Lotus, an American jam band heavily influenced by electronic dance music, has garnered a significant (and in many cases, fanatically devoted) fan base in their ten year history. The “jam-tronica” masters will be returning to Charlottesville’s Jefferson Theater, this weekend. The band is slated to play for two consecutive nights, September 21st and 22nd, and are touring following the release of their latest album, Monks, which can be downloaded for free via Lotus’s Bandcamp website.
You can pick up tickets to their Jefferson Theater show here
The new album follows shortly after the band’s last album, Build, which was released earlier this year. Monks, takes the band into previously scouted, but not fully explored, territory and is sure to be a memorable landmark in the bands history. I talked with bassist, electronic sampler, and synth player Jesse Miller, about the new album, the upcoming show, and how it is that Lotus manages to produce such high-quality music consistently.
So do you want to talk to me a little bit about the new album, Monks, which just came out? What made you guys decide to go with kind of a hip-hop direction with this one? I know you guys had done similar sounding stuff, like with “Alkaline” on Oil on Glass where you featured Othello, but what was the motivation to have an entire album dedicated to that kind of sound?
It really came about pretty organically, we worked on a lot of the tracks on the album with Mr. Lif at the time that we were making the self-titled album, which came out in 2011. So we had this track but it didn’t seem to fit in very well with the album, so we were just holding onto it and thought we might even release it as a single later on. And then we just ended up starting to work on a few other tracks that were basically remixes of things that were from the Lotus album and started sending them around to different MCs and getting their take. From there we were like ‘well maybe this will be three songs’, and then it just kept expanding. We kept writing more stuff and then eventually we said ‘well this should be a full album’, so we ended up writing the instrumental stuff and just kind of going back through some other tracks and just expanding it as far as we could.
So we ended up with this full album, we actually finished it about a year ago, but Build was already in the process, so we were just sitting on a mastered version of it for about a year. Were definitely happy to get it out now. It was a really fun project to work on, I think it’s pretty different than what we normally do. We always like to expand our horizons, musically, take on a new challenge and, hopefully, pick up some new ears along the way.
You guys had a ton of different features on that album, how was it working with all those different artists?
Well, you know, some people are easier to roll with and got back with ideas and recorded really quick but some of them took a little while to do. Luckily we didn’t have a hard deadline on this and we were able to stretch it out over a couple years. It just eventually all came together.
We had to record it at a couple different studios and we mixed most of it out in Denver, me and Luke with this guy, True Genius, and then ended up mixing a bit more in Philadelphia, and working with a guy named Daddy Kev, whose most famous for his work with Flying Lotus. He put a lot of work into making everything, even though it was recorded in different places, sound good together. A lot of different people contributed to the album.
Very cool. So Build obviously came out back in February, and now Monks just a few days ago. I read that you guys might have another album coming out in 2014 possibly?
Well, we’re not exactly sure. We do have a bunch of other recorded material. We’re kind of trying to figure out what we want to do with it. I’m not sure if it’s something that we’ll release as a string of singles or we might try to turn it into sort of like an extended EP. But, yeah, we did have around a number of things that didn’t really fit into either of those camps, some of which are done, except for the mixing. But yeah, we’re working really hard to use it, that’s the end story, but we don’t have a specific plan for it.
Gotcha, with all this stuff coming out around the same time it must be stressful dealing with all that while still being on tour?
Definitely. But, you know, that’s pretty much the life of the artist. If you’re not busy, not creating, or you’re not out their performing or promoting yourself, then…you’re pretty much not doing anything. We like to keep busy because that means were working and were creating.
So, with all the new stuff that you guys have been writing and coming out with lately, do fans have to worry about a dry spell coming up?
I don’t think so. We already demoing for our next full album and I want to say there’s already a good nine to eleven songs written for that, stuff that we haven’t played live before, so we’re still keeping it up. The thing with Lotus is there’s so many different directions we can go. We’re always thinking, ‘well let’s make a hard guitar rock record’ or ‘let’s make an electronic dance-pop record…let’s do any of these things that are going to challenge us and do anything that we think we can put our own spin on and come up with something good’.
Can you tell me anything more about the next studio album that you guys have planned?
It’s a little too early to share much on that because we’re only in the demo stage, but I think we’ll be continuing down the path we’ve been on for the last couple albums as far as making everything very tightly composed. This isn’t going to be the extended trout-rock record. I think this will be something very tight, with more pop kind of structures. We usually try to save the extended stuff for live recordings. But, I mean, who knows? We might make a twenty minute song that goes on the record at some point.
So, with all the material that you guys have written now and all the stuff you’re still writing, is it hard finding a balance between making sure the songs sound good live and not being repetitive with the stuff that you play?
Yeah, it can be a pretty big challenge, but I think we have a certain set of stuff that we think of as kind of the ‘heavy hitters’, stuff that we’ve played a lot and that we know is really going to go off well. And then we have another subset of slightly more obscure songs, that some people might not be as familiar with, that well just bust out live for a specific show that we might only do one or two times a year, or maybe just to revisit just to kind of punch up a little bit. All of those things kind of work together. I think we have enough material that it doesn’t feel repetitive. We’re changing the set list all the time. Before we start a tour were usually not thinking ‘well we need to be completely competent on 150 songs’ or something. We’ll have it more narrowed down to around sixty to seventy-five that were really making sure are on point for the tour. If we need to break something out we’ll just be rehearsing it and sound-checking it for a couple of days before we perform.
Gotcha, and I know you guys are touring a lot more this year than you did last year. How’s it going this year as far as shows and stuff like that?
