THE GLITCH MOB
The LA-based electronic threesome tell us how softsynths take centre stage in their massive rigs
Edward Ma, Justin Boreta and Josh Mayer have been making a name for themselves with their state-of-the-art tunes and their cutting-edge live act. 2010's Drink The Sea made waves in the then-emerging American electronic music scene, and the trio followed it up with 2014's Love Death Immortality. Latching onto the quadrennial release cycle is this year's See Without Eyes.
These West Coast innovators are bringing big new ideas to the live experience. So far they've been known for their use of Liine's Lemur app to control Ableton Live on stage, but their new Blade 2.0 system is half controller, half stage in itself, and allows Ed, Justin and Josh to perform their tunes out as a multimedia extravaganza – check it out at bit.ly/ Blade2glitch
: Do you have a go-to synth that you feel can deliver non-samey sounds? And if so, what is it about that synth that delivers the goods for you? TGM: “When it comes to constructing sounds from scratch, nothing can really touch Serum. It's just so versatile and so well thought out. The only thing it lacks is a traditional arpeggiator… and a warm, 'analogue' sound.
“If we're talking about digging for a preset and then modifying it, nothing can beat Native Instruments' Komplete Kontrol. With the addition of preview audio, it makes digging for sounds a breeze. The whole platform is so well thought out.”
: Forget the technical stuff for a second. Do you have any real-world considerations that will help us create better sounds?
TGM: “For us, album writing is more about the journey, not the destination. So much of the writing process is about the growth that we experience as musicians and human beings, and about the technical studio knowledge that's accumulated over the duration of the albumwriting process.
“We've always divided the album writing process into five stages: song sketching, completing song arrangements, sound design, mixdown, ‘and post edits' (aka 'finishing touches'). In order for us to grow, or get better at making synth patches, we've always found that we should save that particular process for the sound design phase. We don't work on synth patches while we sketch or mix down the record. So from album to album, there's big gaps of time between sound design phases,
which keeps us inspired – we've never gotten burnt out by just making synth sounds.”
: Tell us a little more about your Blade 2.0 – what does it offer that a traditional setup doesn't?
TGM: “Blade 2.0 is our custom stage instrument. It's the sword that we go into battle with, night in, night out. Everything is custom, from the fabrication, right down to all of the custom UIs and OSC to MIDI translators that were all written in Max/MSP. As a result, we're not confined to the limited boundaries of a traditional off-theshelf product. If we can dream it up, we can probably make it a reality with all of the people on the team behind our Blade 2.0 project.
“Blade 2.0 is also completely powered by Dell and Alienware hardware. We use the Dell Canvas as our touchscreen, and those are all driven by Alienware 17s with GTX 1080 Max Q GPUs. Our Ableton Live playback rigs are the Alienware 15s, running the Intel i7 7820 HK CPUs. We use Dell and Alienware machines because they always offer higher-spec components within a durable build – perfect for the rigours of touring.”