album?
We’re excited about it because the album is sort of like bookends. It’s kind of you know front to back, a musical story that goes from the beginning to the end. So that was the first time we’d ever done something like that on one of our recordings, and that was sort of the approach. It didn’t really start that way per se, but then when I started lining everything up and putting songs together and song titles together and stuff it all…a lot of stuff sort of made sense.
And with the titles…with the main title A Place Behind the Moon, it’s sort of like all the tracks leading up to it, it’s like a little musical journey, you know. From the beginning with “Looking Back,” and “Sky High,” each song sort of leads to the next place. And that was really interesting for us to delve into that style in terms of making the album. And we were lucky enough to get the guys from STS9 on board, and they’re on the last track “A Place Behind the Moon,” and that ends the album in a sort of peaceful and different kind of way than the rest of the album. So you know, it was cool to do something a little bit different than just throw a bunch of bangers on an album; we really wanted to have something that you could listen to from beginning to end, and that…sort of completes itself.
What were you trying to achieve with the album’s ethereal opening tune, “Looking Back,” a radical departure from the ‘bangers’ you mentioned earlier.
Well I really wanted to get some sort of interlude thing going, because you know, we’re into all kinds of different music and we love all sorts of different things, and make all kinds of different music and that all really influences us in so many different ways. So I wanted to really delve into that interlude sort of thing, and I ended up making that, and it’s sort of…it’s a very reflective kind of song. So “Looking Back” is sort of like as if you were taking off to go to the place behind the moon, and you were looking back, sort of reflecting on everything that’s happened to you before that essentially.
What, in your mind, is the ‘place behind the moon?’
Well with this album and the way the music flows, my interpretation is that the place behind the moon is that sort of peaceful place. If you listen to the last track “A Place Behind the Moon,” you know it’s just sort of relaxed and nice…very happy kind of tune. It’s kind of that place you get to when your done accomplishing something or it’s the like the end of the road of a long traveled journey. Something like that.
What are your thoughts on the forward progress Big Gigantic has made with this album?
Well I think one of the main things is that our sound has really started to come together. I feel like if you hear one of our tracks, you’re like ‘Oh, that’s definitely Big G,’ and obviously because of the saxophone but for other elements too, just like compositionally. We’re doing the electronic thing, and when we’re playing live it’s like a little more DJ based but you know, it’s like somewhere in between. It’s a little more like a song, but it’s kind of like a DJ track, so we’re hitting it somewhere in the middle. And I think that’s the thing…we’re starting to really develop our sound more, and that’s one of the more exciting things about it is that we’re really coming into our own in terms of our sound. And being able to put together an album like that is another step, like you’re saying, another step for us.
Tell me about how you attacked the recording of the album.
Well I write mostly everything, so it’s mostly me, and Jeremy joins us in the live thing. And he obviously has input for sure but I do a lot of the writing. I enjoy it, I write music every day, and I’m writing stuff for Big G all the time. So I don’t know, the way I approach the whole Big G thing in general is I’m constantly trying to learn something new every day, you know, in terms of writing or in terms of producing and stuff like that, and the sounds I’m making and all that stuff. So I’m trying to learn different techniques, and then I try to incorporate them into a song, and kind of go at it like that. So I’m trying to learn but at the same time I’m trying to write songs that really have elements of…where you’d go see a DJ, and there’s a buildup and a drop that hits really hard, you know I’m trying to develop things like that in our tunes but still have more of the elements of melody. You know there’s a lot more melody in my tunes than some other electronic stuff that’s going on.
So when I’m in there writing in the process of making the album, I didn’t go “Here’s ‘A Place Behind the Moon,’ this is the title and now I’m gonna write all the tracks to make it,” you know, it just sort of fell into its own in that way. But it’s kind of a process…writing to grow as a band. It’s different every time. A lot of the time I really start with a beat mostly, start with the drums and work with a beat and get a groove goin’ that I really like. And then I go in and sometimes I’ll do some sax stuff, try to write the line, or sometimes do some bass or I’ll just like get the Rhodes out and just like go through some chord changes and stuff that I like and then start developing.
I try to really get what I’m hearing in my head and see how can I get this out of my head out here to my ears and make it sound right. So maybe I’ll be hearing an arc and I’ll try to go in and make the arc, and then the melody line, and then piece everything together from there.
Give me a case study, if you will. Take a tune like “Limelight” and detail the creative process that brings that tune out of your head and into workable form.
