Blog

Jul 23 2010 Martha’s Bisco

Last weekend was awesome. I got to drive excessive distances and we got to hang with close friends and fun peeps. First up Camp Bisco. We been spending a bunch of time with the Disco Biscuits at various shows, supporting them as well as our agent Seth being  a long time fan so was well nice to be invited to play and also chill at their festival. We got there Thursday night because we wanted to see LCD , who were awesome, again.  We also saw Pretty Lights who were also awesome, caught a bit of Orchard Lounge set with Aron of the Biscuits tweaking softsynths into the mix and we decided to call it a night as we knew we had to play sunrise slot the next night. Completely accosted Diplo before his show Saturday, abused back stage pass access to go up and say hi and even though he was supposed to get on stage he stopped to talk and was awesome. His set was amazing I can’t explain enough how Diplo and Switch have occupied my brain for the last few years whilst trying to get beats and sounds right. The way they transplant rhythm patterns from other cultures and then just tweak them out and make them sound completely awesome on a fat system makes me want to spend all my time infront of a computer. Even though we were due to set up and play we all found it well hard to leave the tent Diplo was playing at, awesome. Then we played silent disco which was silent and on the 3rd stage and totally awesome. The Silent Disco peeps are mad cool and it’s a completely different experience to DJing through a system, it’s so awesome to take your headphones off and still know where the tune’s at by what people are singing.

The next day we went to Martha’s Vineyard. Which meant a long drive, and an hours ferry ride after about 3 hours sleep.Luckily we were greeted by the exceedingly charming  Rob, Michael and Cesar who took us from the boat to meet the excellent Jamie at Lampost who made 3 hours sleep a thing of nothingness by setting up almost everything without us lifting a finger. Instead we were taken to jump off Jaws bridge , eat pizza and all was good with the world. It was pretty much a dead cert that night was going to be awesome when your on a party island, the clubs packed, everyone’s wasted and the DJs just come from Rob’s garden hammock. Pictures from Michael here>>>

Back in NYC preparing for a trip to Chicago to play a fucking awesome party that we can’t invite a single soul too….. I know!! But at least we will finally see Chicago which I am well psyched about. Then on 6th August we are playing at Webster Hall for GBH pretty much our biggest NYC date ever so far, and that’s saying something, we live here!

Jun 24 2010 Plantain Studios NYC

Some of you might remember our long term collaborator producer/musician buddy Abe Seiferth. Abe is in the Tippy Toes band with Reggie Watts, also guitarist in the group Phonograph and producer/songwriter working under such aliases as Marvel Sonic, who made this video for. Abe also features in our live set from NYCWTF earlier this year. Well James Murphy &  LCD Soundsystem have just set out on a world tour (we playing at same festival as them again in a few weeks at Camp Bisco). Whilst out and about on the road James has put Abe in charge of his New York studio Plantain based in Manhattan. In fact this is the first time Plantain is being offered up for use for musicians and producers outside of the DFA Artists. As you can imagine with LCD’s studio the place is packed with classic retro synths and specialist outboard gear of all sorts. Abe has started running a blog from the studio called Today At Plantain which features some of the tracks being made there and also some of the gear that James Murphy has been collecting over the past few decades.

Jun 18 2010 Webby Awards

Completely neglected to write about the Webby Awards, which we were performing at on Monday. We got back from Bonnaroo knackered, obviously, and went to Cipriana in Wall Street to setup for the Awards. I didn’t really realise the full scale of the event till i saw B.J. Novak and Animal from the muppets soundchecking.

I been pretty jealous that Ian had got to hang with Grover last year. Highlight of the night was meeting Auto Tune the News. After that I went to the sea in Brooklyn and got a day of recording and filming in with our mate J-Live. Ian and I drove down to Pittsburgh yesterday, immensely fun road trip. We are playing at Mattress Factory tonight and the show is completely sold out. Lots of pictures are now up from Bonnaroo.

Jun 14 2010 Bonnaroo

Wow that was an amazing 4 days. Bonnaroo was insane fun and we ended up playing a total of 5 times. We flew into Chattanooga airport early Thursday so we could get maximum time to check out the festival. Our experiences of festivals have been of Europeanones like Glastonbury, Oxegen and Sziget so we have high expectations and gotta say Bonnaroo was friggin sick. The greatest American shows for us to date and the audiences were ridiculous.

The Silent Disco set for us was amazing, everytime we took our headphones off you could just hear a tent full of people singing along acapella. We had immense fun then stayed around the silent disco with our friends Robbie and Amy before setting off to the Lunar stage to check LA Riots & Afrojack. We then proceeded to get lost and enjoy a wide wide area of whatever we walked across till a sunrise bedtime.

The saddest thing about Friday was not being able to see Les Claypool but instead hearing him in the distance as we set up on the Lunar Stage. The Lunar Stage was amazing though, it had a 20 ft video wall and a ridiculous sound system with a sound engineer who paid immense attention to detail.  Pretty much the best sounding system we’ve played on in a long time. We started out playing to about 20 mates and ended playing to a few thousand. We packed our stuff and went to catch Chromeo and Daryl Hall…. it was like being transported back to see some genuine sick ass 80s band, the crowd was huge and the whole band were loving it, it’s so easy to get into it when the people playing the music look like they are enjoying themselves. Vocoders galore, loved it. Then Bassnectar, funkin raw ass wickedness, dubstep, beats, really wumpy sick bass had thousands going mad for it, we then  hung around to watch LCD Soundsystem which was also fucking ace.

I haven’t seen them in ages but was reminded how astonishingly good a band they are. I heard they had brought in their own soundsystem for the stage and the sound powerful without being painful. Mid way through a naked dude ran onto the stage but was gathered up by security before doing too much damage, he was carried out dick  downwards.  LCD ended with a sick cover of Empire State of Mind.

Not imaging it could get any better Saturday turned out to be even better. Not only did we get to play again but they gave us another slot on the Lunar Stage right around midnight. Deadmau5 even came and watched our second set before donnin the electro mouse head and playing his 2 hour set next door. His live show is amazing, the sync work in the lights and AV with his music and helmet is off the top future shit. Great. We then went to see our  the Disco Biscuits play a sunrise set, their 2nd or 3rd of the festival. After that I went to see Danny Howells playing 3 -4 hour sunrise set. We  then proceeded once again to do random ass fun shit till the sun was well up and it was evidently time to go to the airport.  Today we playing a special set at the Webby Awards.

Jun 11 2010 At Bonnaroo

Wow we love Bonnaroo, 4.24 am and our first night is drawing to a close. Luckily we have a hotel although it was hard to leave tonight. Afrojack’s set on Lunar Stage (where we playing for next two days) was Ace.  Was just leaving as Sharam started his set and so decided to come back and dance a litte. Been loving Bonnaroo today, especially the food. The Silent Disco show we did was sick, such a beautiful response from a great open minded crowd completely up for a party. Now we gonna pass out. We have come from Montreal, to Thrillist Party in NYC and direct on 7am flight to Bonnaroo. Had an astonishingly beautiful drive through Tennessee , which it seems is beautiful (this is my first time here).

OK gonna crash more, we got another 3 shows and 3 days of partying before we return to NYC for the Webbies.