Organic electronica from Pretty Lights

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

By Aaron Davis

Jaackson Hole, Wyo.-The band played its first show just over a year ago, and Pretty Lights has been causing a ruckus around the country ever since. From its Fort Collins base, the head-thumping electronica has been selling out Colorado venues in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins and beyond.

Pretty Lights – producer Derek Vincent Smith and drummer Cory Eberhard – seem to be an anomaly in the hip-hop-electronica world. For starters, Smith, who would take the role of deejay in the genre’s typical ensemble, has never spun a record in his life.

“My music is a combination of playing live instruments in the studio, and spending countless tedious hours digging through old vinyl,” Smith said via email. I love it though. There’s nothing I enjoy more than listening to music from decades past.”
The self-described producer doesn’t use turntables. He summons his old-school samples, mixed with new-age synthesis, from a laptop and a sampler device called the Monome 128. The button grid manipulates pre-recorded music on the fly, and seeing Smith at work, it looks like a telephone operator on speed.

“A lot of people see me on stage, and it looks like I’m a deejay, because I’m not playing a guitar, or whatever,” Smith said to the Charleston City Paper in February.
 “But everything I play is original, first of all. I don’t play any other people’s music.”
Pretty Lights’ organic approach with live beats and sonic layering brings more energy to the stage than just a guy with turntables—which is often lacking in the genre. The human interaction between two individuals that can push and pull one another creates an entirely different vibe, and there’s a systematic approach to making it work.

“We’ve actually developed a system of sign language where I can conduct how it’s going to go and still communicate it to him [Eberhard],” Smith explained, referring to improvisational changes in rhythm and timing during a live show. “We can take the music to places we haven’t gone before, but he’ll still know where we’ll be moving to. It’s a method of improvising where we can stay on the same page.”
Smith has been able to capitalize on variety of atmospheres all over the country — from playing Phish after-shows two weeks ago in Virginia, to opening for Sound Tribe Sector 9 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre just last week. In the near future, he’ll perform between sets of a Widespread Panic show in Alabama. Then on to Bonnaroo … And, Pretty Lights has sold out every show on a recent Southeastern tour, including the Georgia Theatre in Athens.

How does a band rise so quickly in this complicated music business full of indie acts? It all started with giving his latest double-disc album away for free. The 26-track album “Filling Up the City Skies,” has already been downloaded 40,000 times since its Halloween ’08 release. Who said you can’t get something for nothing?

“I tried selling an album of a band that I was in before PL and it was frustrating. I really wanted people to hear my music ... but I was insisting that they give me money to do so.  It just seemed like a major hindrance to getting underground music into peoples’ stereos, charging for it that is. There have been great benefits from giving the music out for free.  It has accelerated my performance career hugely,” Smith said.

With a name like Pretty Lights, one would expect an extravagant light show, but that’s not how the name idea came about. The lights actually came as an afterthought.

“I saw this old poster for a 1966 Pink Floyd New Year’s show that advertised the lights, and kind of started using that name before I was even trying to bring a light show,” Smith explained. “Now that things are picking up, I definitely want to make it a big multimedia experience.”

When Pretty Lights shine on Jackson Hole this weekend, Space Flight Orchestra and DJ Mikey Thunder will also contribute.

Bobby Collins, a.k.a. Spaceflight Orchestra, released his first full-length album, “An Orchestra Of One,” in January. SFO’s live show re-creates the tracks from the ground up using turntables, keys, effects processors and theremin (an eerie, electronic instrument played not by touching, but by controlling pitch and volume with hands around two vertical antennas). Collins has appeared alongside Bassnectar, Michael Kang of SCI, Cosmic Rocker of Infla Granti, DJ Harry and more.

Mikey Thunder was recently voted “Best Club DJ” in PlanetJH’s Reader’s Poll, and he has built a strong following at 43 North on Tuesdays and Saturdays. He deejays for Biomecca and has played with Michael Franti and Spearhead and Ordinary K, and opened for Jurrasic 5, Digable Planets and Del Da Funky Homosapien.

Surf to www.prettylightsmusic.com to download either of Pretty Lights’ albums. Scope the other DJs at myspace.com/spaceflightorchestra and myspace.com/djmikeythunder. PJH

FILE PHOTO
Pretty Lights


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Organic electronica from Pretty Lights | Planet JH News Article: Music Box

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