Let’s see, what did I do with that. With “Limelight” there’s kind of like this funky clav. So I start with the drums and then there’s kind of like this funky clav in there that I started working with. And then I think I went to the bassline you know, and then I went to just the regular keyboard.
Usually when I have a big groove like that setup, I’ll have like, pretty much everything in there but a melody, and it’ll just be looping. And it’ll be hours just like doing either the melody on my horn, just goin’ through ‘til I find something that really latches on to me. Or I’ll just sit there and play the keyboards, and play a lead synth part ‘til I find something that really hits home with me. I’ll have like 5 or 6 different melodies. I’ll be like “Okay, I like this one, I kind of like this one…” but usually I know the one that’s right when I really love it. And that’s what I like to do with the melodies too, when it’s very sing-able, you know when you’re leaving the club still singing melodies. So those simpler melodies and things like that are something you wanna have so people can really latch onto something.
Can you describe Alex B’s role in the making of the album?
Alex also did Wide Awake. He mixed and mastered Wide Awake and did the same thing with this release. He taught me everything, so much stuff about just producing in general. And he’s just got great tools, he’s got a great ear, he’s got great everything to really mix stuff. And I love the way that a lot of his stuff is mixed and mastered, so you know I really essentially just gave all the tracks to him and he just went in and mixed it how he heard it, and then mastered it. And mastering really just puts that shine on it, makes it sound like a real record. So I pretty much mixed everything how I heard it, and then I played everything for him, and then he got a hold of it, mixed it down, just really cleaned it up, and then mastered it, and we’re just really excited about the way that it sounds, and he did a great job on it. He’s the man, you know we do a lot of different stuff together. We just got off a little bit of touring with him, and so we’re super stoked about the way he made the album sound. It’s always great to work with him.
Where did you physically record?
At my house. I have a studio there, I work out of there, I can record there, and pretty much do whatever I need to get done.
Your remix of Chiddy Bang’s “Opposite of Adults (Kids)” has also been getting a lot of attention recently. How did that opportunity come about, and how has that opened doors for you as musician?
Well what happened is we have some friends who just started this project called ‘Mansions on the Moon,’ and essentially it’s kind of like an electro-pop kind of thing. Actually a couple guys from The Pnuma Trio started this thing, and they put together a mixtape that was presented by Diplo. Diplo did a remix and Deadmau5 did a remix and this guy Xaphoon whose Chiddy Bang’s like producer’s drummer, and us, and a few other people. So we all got together on this remix album and they heard our stuff, and then they met our manager and blah, blah, blah. So anyways they were like, “You should do a remix of our ‘Opposite of Adults (Kids)’ tune,” and they gave me the stems and I just gave it a shot, and they really liked it.
I was extremely excited because I really love that tune and I really like Chiddy and all the beats and stuff that they’re doing. I think that stuff is really fresh. So I was stoked. You know I just kind of tried to put my thing on it and do what we do in Big G. And I just kind of changed up the verse a little differently to make it a little more like a hip-hop track and kind of threw in the chorus kind of thing that we do a lot with Big G.
And fortunately they liked it and you know our manager asked for a quote for the remix and he (Xaphoon Jones) was like ‘Big Gigantic just got your girlfriend pregnant.’ We used the track on Hypetrack and it’s been getting a great response. We have a ton of downloads and it’s definitely getting the same kind of attention that our “I Need a Dollar” remix has and so that’s good. We’re always trying to do more stuff with more hip-hop artists because we’re an instrumental band, it’s like we can do a lot of different stuff you know.
I also think it’s interesting that in an era where many artists are so cautious about leaking new material, you’ve adopted such a free and open form of distribution. For example, at the Thumpty show in Ithaca last year, you played most of the tunes from the new album and allowed that recording to be openly released 9 months before A Place Behind the Moon dropped. Could you elaborate on this type of business model that you’ve adopted for Big Gigantic?
Right around a year before that show, Radiohead had just started to do the free thing and then Derek from Pretty Lights did the free thing and that was really successful. So much music is being traded back and forth right now, and we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn’t do it. And just because it can get around so freely, my main objective, what’s important to me, is I want people to hear it and I want people to come see us live. So I’ve just been like, “Let’s just give it away, get people excited about it, and ask questions later.” And I think what we did on this last one, it’s really interesting because in the world of “we want to get on Pandora,” or whatever, we want our music on Pandora, people ask us all the time, but it’s like you have to officially sell your music through Amazon to be able to do it, it’s so tricky, there’s so many loopholes and things like that.
