U:Move

    Varying members of the Los Angeles-based electro-hop crew, Glitch Mob, have done shows in Lawrence (edIT and Ooah), but never the whole group.  Friday, May 28th, Kansas City’s growing experimental dance following will have a chance to catch da’ Mob at the Conspiracy Room inside the Uptown Theater on Broadway.  And this show is no conspiracy.  This is no grossly-delayed April Fool’s joke or anything like that, we assure you. 

    With their debut full-length album, Drink The Sea, slated for release on May 25th, we couldn’t resist poking their brains to find out more about the record in this quick Q&A.  But what should you expect at the show?  When you hear Glitch Mob’s post-digital, remix-on-the-fly sound and think something is wrong, just remember the old saying - “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  The only thing you’ll need to worry about breaking at this show is your own neck.  I even overheard a rumor that the doorman will be handing out free neck-braces after the show is over…

Who is Glitch Mob? Some online sources list differing numbers of people in the crew.
The Glitch Mob is Justin Boreta aka Boreta, Ed Ma aka edIT and Josh Mayer aka Ooah.

What’s the significance behind the title of your guys’ new record, Drink The Sea?
With Drink The Sea we were telling our story. We put a lot of thought into every aspect of the record from the song titles to the mixing, melody, tempo, mastering, length, etc. There’s a story in there but we’d rather leave it up to the listener to decide what it means to them.

Concerning your guys’ upcoming Drink The Sea album, what is it about electronic music that makes good full-length albums so difficult to come by? Would you even settle with that statement?
I think there are plenty of good full-length electronic albums—some of my all time favorites, in fact. It’s challenging to make a good album that works on the dancefloor and in the headphones, but it has been done a lot. Dance music and DJ culture are not focused on the overall listening journey as much as rocking the dancefloor, and those can be very different aesthetics.

How is Drink The Sea going to compare against most of the tracks you guys have released over the past couple of years?
Drink The Sea is a full listening experience and is meant to be heard from start to finish, preferably loud. In the past we’d focused more on individual dance tracks and singles.

How would you describe the live sets you guys do? Is it DJing? Controllerism?
We’re just playing music utilizing technology. It’s not really DJing at this point because we aren’t playing full mastered tracks. We are playing songs like a band, although there is an element that is being played by the computer.

Would you rather play a big festival or a medium-sized city?
There’s benefits to both really. In general we prefer small, intimate events though because of the way we can feed off of crowd energy.