By Marcus Bonner
The four year lull since The Glitch Mob’s debut album was anything but; they’ve been working their asses off. They want you to know that and say you’ll hear, see and feel it, not only on recently released sophomore effort Love Death Immortality but on the corresponding world tour which just happens to kick off last night.
The Glitch Mob’s live performance has gained significant weight thanks to no small amount of effort on their part and the privilege to work with professionals afforded by Drink the Sea’s success. Previous tours were (by necessity) pretty DIY, with the trio designing their own sets, using cheaper hard-and-software, and programming a lot of the lights and sequences themselves.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to collaborate with people who are better at building sets than we are,” says Justin Boreta.
“We don’t want people to think they can just go on Youtube [can we legally mention youtube?] and see what it’s all about,” Josh “Ooah” Mayer adds.
Fans in the Philadelphia area who want to see what it’s all about should come out to the Electric Factory this Friday, the 14th.
In the time since Drink the Sea came out, electronic music has exploded in scale, scope and notoriety, with subgenres and acts emerging from various scenes the world over. However, The Glitch Mob hardly see themselves as pioneers, electing instead to describe themselves as the “oddballs in the corner”, doing exactly what they want and not especially bound to any EDM “scene”. Even on the LA Beat scene, where they undoubtedly made their bones, little of what they did was derivative. To this uniqueness they say they owe their success, and they say experimentation is an aspect of the West Coast in general.
“We never really said ‘let’s sit here and discuss whether we should experiment,” Boreta explains.
Instead, it was the order of the day. There was a whole network of artists who challenged each other and brought in elements from a wide array of influences. The Glitch Mob’s music is EDM because it’s made electronically and lends itself to dancing. But they insist that their musical background (and backbone) is and has always been hip-hop.
“Drum and Bass was the first music we really got into that was electronic,” says Boreta.
The evolution of their sound between Drink the Sea and Love Death Immortality seems to have a lot to do with the trio’s evolution as people.
“Drink the Sea was one book with many chapters. It’s what we were feeling at the time. Love Death Immortality is another book with its own chapters. This has a lot more to do with what’s up now,” says Boreta.
“It’s really about the story,” says Mayer. According to Boreta and Mayer, Drink the Sea was a lot more introverted, the story of the three oddballs tinkering with all their favorite musical tropes. Love Death Immortality is more extroverted, grander, and including in its story all the people they’ve met along the way.
Mayer says, “the story in Love Death Immortality is our story now. It’s a bigger painting with more colors.”