So what we’re trying to do, we’re still working on this whole model, but you know I still 100% want to give everything away, but what we did for A Place Behind the Moon, is it’s available anywhere. You can get it any way you want. You can pay for it, you can not pay for it, you can do anything you want with it, but that’s my new thing I think is I want to really make it available in every venue through iTunes, through Amazon, you know, if you really wanna buy it, go on there and buy it. Or you can buy it from our site. Because it’s all about accessibility, it needs to be easy, whatever it is, simple. You know, ‘cause when I’m buying music, I just wanna go boom, click twice, and have it come as opposed to “Sign up, do this, you gotta do that.” So we just want to have it everywhere. I know there’s a bunch of kids that can’t afford it, and I want them to have it, so go get it for free. And if you want to donate a dollar, donate a dollar, or whatever. Most importantly we just want everybody to have it, and then come see us live because that’s where you can really see us in our element and we’re having a great time playing together.
I think another contributing factor to the freshness of your live show is the musical sophistication the goes into melding the live drums, sax, and keys with the electronic elements. Can you take a tune like “Sky High,” and detail all the different things that go into the live execution of that tune?
Well what I like to do live is I like to work in different tunes and transition different things, so we’ll be transitioning from something and then we’ll come into that first hit…It depends, I’ll look at Jeremy, and we’ll start the tune, I’m playing my part, Jeremy’s doing his thing, and then I have a bunch of effects set up on my midi controller that can do different DJ style things, so I’ll do some stuff like that while I’m playing my sax or when I’m playing keyboards.
And then it breaks down and we get into the open section, and I start soloing a little bit, and that’s when I usually sort of turn to Jerm and really we just start trying to react back and forth off each other, and really just take the music where it couldn’t be taken DJ-wise. And really transcend the tune and build it and get it really cookin’ at the solo. So then we’re building, and building and building and building and then pretty much the cue out is that ‘be-de-de-de-de-de-de bomp’ (the song’s opening melody). So once I start soloing we know that we can do all kinds of different stuff, like I can drop out the bass and then we can build it a little more and then come back in and build it a little more, but we know we’re building to that line, the big ‘be-de-de-de-de-de-de bomp,’ and then we end the tune, and that’s kind of the breakdown.
It’s impressive how you’ve infused so much improvisation and spontaneity into a largely electronic-based project. How much variation goes into your sets from show to show?
You know, man, it’s crazy. Me and Jeremy just have a really good understanding about phrasing and flow and I have a couple little hand things that I do that he knows. And we’ve just been getting pretty good. We’re playing a lot of stuff from A Place Behind the Moon right now stuff but what I’ll do is switch up how we move in and out of that stuff. So I pretty much look at Jeremy, and we play through stuff and talk through stuff at sound check and then I just…give him that look, and…he knows (laughs). I’m so glad he’s my drummer.
During our last interview two summer’s ago, Big Gigantic was being featured as one of Relix’s On the Verge artists. I think it’s safe to say that since then you’ve crossed the threshold into broader success, and I wanted to know what’s contributed to your growth in those short few years and how you plan on continuing to develop in the future?
Well, our success is based on a lot of things. Obviously the fans have been incredible and super supportive and everyone’s really just tried to get our back and help us out and that’s been amazing. We have a really great team, and you know my main thing is I just try to work… endlessly. And I feel like everything I put in, I get back. If I’m not putting anything in, I’m not getting anything back so my motto is really just working super hard.
And really just trying to keep it honest and nice and loving, just the whole vibe in general. And obviously luck too. It’s luck and timing, and we’re just super fortunate for being on this end of it, being able to tour. Touring has obviously helped a lot because we get to keep coming back to places, and getting new fans. And playing festivals has helped a ton, that always is huge. So I’m just flying by the seat of my pants and trying to work as hard as I possibly can and I hope that everything keeps it up so that when we get to the gig it’s fresh, and new, and exciting for everybody.
And as far as the future, we’re just going to keep up what we’ve been doing. We’re going to try to step up our production and get our live show to where you really feel transported to another place. And we’re going to really start hittin’ that pretty hard, and then in terms of the music, just keep developing our sound more and try to get into some things that really haven’t been touched on yet that’s really going to be new and exciting for people.
