–Margaret Main (cover photo by Matt Enbar/MenbarPhotos)
On 7/12/13 before their Saturday night closing set of Camp Bisco, Live for Live Music caught up with Lotus bassist Jesse Miller to talk about the bands recent release of their album Build and the bands plans for the future. The band’s front man for interviews, Miller seemed excited to be back at Camp and had some interesting opinions to share.
In a world that’s dominated by MP3’s and digital music why was it important for you to release the album on vinyl?
Well I’m kind of the vinyl snob of the band, so I make sure everything comes out on vinyl. For us it’s really an issue of sound quality. We put tons of work into making sure our music sounds as good as possible. We record an analog tape and it’s all live instrumentation, what we think is the best quality we can do and we don’t want to put in all that work just to cut out 9/10ths of the information to distribute through MP3, so we want to make sure the top of the line is available. Vinyl is definitely the best way to hear Lotus. You can get the MP3 if you want, it still sounds good but not nearly as good as the vinyl. If you have to get digital get the wave files, get the highest quality, but I’m sick of this music that’s produced to sound good on MP3’s, to me its flat with no life. Lotus has always been about putting the live in music, keeping the soul, keeping it dancey, keeping it live instruments and for us, sound quality is a huge part of that.
Is there a track from your latest album Build that you enjoyed producing the most and which do you think has translated best into the live setting?
One of my favorites of the album was a track I wrote called “Uffi” and I’m most proud of how this track came together. It puts a lot of almost conflicting elements together and makes this really dancey track. But live, I think one of the tracks that have really taken off has been “Neon Tubes.” It’s the final two tracks of the album and it kind of starts off with this funky 80’s groove. There are some different tempo changes and at the end it becomes this kind of more modern analog synth house thing. It took us a long time to put it together because there’s so many changes but when we finally figured out how to play it live it kills every time.
You’ve played Camp Bisco many times before, how do you feel about the festival and the crowd that it brings?
We’ve done Camp Bisco many years on and off going back to before it was even at this location. It’s kind of in our backyard, its funny even the years that were not playing it people will be like “see you at Camp.” They just think that were gonna be there; its kinda in some ways really our crowd, even though some years we play it and some years we don’t. It’s always a party, it’s always a packed stage, it’s always high energy. We just hope it’s not some crazy rained out mess and we can go on and put on the best show possible but the crowd’s always right there with us so we have a fun time. I always have fun coming to these things that are pretty electronic oriented and being the band that’s out there with instruments. I think it’s refreshing for people to see people up there playing and responding to the crowd and having those dynamics. So, to me, that always feels good and like we can build something unique that’s at one of these festivals.
Incorporating live instruments into electronic music has been steadily gaining popularity. Is this something you’re excited about? Seeing this live element onstage rather than just DJ’s?
Well, for us that’s what it always was and it’s kinda funny now to see the things like Daft Punk’s recording a tape, that’s a big deal, but we always did that and Pretty Lights is recording real musicians, that’s always been our go to. So, for us, its just people coming around to what we’ve always thought was the heart and soul of it, just the most soulful parts that really convey some emotion and not just borrowing that from another record by sampling or something like that. It’s always been important for us to keep that live element and we definitely try and stay current with what’s happening. But, for us, at the end of the day, it’s always about playing our instruments and making something that we feel like we can pull off on stage that’s a dynamic performance.
You guys have been known to perform theme shows such as your show in 2011 honoring Daft Punk and Deadmau5. Can we look forward to another themed show anytime soon?
Nothing is planned. It’s probably not surprising, but they take an awful lot of work to put together, so we try to reserve those for special occasions. Sometimes it’s honestly really tough coming up with a unique theme that we can all agree on. We have five guys in the band and as many times as I suggest that we should do a Kraftwerk theme, no one else is really jumping at it. We all have our own ideas on what would work, so part of the biggest problem with that is coming up with something that everyone can agree upon. I’m sure its something we will probably do in the future, but right now nothing is on the books.
When did you guys decide to start using samples instead of pure instrumentals?
