Conceptual Electronica: The Epic Cinemascapes, Bold Theatrics and All-or-Nothing Approach of The Glitch Mob

–Written by Kevin Madert & Michael Hogan, with contributions from Jay Bartell

With a perfect blend of hard-hitting bass, cinematic splendor, and traditional rock edge, The Glitch Mob is one of the most unique acts to emerge from the United States’ recent explosion of electronica. The Los Angeles-based trio – formed in 2006 and currently comprised of producers/multi-instrumentalists Boreta, Ooah and edIT – are on tour now in support of their sophomore album Love Death Immortality, and they’ll be making a stop at Washington, D.C.’s Echostage on Sunday, November 2nd. We recently had the chance to sit down with Boreta and discuss everything from the process of penning a second album to the group’s mutual love of Quentin Tarantino.

–Interview conducted by Shiloh Heimann & transcribed by Kevin Madert

Alternate Frequency: A little less than four years passed between the release of Drink The Sea and the release of Love Death Immortality. How long after your debut did things start coming together for a follow-up?

The Glitch Mob: After we wrote Drink The Sea and released it, we toured all over the world for a long time. The album came out in 2010 and we spent nearly two years on the road supporting it, so it wasn’t until 2012 that we went back into the studio and really started putting the pieces together for the next album – which ended up being a two year process from top to bottom.

AF: And is there anything that transpired in your lives – musically or personally – that informed the creative process for Love Death Immortality?

GM: So before we wrote Drink The Sea we were actually writing more dancefloor banger type songs – in our own way, like heavy hip-hop tracks like “West Coast Rocks” and an album of all our original stuff – and then we decided to go off and make a more emotional, experimental album. And that’s how we ended up writing DTS: we decided to take a left turn and do something that was really risky for us. And then when we came back around with Love Death Immortality we wanted to take everything that we’d gathered from DTS – the storytelling, emotional and cinematic aspects – and craft this crazy live show to go with it.

AF: Is there any particular track on Love Death Immortality that most accurately represents the transition between the band you were four years ago and the band you are now?

GM: We chose the first track “Can’t Kill Us” as the lead single because we felt it was a good bridge between the two worlds. It still has the weird, dark, psychedelic, Jim Morrison-desert thing going on that DTS had, but it also brings in the more honed impact of the new music.

AF: You guys are a glitch act, but you’re also very much a rock group. Do you consider yourself more of one or the other or a healthy mix of the two?

GM: We don’t really consider ourselves to be in any particular category. Some people call us a band just by nature of the fact that we’re multiple people, but when we normally play live on stage we don’t actually utilize physical instruments. We’re kind of between a rock band, a DJ, an act…put it all in a blender and we’re whatever comes out.

AF: We actually caught your last show in DC earlier this year, and really loved how unique your live set was and how much you actually interacted with the music as part of the performance. Can you tell us a little bit about your set-up, like how you incorporate the MIDI pads and drum triggers into the set-up, and how you delegate certain roles to certain people? Does one of you handle more drum samples while another plays the melodies? Or is it all a group effort?

GM: The live aspect (of The Glitch Mob) is something that’s really a huge part of our DNA. This time around, the whole set-up is called “The Blade.” In the past we’ve done everything ourselves – from the programming to the stage design to the lighting. On the tour just before this one we got to work with a guy named Martin Phillips, who’s been amazing in helping us craft this second phase of our live creative process. We still have our hand in everything, and it’s a very deep process; from the audio to the visual content and the stage design, we’ve had creative input into everything. When it comes to actually playing it’s definitely a group effort, even though there are certain things multiple people can’t do at once. For instance, we methodically chop up every single sample and stick them along with all our albums into Ableton, into our system. And that’s an incredibly meticulous process that only one person can do at a time. So we rotate around; sometimes one of us will be focused on audio while the other two can go and work on visual content and stage design.

AF: So you mentioned that the last tour had you traveling a lot, and for a while between albums you were playing shows primarily out on the West Coast. Now that you’re back on the East Coast, do you notice a difference in the crowds?

GM: It always changes on a nightly basis, and because this music has been out for a while it’s going to be an entirely different experience compared to our earlier summer tour. It’ll be fun to see how the crowds will be totally different, what with school back in session and our fans in different places than they were a few months ago. The songs that certain crowds like are hard to predict because of how totally different it is. It’s really hard to quantify East Coast vs. West Coast, but I can definitely say there’s a difference between big cities and little cities. A lot of times the smaller town shows are crazier, more unhinged, because not a lot of tours come through there all the time; that’s one difference I definitely notice.

AF: How about internationally? What’s the difference between crowds here and the crowds in Europe or Australia?