Yeah, we did a huge tour in support of Build and then early this summer wasn’t super busy so that actually was a period of time where we wrote a lot of this new stuff that we’re working on. That’s kind of been declining a little bit since. Were on tour right now, but soon we have quite a bit of time off that were planning to dedicate to studio work. It’s been good. We definitely try to strike a balance between making it out to all these different markets and not going crazy and burning ourselves out. About forty-seven shows in the spring definitely bordered on that but since then we’ve been taking it pretty easy and we’ve never been on a bus for more than a week and a half or so. I think that’s kind of the balance were always looking for.
Have you guys had any shows recently that you really enjoyed?
Well, we were really excited for Red Rocks, but unfortunately that got cancelled so we’re going back there in about two and half weeks to do that. That’s a really big show that we’re looking forward too. This week we have five shows which I think should be a lot of fun. One, tomorrow, in Nashville and you’re obviously covering for the Charlottesville show and we’re really psyched to do two nights there and just kind of hangout.
You guys have played Jefferson Theater before, do you like it as a venue?
I think we’ve only played there one other time, maybe about three years ago, but from what I remember it was cool. I liked the vibe there and the stage was nice, we had a lot of room to spread out, so from what I remember it was good.
So as a musician, I’m assuming that you’re a fan of other music as well, do you still get the chance to go out to shows that you’re excited to see?
Mostly I like to go to pretty small shows, but over the last six months I was really blown away by a Mount Kimbie show and a Gold Panda show. They’re both kind of live electronic things. I like to hear a few rock shows in Philly too but I usually don’t go to places much bigger than maybe like a thousand cap.
Do you notice that bands or artists that you’re into at a certain time might influence your own sound?
Yeah, I think so, to a certain degree…I don’t think it’s ever like straight trying to rip something off, but maybe just ideas for grooves.
Since you guys are on tour a lot and are playing shows all the time, I was curious if you’d seen anything funny or crazy from on stage that was particularly memorable?
(Laughs) Yeah, there’s always something funny going on. A lot of people get down and dance at Lotus shows. Some people, that don’t really dance at other things, dance at Lotus shows and that can be pretty funny to see.
So, along with Lotus I know you’re also doing your solo project, Beard-o Bees, how has that been going?
I haven’t been doing a whole lot this year because I’ve been really busy with Lotus stuff but I’ll do some shows here and there. When I get time off from Lotus it’s kind of my realm for doing a lot of synth experiments and really delving into some more ways to perform electronic music live and on the fly. I have a lot of doing that and it’s definitely an outlet for things that don’t necessarily fit into the Lotus world.
Do you approach those two projects differently?
Oh yeah, definitely. Beard-o-Bees is almost exclusively analog synth so that’s the one huge difference.
With Lotus, how do you think things have changed or evolved in the last ten years with either how you write or how you perform?
I think, as far as writing, over the last five years or so we’ve just really looked at ways to churn things down as far as structure and make things as tight as possible. And I think we’ve tried to, especially lately, take that to ideas about improvising live. It’s really easy, when you have five people, to do too much. So I think we’ve all been kind of working on leaving more space so that things can grow organically while we’re improvising throughout the whole band, if that makes sense. I think we’re all kind of into the idea of minimalism and working with small, repeating, patterns and seeing how those build upon each other.
What kind of equipment has been your favorite to work with? Is there anything new coming out that you’re really excited about working with?
My case definitely runs toward analog so it’s never really new developments but this year I’ve been working a lot with a modular synth, it’s not really something I bring out on the road with us, but I’ve been doing a lot of work in the studio with it. You know, when you see some of those old pictures of someone up against a giant wall, plugging things together, this is kind of a miniature version of that. Having no digital elements, just making sure everything’s all analog, and really building unique sounds by patching synths and TV controllers together. That’s something I do a lot at home and have started to bring into the Lotus sound in a couple of different ways.
And one thing I’ve kind of noticed about the Lotus sound is how you incorporate a lot of electronically produced and written instrumentation but it still all sounds very organic. How do you guys incorporate all these non-organic techniques and still manage to make the sound flow together very smoothly?
You know, I would almost frame it the opposite way. I think, for the most part, we use pretty standard rock and roll instruments, we just approach it in a way that is pretty influenced by electronic and dance music. Were pretty much always using a drum kit, were always using guitar, and were using percussion and bass. We’re definitely using synthesizers, but were not dumping all this into an Ableton thing and doing all that editing. We’re recording the tape like they used to, and some people still do, but not that many people anymore. For us it’s definitely part of that sound quality, and also really finding good sounds. Really, I think it comes down to arrangement. If you’re just trying to mash together some collection of really disparate elements, it can not really work. But, if you approach them in a really savvy way, compositionally, you can find ways to make a lot of different things work. Sometimes, people hear our songs and say ‘oh that synthesizer sounds really cool’, and we’ll say ‘well it’s not a synthesizer, its violin and cellos’. We use horns a lot, organs, pianos, all these things where the real thing sounds a lot better than a digital knockoff. I think a lot of people are often confused when we talk about sampling. Usually we are actually talking about bringing in something that we recorded…and us having the ability to trigger it and control it in various ways.
So what do you do when you’re not writing and recording music? I read in one interview that you like to read, what kind of stuff do you like?
My Harpers and New Yorker magazine subscriptions actually keep me pretty busy but I’m also into a lot of fiction. I really like McCarthy and Nabokov. I like non-fiction too though.
Do you want to say anything to wrap up?
I just want to emphasize that if people want Monks they can download that for free through our Bandcamp or find links on our website. It’s also on vinyl, if people like it, definitely get the vinyl. It sounds really good. Also, it’s been awhile since we’ve been to Charlottesville so we're looking forward to getting back there. Two nights, it should be a really good time, we hope to see a lot of people out on Saturday and Sunday.