Man, I don’t even know what year it was, but you know I was the bassist and I just always felt a little bit limited. I wanted to be able to add more and so I picked up this sampler called the SP8-08. Zip discs, you have to load up sounds on these zip discs. You don’t know how hard that was touring, there was always something going wrong with it. That kind of hooked me on this idea and it became more sophisticated over the years and eventually went to a laptop system but basically for me that’s the bridge between production and the stage. When I go out and record violins and cellos we don’t have a way to bring that to the stage unless we use a sampler. I like producing those things and recording those instruments but having a way to trigger it onstage. The same thing goes for guest vocals and sometimes I’m doing some really crazy analog synth stuff that there’s really no good way to replicate live. So in those cases we’ll sample stuff and to me it’s just an expression of the other side of our artistry that were not able to perform live.
This question was fan submitted to Live for Live Music, this fan would like to know what your favorite place to play in Philly is and if you remember the show at the North Star Bar with 100 people?
Well, I don’t know which North Star show they’re referring to because we played there 100’s of times coming up. But I live in Philly along with one other person in the band and the venue scene has really changed a lot. Lately, we’ve been playing a lot of different things and focused on doing some special shows. We did a show down at FDR Park last year and the year before that and on New Years we did a show on the pier, so some non-traditional venues and those were a lot of fun. I always like playing the Electric Factory and I go see shows there all the time. I don’t know if I can pick a favorite; it seems to change every time we come back, but I’m going to go with the Electric Factory for now.
Have you ever considered adding a singer to your band?
We do quite a fair amount with singers but for now we’ve always brought that in on stage by using a sampler. I think its mostly cause we work with a bunch of different singers and we’ve thought about it but we feel like it would really change the vibe of a Lotus show to bring out a guest like that just for certain songs. So even though Luke and I do like to write for singers occasionally we’ve just been using the sampler whenever we work with singers.
What’s your pre-show ritual?
I just like to make sure I know where my bass is and drink a beer.
Simple enough. Who do you think rocks the bald look better, Mike Greenfield or Mike Rempel?
Ha, well I think they’re both rocking it, its funny sometimes they get confused because they both have shaved heads and glasses. I think Al from Moe is in there too I’m sure Greenfield has been confused with him a couple times so I don’t know if I’m going to give that trophy away quite yet.
When you find yourself with extra time at a music festival to attend another artists set do you try and discover new artists that maybe you haven’t heard of or do you like to go to old favorites instead?
You know, it’s interesting. We go to these festivals a lot of weekends over the summer and its crazy how few artists I actually see. I end up just doing interviews and seeing friends like, this is a nice opportunity for artists to go to the artists area and be like, “hey we haven’t seen you all year, but we run into you at festivals” you know? So it’s a good chance to catch up with artists; so I’d say its usually people I know. Like, if my friends are playing I wanna go check them out but honestly we’re in and out so fast at some of these I don’t get to see that much music.
How do you think your sound has changed overall since the release of Vibes?
Oh wow! I think we’ve definitely focused a lot more especially on composition. I think early on we were kind of just designing these hooks that we could improvise on and I think we’ve moved into a realm where there are compositions that don’t necessarily lead to lengthy improvisation, they stand on their own and then we can still use other things to stretch out. So I think it’s just been really honing in on our composition skills and writing things that are very focused; but at the same time, if we wanna stretch something out, having the ability to do that so it’s not like we’ve tossed that by the wayside. I think just having the ability to write a really focused composition has been the biggest change.
Can you talk about an encounter with a fan that completely took you by surprise?
I feel like most encounters with fans take me by surprise. Sometimes I don’t feel very connected or know what their talking about. But you know what I love is that Lotus fans are so passionate and are always coming up and, you know, saying Lotus changed their lives and I don’t even know how to take that. Its really huge but I love that the music is having an impact. People are coming up with tattoos on their arms and that’s humbling. We put so much effort into writing and performing our music and I’m so glad that it’s making an impact cause we really pour everything into it. We don’t want it to be a fleeting thing we want it to last, so we’re really glad that for some people it does have that impact.
(photo by Matt Enbar/MenbarPhotos)