GM: You know, European crowds are actually quite different from American crowds, especially when you’re in Eastern Europe. There are very few acts that actually make it over there, and because of that they’re incredibly enthusiastic and tapped into the music. They sing the melodies as if they were the lyrics to a song – something that doesn’t really happen in America – and everyone is screaming them because they’re so into it. And that’s not to say American crowds aren’t enthusiastic – because they are. It’s just a totally different experience. I think that also comes from how incredibly varied the crowds are. There’s not an “EDM culture” out there; in America there’s a bit of a separation between the “rave”/EDM culture and normal music culture, but out there people have been living with electronic music for so long it’s all sort of mashed together.

AF: Focusing on the idea of people singing the lyrics or melodies back to you, how does that affect you as an artist emotionally, as well as the show and the vibe you’re hoping to give off?

GM: For us it’s an energy thing. Playing a live show it’s all about that energy; we’re very tapped into the crowd and the more they can give to us the more we can give back to them.

AF: Your music is often highly cinematic and even orchestral – from the tight, full sound design to the intense attention to detail. Does the thought of scoring a film, or perhaps putting together a more traditional piece in the vein of Nero’s work on “Symphony 2808” with the London Philharmonic, interest you? If you could work with a director or classical composer who isn’t necessarily known for dabbling in electronica, who would they be?

GM: Yeah it’s something that’s always been interesting to us. We’ve had some discussions about it and there have been opportunities presented, although the timing unfortunately hasn’t worked out. It’s definitely something we’ll do at some point – take our music and translate it from a nightclub to a seated venue or something more acoustically driven, or even put together a film score; that’s something we’d love to do in the future. Right now, this whole thing is a big crazy operation but we hope to eventually have the time to put together something like that.

AF: If you could work with a director or classical composer who isn’t necessarily known for dabbling in electronica, who would they be?

GM: We’re really big fans of Tarantino. If we could do something in one of his movies that’d be a lot of fun; he uses a bunch of very cool music and I think that’d be a really enjoyable experience for us.

AF: In addition to being quite cinematic from an aural standpoint, the visual aspect of your music seems to be very important as well. How are you using the visual side of things – from your live show, to music videos, to your album art – to compliment or even enhance the entire musical experience?

GM: For us the visual language of what we do is a very important part of everything. Really, it’s just as important as the music. We spend a lot of time being meticulous with all the visuals, from the live aspect, to the album art, to the designs of the merch, even the typeface we use in all our media. We consider all of those things equally important pieces of the bigger puzzle. It’s just another way for people to get into the music and see things differently, and we’re acutely aware of this when we curate everything. When it comes to the live show and all the theatrics involved it’s almost like watching a movie or a live action play. It’s definitely meant to take you on a journey.

AF: In an era of electronic music where producers often seem to churn out remixes more often than originals, and while there are plenty of remixes of Glitch Mob songs, your remix catalog is much more condensed. What kind of “make the cut” criteria (if any) do you bring to bear on potential remixes?

GM: We used to do more remixes earlier on in our career, but now we’re really deep in writing our own music. We take a long time to write music – we’re very meticulous and everything is 110 percent and we never want to put in anything less – so sometimes when a potential remix comes along there can be a time-crunch aspect involved. Beyond that, for us to want to remix a song it definitely has to be something we really like, or at least something we’re really interested in or inspired by – like when Prodigy came to us and asked us to remix “Breathe.” We were in the middle of writing our album and we said “okay, do we take a month off from writing this album to do this remix?” And we were like, “Yes,” even though there was honestly very little (doing that remix) did for us – financially or otherwise. We chose to do it because Prodigy as a musical group meant so much to us and their work was an integral part of our musical upbringing. We saw it as something that was a true honor to be able to do. It was the same way with Daft Punk; we again decided to put everything on hold and work on (the “Derezzed” remix) because we’re such big fans of their work.

AF: Your music – along with that of your solo endeavors and various side projects – is released on your independent label, Glass Air; tell us a bit about what it means to you. How does label ownership and the freedom that comes with it balance with your workload and touring schedule? Have you ever considered expanding to represent non-Glitch Mob related artists? If so, what kind of acts would you like to see on your label?

GM: We run our own label because it allows us to keep sole creative control of everything we do, and we like being independent and doing everything amongst ourselves and a small group of people. We’re not releasing other artists right now because we’re putting all our energy into doing our own thing – although curating other people’s music is something we do hope to look into later down the line. We all have side projects and the people we work on them with are all close friends, so we’re keeping it to just our own stuff for now, but in the future we definitely hope to open it up.

AF: Speaking of your side projects, do you see them as a complete departure from The Glitch Mob – allowing you to explore more personal musical tastes that might not necessarily work with the group – or do you find yourselves drawing from those influences and bringing them with you when you return to the group?

