Q&A With The Glitch Mob’s edIT

We caught up with Ma, who is best known as edIT, a few days after the three-piece electronic group played its biggest show to date at Coachella’s Sahara Tent.

The act released its second album, Love Death Immortality, in February via Glass Air Records. The first single, “Can’t Kill Us,” is featured in the trailer for “Sin City: A Dame To Kill For,” while the second single, “Becoming Harmonious (feat. Metal Mother)” is in the trailer for “Edge Of Tomorrow.”

The LP debuted at No. 13 on the Nielsen SoundScan album chart, No.1 on the independent albums chart as well as No. 1 on the dance/electronic albums chart.

Speaking of genres, edIT noted that just like the meaning behind the songs, it’s up to fans to figure out where The Glitch Mob fits in the wide spectrum of music.

edIT also discussed the act’s custom stage instrument called The Blade, which the producer/DJ describes as enabling the band to play “live performance musical chairs.”

How did playing Coachella go?

Oh, it was great. It was truly an amazing experience. I think [for] every artist, Coachella is one of those milestones that everybody looks forward to. It was a true honor and it was wonderful.

The Glitch Mob was formed within Los Angeles’ beat scene. How did the scene influence the group?

We didn’t necessarily form out of the Los Angeles beat scene, I think that [assumption is] kind of due to my residency at Low End Theory. … But I mean we’ve actually been kind of circulating through multiple music scenes. We never really fit into any kind of subculture, genre or scene, so to speak. Obviously we have tons of love and relationships with the L.A. beat scene … The Burning Man scene … the early dubstep, drum ’n’ bass scene as well. It wasn’t necessarily that we were birthed out of that beat scene, per se, but we were definitely there in the beginning.

I was looking at Glitch Mob’s Facebook page and under genre is listed “you tell us.”

I think genres are basically labels and words that help people understand what music means to them. We have never at any point in time looked at our music in terms of a genre. And as a result people have called our music many things. They’ve called it glitch shop, dupstep, electro, rock trance. And we’re not going to come out and be like, “No, it’s actually none of those things.” If that’s what it means to the fans, then that’s great. 

We definitely don’t discriminate and we don’t try to predetermine what the music means to people. I think The Glitch Mob music means something different to every single person. If it means trance or if it means beats or if it means glitch or whatever, then that’s great.

What kind of music did you grow up listening to?

Oh, all kinds of stuff, really. I’m a music lover and appreciator and a student. … I don’t think there’s any kind of music that I can’t find inspiration or influence from, even if it’s [not] necessarily my cup of tea. Even country music – I might listen to that and be like, “Man, I like the way that they did that drop pattern. … Like I would never program that drum tablet but I can really appreciate that. Or the way they mix that harmonica (laughs) or something is really unique. 

Let’s talk about The Blade.

We basically have this massive instrument on stage that we play called The Blade. … It was designed out of necessity because there’s nothing out there that allows us to play our music the way we wanted to play – so we had to build it. … We assembled a really amazing team of people to help us with it. It’s an amazingly fun instrument to play and I love it.

I read a description that said The Blade is basically a custom stage instrument that you can play by pressing different panels.

Yeah, basically that’s it. There’s this touch screen software called The Lemur … so that’s kind of the foundation of how we perform all the melodies. I guess if you were to give the really ultra-dumbed-down answer … you can envision us playing our music on these massive touch-screen surfaces and playing drums but the drums can make any sound that we want them to. That would be the fundamental gist of it, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s actually extremely complicated. (laughs)   

Do you all use The Blade? Can you give me a breakdown of the live show?

Well, because The Blade is fully customized it allows for each band member to play any type of instrument at any given point in time. [That] is actually how we’ve been performing since Drink The Sea. Everybody plays everything, so there’s no drummer or bassist or lead synth player, per se. We are all those roles and within in one given song, we might actually play all of those different parts in specific parts of the song. Maybe on a song like “Animus Vox,” I’ll play kongs, lead and the bass. And that’s what The Blade allows us to do, which no other instrument out there could. It’s almost like this live performance musical chairs. You can’t do that in a traditional band. … So that’s kind of what’s happening on stage – we’re all switching parts. And that’s just something that is a by-product of the way the songs are written.  The song structures and … the cinematic aspect of our music and also just the fact that we’ve learned to keep in interesting.

All three of us are playing The Blade at the same time. We’re all inside of The Blade, actually. It’s this massive instrument. It’s 20 feet wide. … If you look at pictures, we’re basically standing inside this spaceship-looking thing and that spaceship is The Blade.

In your bio you said The Glitch Mob’s debut is a personal type of album that you’d want to listen to on your headphones, whereas the new album is meant to be played live. You also mentioned that after touring a few years you learned what type of Glitch Mob songs work best on stage. So, what works best live?

Well I think the biggest difference between the first record and this record was really, Drink The Sea was a really personal, introspective experience told by three people. When we went to go write it we didn’t really think about how it was going to be received by the audience or anything. After two years of touring that record I think the main takeaway was that although The Glitch Mob in the literal sense is the three of us … The Glitch Mob in the figurative sense is the thousands and thousands of people out there that bring this experience to life. We are all The Glitch Mob. I think when we came together to write Love Theft Immortality we didn’t write it really from the standpoint of three people telling personal stories, we wrote it from the standpoint of “What is the collective Glitch Mob trying to say?”

