Talking Organic EDM With The Glitch Mob’s Josh Mayer

Gabby Catalano ’18 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

If you’re ever riding a dirt bike or an ATV, be sure to have The Glitch Mob on your playlist before gripping the accelerator. This heavy electronic, LA hip-hop influenced group will be making an appearance in Boston next week. Be sure not to miss them when they bring their uptempo beats and “organic” style to the House of Blues on October 29th.

Emertainment Monthly: The first time I heard your music was in a surf/skate shop in San Diego and your song “We Can Make the World Stop” was playing in a GoPro and RedBull video.

Josh Mayer: Yeah, that’s something we really like to do. When [GoPro] came to us to collaborate on a video for one of their new cameras, it worked out great because our music goes very well with different sports-type elements, the energy, and so on… Whether you like electronic music or not, it gears [towards] extreme sports-type enthusiasts and they can connect with that.

So let’s start on a quick history lesson of The Glitch Mob. How did you guys meet?

We [Edward, Josh, and Justin] met through really just the love of electronic dance music, particularly what was going on in the early 2000’s — an era of the West Coast — which was everything from low end theory, underground LA and beat scene club to San Francisco warehouse parties. We were in our early days of DJ’ing … and we would get booked on the same night and also back-to-back. We ended up becoming friends a lot through that and through our community on the West Coast. There was a time when we were like, “We should just DJ all together.” So we brought all our laptops and DJ gear at the same time and just traded off. From there … we decided to turn into a live act and approach it more like a band.

You guys have a large younger-aged audience, but have you noticed any other age groups that are drawn towards your music?

Yeah definitely. There’s always a huge array of ages. It’s interesting, there are people that will show up in their mid-40’s and will be just as excited. We love meeting all the different fans. When we started, we didn’t necessarily think of our fan-base as a young crowd. We kind of came from an older, mature, underground scene … which we considered [the ages] to be like 21 to 30. It’s really cool because we have this big array of age groups, but lately its been younger crowds, which is nice because when I was growing up listening to punk music and going to shows, I was [between] 13 and 15. We are embracing that a little in our electronic music, trying to bring more old school punk rock. You know, just heavy and wild energy on stage. Not a super gloom, EDM-type show.

There are bands that make it big and rely heavily on record labels, but you guys took the more independent and “organically grown” route. Why did you choose to do this and how have you benefited from it?

We [the trio] chose to do it out of necessity. We would play these small shows and just burn CD’s of mix tapes that we’d make, give people them for free, and try to spread the word. So when we decided to write a record that was actually going to be released and sold, we wrote the music and the label. We just went for it. It was a really organic process that we ended up finding ourselves kind of their unintentionally, and we loved it. We don’t have to cater to anyone. We don’t have big money checks [dangling] over our heads. Everything we do is 100% ours and in our control. It’s a hard process but it’s really fine. It’s just another wheel in the whole machine that we love to keep.

Yeah, and that approach is more personal too.

Exactly. Everything we do, we have to be passionate about, because we are the ones doing it, along with the people that we hire to work with. It’s a pretty small team of people that help us do this. … Everyone’s in it and passionate about it.

It’s interesting because a lot of young people nowadays are making music independently in their home basement or college dorm room.

Yeah that’s cool, and it’s caught up to where anyone can just get out a laptop and a music program and start making music, which is also a blessing and a curse at times. (laughs)

You have many tracks that feature other mixers, like Metal Mother, Aja Volkman, Sister Crayon, and others. Do you enjoy collaborating with other artists?

We really enjoy it, but again, the whole Glitch Mob world is a really organic process. All those people [mixers] we knew and are friends with. Metal Mother is a really old friend of ours … and Swan is an old friend too. We were like, “Oh, we should reach out to some of our friends and see if they’re interested in wanting to contribute to some songs.” We didn’t give any creative direction, we just said, “Hey, we have some songs. We think that what you do would be great. Here’s the song, do what you want, feel it out, write whatever you feel like, then we’ll just go from there.” There wasn’t a whole lot of back and forth. All of those artists are incredibly amazing. So that’s what we do, and we pieced it into the music in the right way. We love doing it and we’ll probably always do it like that.

Are you interested in working with any more mixers in the future?

We’ll probably always work with some friends, or maybe if there’s some big vocalist that we would like to work with. If the time comes and it just feels natural and organic, then we’ll do that. We have so many talented friends and we also love to meet up with them and would love to have our art mixed with theirs. But you never know, things are always changing. We have no plans right now to collaborate with anyone in the future, but I’m sure we will.

You’ll just let it ride and see what happens?

Exactly.

Do all of you guys have similar influences and that’s why you have such good chemistry together as a group?

Yeah, we have similar tastes in music. I mean, we all come from a background of electronic music, like early mid-90’s drum and bass music and IDM, super experimental. A lot of underground hip-hop music influenced us a ton. But also we come from totally different types, like I was super into punk and hardcore. Maybe they weren’t as into punk music as I was, … but we definitely bring a lot of different flavors to the studio. I think the chemistry and why we’re able to write music so well together is because … we’re really good friends and we hang out a lot. I think that’s really the route and the heart of the whole machine: we’re friends, we get along, we have a great time, we’re creative together, and that’s kind of where The Glitch Mob music comes from.

Do you enjoy playing live and watching the audience get into your beats, or do you prefer more of the composing side, i.e.: sitting in a studio creating new beats and collaborating with each other? What’s the reward?

The whole process is the reward. Yes, it is really fun being locked away in your studio and writing music and being creative, but it’s a long and tedious process and it’s a lot of time spent doing that. It took us about two years to write our latest record. For us, our music is very experiential, like it’s meant to be experienced and felt and put into a situation where everything is full blast. We write [our music] for the intention of it being played live.

Do you have a certain venue or city that you love performing in?

JM: It’s hard to say, but it’s really a night-to-night basis kind of thing. One show at one venue could be amazing, but a year we go back and it’s not quite as amazing. It’s all about the vibe and how people are feeling and how we’re feeling. It’s all about that moment, if people are connecting with us and we’re connecting with them. The fact that we get to play music for people and have a good time with them is an amazing opportunity.

Do you have any words of encouragement or advice you can give to aspiring artists or people taking the independent route?

Yeah definitely. We love to encourage people to work hard, focus, and try to be really original. Do your own thing and tell your own story. There are a lot of people in music right now … and everyone’s aspiring to be an electronic DJ and produce an album, which is really amazing but also hard for people. So just find your voice and be unique, and it’ll all work out in the end.

Are you working on any songs or albums right now?

Not currently right now, but … we’re talking about working on some more music, like this winter. We’ll probably start writing more music and have it hopefully come out top of next year, but there’s no guarantee on that stuff (laughs). We take a long time writing music and we’re perfectionists about it. And to us, music shouldn’t be rushed or hurried. It has to be ready when it’s ready. But there’s definitely a lot more to come.

That’s great. I can’t wait to see you guys live at the House of Blues in Boston coming up.

Yeah cool. We love playing in Boston actually. It’s eDIT’s (Edward Ma) hometown, so it just feels special every time we go back there. … His parents come to the shows. So it’s great, we’re excited for Boston.

Anything else you’d like to add?

That’s about it, but we’re excited for the Boston show.

Get tickets for the show here.