WXJM’s Urban/Rpm director Tyler Hoover got the chance to talk to edIT, Boreta, and Ooah of the Hip-Hop electronic group The Glitch Mob, whose most recent album Love Death Immortality was released on February 11, 2014 and is in rotation.
WXJM: So to start things off how would you guys describe your style to those who have never listened to your music?
The Glitch Mob: Maximal feels, a lot of feels, sort of like adventure dance music. Imagine you’re Indiana Jones riding through a psychedelic tidal wave of machetes and piano notes. That’s kinda what it’s like.
WXJM: That’s a pretty vivid picture.
The Glitch Mob: Dance feels; EDF, that’s the genre. We like to take all sorts of different music and mash em’ all together to get something new and unique and awesome.
WXJM: Who would you guys say your primary influences are, especially in your new album?
The Glitch Mob: Well first and foremost the primary influence was all the thousands of people out there that make up The Glitch Mob. We wrote this record for them. We tried to channel what we believed was like the entire Glitch Mobs collective experience and try to put that down into music. That was really it man, all the emotions and stories we’re trying to tell were really all fundamentally based off of all of the experiences we’ve had with all the people out there. That’s really where it all stems from.
WXJM: I know you guys are associated as one of the most prolific artists of the L.A. beat scene but how exactly did you guys meet and decide to form The Glitch Mob instead of continuing along with your solo careers?
The Glitch Mob: When we first started the idea of The Glitch Mob we were doing our solo DJ careers, DJing a lot of parties back to back, and we were also friends first and foremost, so we thought why don’t we start doing this together and when we first did it it was so much more fun.. It was a lot more fun for us then performing individually, there’s just so much more you can do with more people on stage. We never actually sat down and said hey, let’s start a band, in the beginning it was more of an idea of a collective of DJs and being from L.A. and being Hip-hop heads in the beginning it was about making music that feels like Hip hop but it’s electronic music. So that’s really the inception of the whole thing and part of the inception of the whole beat scene which has really morphed into something else and we all branched off in our own direction but we all share common roots.
WXJM: Wow haha, so to talk about your new album Love Death Immortality my first question is what message or theme are you trying to send with the name?
The Glitch Mob: The album title and song titles come late in the process for us. The songs all had working titles in production and the way we decided on the album title was we took words from different texts in the library in old samurai and art books and picking words that sort of help to describe what the vibe of the record was and then three is a really important number to us, there’s three of us and there’s something about the stability in the number three that’s a theme to us and we try to represent that in our triangle or logo. We knew the album had to be three words and once we decided on that we tried a different combination of words till we came across something that not only felt epic but tells a common story about us connecting with our fans and all the common threads that link us together. This album was homage to that.
WXJM: It does sound pretty different from Drink The Sea. Would you attribute that to your changing or growing fan-base?
The Glitch Mob: Not really. I wouldn’t base that around the fan base. We’re just the kind of guys that want to try new things. We just really wanted to try different stuff, like record in different tempos we’ve never written in and patterns we hadn’t done in the past. None of us are the kind of guys that want to keep making the same music. We just went on like an electronic music producer exploration. We wanted to try new means of conveying the emotions we wanted to capture in the tunes.
WXJM: Understandable, I know in the commentary album you guys mention a retreat you went on to get inspiration for the album. What was that about?
The Glitch Mob: Oh, Joshua Tree Retreat out in California. We went after touring in order to reboot our whole aesthetic and discover some new creative ground. It was a great way for us to get creative and really live in the music and also get away from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. I mean it’s practically in our DNA at this point to try new things and this retreat really allowed us to focus on the album.
WXJM: Interesting, I’ll start to wrap things up here for you guys, where can anyone whose interested find you guys on social media?
The Glitch Mob: Everywhere man. Theglitchmob.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We’re @theglichmob on twitter if that’s what you mean. We’re just The Glitch Mob on every social media.
WXJM: Ok, last question, do you guys have any big plans for the future?
The Glitch Mob: Well we’re at the beginning of a massive three year tour cycle so we’re really just planning on going out and sharing our music with the world. That’s really what it’s all about for the time being.
WXJM: Well thanks a lot for interviewing with me today, can’t wait to see you guys at Bonnaroo.
The Glitch Mob: No problem man.