GM: It goes both ways. For example I have a side project called SlideCamp that’s all downtempo & ambient experimental music. When I go off and do that it’s a very different creative process; it’s not something we perform, it’s just music meant to be listened to at home through a pair of headphones. At the same time, though, I often discover new techniques and things I’ll bring back into the Glitch Mob process. It’s a very cyclical relationship.

AF: This is the second round of shows you guys are on supporting Love Death Immortality. The first round brought you back to a lot of cities you haven’t been to in quite a long time (like Washington, D.C.). How did that tour go? In terms of production and scope, it was a pretty big undertaking. How did the additional visual aspects and the greater scale of the tour affect the overall experience of the show?

GM: The main reason why we do the whole stage construction is that it’s a way for us to perform the music; we like getting up and expending the physical energy of pushing buttons and hitting drums and all that stuff. Our music is meant to be performed in that way, and while DJs certainly play our songs out, that’s not our intention when we’re writing it. When we compose music we’re energetically and actively thinking about what it’s going to be like when we play it live, and the new stage was meant to enhance the whole experience for everyone. We definitely want to give people a show that’s crazy, something they’ve never seen before, but really it’s intended to compliment the music; it’s yet another piece of the puzzle. When we first went to Martin and sat down to design the stage we knew we wanted to build something that looks like the music sounds. This setup is the closest we’ve gotten to our true vision of what the music we make should be coming out of.

AF: You say “closest.” Have there been any tweaks that you guys have been applying as the tour has progressed to bring you guys closer to your idea of perfection?

GM: It’s actually an incredibly long process – we worked on this thing for months before we took it live – and then the second we got back from (the first round of touring) we were back in the rehearsal studio tweaking everything again. Between the audio, the visual and the physical aspects it’s like a living, breathing system. We’re constantly upgrading and changing – right now we’re calling it (version) 1.5. So yes, there’s a ton of stuff that should look and sound better on this tour than it did on the last one.

AF: So bringing something as big as “The Blade” across the country and around the globe is quite a task. Have you run into any technical difficulties at shows or has it been mostly smooth sailing throughout?

GM: We have a really amazing team of people who work with us and they’re really good at what they do, so yeah it’s been pretty smooth sailing. There have been some technical issues we’ve run into, and we trust our team to help fix them. We also have a guy on stage who’s actually there to help with live troubleshooting; it’s such a risky maneuver to play on this customized system and a constant stream of upkeep and change keeps us going. (Laughs) There’s been a lot of smaller stuff up to this point that we’ve gotten really good at playing through any potential problems – and luckily there haven’t been any big logistical issues.

AF: One of the best things about the Glitch Mob experience is your relationship with your fans. You’re constantly posting photos of fan tattoos on your Instagram, you’re well known for your infamous haircuts; do you hope to keep up that personal connection with your following on this tour?

GM: Oh absolutely. We’re actually looking to grow the role of our “fan club” (called “The Mob”); it was originally an invite-only Facebook group but we’re expanding the entire program. It’s always been one of our favorite parts of every show, hanging out and talking with people beforehand and afterwards. We’re hoping to have a crew of people at these upcoming shows – we’re calling them “The Mob Support Team” – that can hand out water, give people earplugs and generally keep everyone safe and happy. It’s a big part of the whole experience for us.

AF: You all are playing Echostage in Washington, D.C. on November 2nd, marking your second trip to the area this year (the first being to The Fillmore in Silver Spring). While The Fillmore was designed as primarily a rock venue, Echostage was designed as an electronic venue, and seems a better fit for the show you’re putting on. Are you excited to bring your show to a bigger venue essentially created for this type of show? Any trepidations?

GM: Yeah, we’re really excited. The entire stage set-up is modular so it can expand and move around – it’s almost like building with Lego pieces – so the more space we have the bigger and better the show can be. We’ve never been to Echostage, and we’ve heard a lot of great stuff about it, so we’re really looking forward to it.

AF: Is there anything about DC in particular – the crowd, the sights, the general vibe of the city – that stands out to you as a performer?

GM: To be honest, we haven’t spent a whole lot of time there. With the tour being so crazy we haven’t had a lot of time off to explore the cities we stop in. The last show there we were pleasantly surprised by the energy level of the crowd, and we’re excited to come back so soon.

AF: Thanks for your time. We can’t wait to see you on the Love Death Immortality tour at Echostage in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, November 2nd!

You can connect with The Glitch Mob on Facebook, Twitter, and Soundcloud, grab tickets for their show at Echostage on November 2nd with The M Machine and Chrome Sparks here, and watch the official video for “Can’t Kill Us” from Love Death Immortality below.