As a result I think the music is much more epic … celebratory and all inclusive. We didn’t necessarily write it from the standpoint of “What’s going to work best live?” It’s really from the standpoint of “What is going to be the most all-encompassing story and how do we share that story together when we perform it?” Because you know if you subtract the the fan element … The Glitch Mob would only be three guys in a bedroom making music with weird sounds. It’s really the people that bring this experience to life so when we sat down to write the record [we thought], “How do we all share this experience that we are collectively telling?”  
 
What kind of themes did you cover in the new album? Judging from the title – Love Death Immortality – sounds like it’s pretty heavy stuff.

Once again this goes back to letting the listener determine what the music means to them. I don’t have a literal answer for you like “This is what the record means, this is what the title means” because it’s something different to everybody. I think there’s something really sacred in that. I don’t want to take that away from anybody out there. Obviously from an emotional standpoint, we kind of … set the tone and let the listener decide what the music means to them.

But … listening to the record … the feelings are big. There are heroic moments, there are epic moments, there are high stakes, there’re low lows. The album is very dynamic emotionally. We do that because we like to take everybody on a journey with us … and what that story means is up to the listeners. 

How do you come up with beats and what inspires you?

It always comes down to the emotion and the feeling that we’re trying to convey. It never stems from the kind of place of like, “Let’s write this kind of a song. Let’s write an electro song today, let’s write a dupstep song today.” It always comes from, “OK, what is the feeling and emotion that we want to get across? And that part of the process is conceptualizing the feeling through melody.

We went up to Joshua Tree in the beginning after touring for two years … to get inspiration and begin sketching out some ideas. That’s generally where it all starts …. like maybe “Let’s convey something that’s triumphant but dangerous at the same time.” There will be a bunch of sketches that come from that, one of them will generally stick. … After that, it will take roughly two years to complete that song. … The next cycle will be laying down melody, chord structure, mapping out loosely what the story is going to be. [Then] you go through sound design and mix sounds. But what happens is that after each of those phases we will learn a bunch of tricks and techniques that will need to be applied to all the songs again. It’s this constant cycle of refining and refining the story until finally you refine to the point of where the story doesn’t get any better, it just gets different. And that’s when you know that the tune is done.

Is it hard to say “OK, this song can’t get any better?” Or is it easy to recognize?

First and foremost it’s hard because The Glitch Mob kind of exists on its own island musically. We don’t really exist in any scene or genre. It’s not like we’re part of the trapt scene or dupstep scene or big room scene. So there’s not really any good examples or textbook songs of how to do The Glitch Mob. Every record we have to really learn how to be The Glitch Mob all over again. …

So much of it boils down to “Is the feeling right? Is the emotion being conveyed properly?” … To really get [that] right is not really something that you can just go to school and study. (laughs) … It’s whether or not the tune touches our heart. And if it doesn’t, then we know the song’s not done.

Upcoming dates for The Glitch Mob:

May 2 – Portland, Ore., Roseland Theater   
May 3 – Seattle, Wash., The Showbox         
May 4 – Seattle, Wash., The Showbox         
May 6 – Eugene, Ore., McDonald Theatre   
May 7 – Reno, Nev., Knitting Factory Concert House        
May 9 – San Francisco, Calif., Warfield Theatre     
May 10 – Los Angeles, Calif., Club Nokia  
May 19 – Vienna, Austria, FLEX    
May 20 – Zurich, Switzerland, Komplex 457          
May 21 – Darmstadt, Germany, Centralstation        
May 22 – Hamburg, Germany, Uebel & Gefährlich 
May 23 – Berlin, Germany, Gretchen Club  
May 26 – Prague, Czech Republic, The Roxy          
May 27 – Brussels, Belgium, De Vaartkapoen         
May 28 – Paris, France, La Machine du Moulin Rouge       
May 30 – London, United Kingdom, Koko 
May 31 – Nimes, France, This Is Not A Love Song Festival Grounds (This Is Not A Love Song)
June 7 – New York, N.Y., Randall’s Island (Governors Ball Music Festival)         
June 19 – Dufur, Ore., Wolf Run Ranch (What The Festival)    
June 26 – Rothbury, Mich., Double JJ Resort (Electric Forest)       
Aug. 1 – Chicago, Ill., Grant Park (Lollapalooza)    
Aug. 3 – Montreal, Quebec, Parc Jean Drapeau (Osheaga Festival)
Aug. 14 – Le Locle, Switzerland, Patinoire Du Locle (Rock Altitude)       
Aug. 15 – St. Polten, Austria, Green Park (FM4 Frequency Festival)         
Aug. 16 – Gampel, Switzerland, Open Air Gampel (Open Air Gampel)     
Aug. 23 – Reading, United Kingdom, Richfield Avenue (Reading Festival)
Aug. 24 – Leeds, United Kingdom, Bramham Park (Leeds Festival)

For more information please visit TheGlitchMob.com.