Pretty Lights makes music that bangs and snaps with freshness and legitimacy. The Colorado-based producer creates electronic compositions that are perfect for the dance floor and ideal for headphones. And he’s doing it all out of his loft — not in LoDo, but Fort Collins.
Pretty Lights is responsible for some of the freshest sounds in contemporary electronic music/hip-hop today, and yet the act’s sole member and producer still has memories of wanting to be the next Steely Dan.
“I wanted to do what Steely Dan did,” Derek Vincent Smith recalled earlier this week from a sound check in Tennessee. “I wanted to make a studio record and make people see how dope it is — and then I wouldn’t tour until all my shows sold out.”
The reality isn’t that far off. Pretty Lights will release its third CD — “Passing By Behind Your Eyes” — on Oct. 6, and most of Smith’s September gigs are sold out, including two of three Colorado shows: Both Thursday at the Fox Theatre in Boulder and Friday at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins are sold out; Saturday’s date at Denver’s Ogden Theatre still has tickets available.
Smith’s “sample collages” are born from the DJ Shadow school of composition. Smith gathers unusual slices of sound from a smorgasbord of vinyl records and manipulates them into a unique song.
“As I got started manipulating the music in that way and exploring that art form, I realized the potential and creativity and possibility involved,” Smith said. “The biggest piece for me, when it comes to sampling, is using the samples I find in new ways, whether that means I’m rearranging the melodies or using the technology in ways to manipulate it and turn it into something new.”
At the speed of free
The result is addictive, as heard in the fan-favorite “Hot Like Sauce” and the club- ready “Sunday School.”
And did we mention that Smith gives it all away for free on his website? Prettylights has been home to free album downloads since his first record, “Taking Up Your Precious Time,” debuted in 2006 — before Radiohead’s pay-what-you-can experiment.
“I could have stopped that after I had 100,000 downloads,” he said. “But I didn’t want to do that.”
Smith remembers the day his website jumped from 200 downloads per day to 10,000. It coincided with sets at some of this summer’s biggest music festivals, including Bonnaroo, Rothbury, 10,000 Lakes, Forecastle, Electric Daisy, High Sierra and Camp Bisco.
But before Smith was seeing 150,000 downloads, he was a teenager in Fort Collins having his mind blown by Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” After first delving into grunge and punk, he bought a bass guitar, knowing he wanted to make music.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Wu-Tang Clan were Smith’s entry to a high school obsession with underground hip-hop. Soon he found himself at raves in Denver and Colorado Springs listening to Aphrodite, DJ Dan and Bad Boy Bill.
“It was right around then when I wondered, ‘How the (expletive) are these people making this music? How is this stuff made?’ ” Smith said.
As a freshman at CU Boulder, Smith was “making beats in my dorm room more than I was making class.” At the end of his freshman year in 2001, he dropped out of CU with a 3.9 grade-point average.
These days, as he contemplates a prominent headlining tour of the West Coast and the anticipated release of his third album, Smith is embracing his chosen career. And while he’s excited to debut “Passing By Behind Your Eyes” to his fans, he emphasizes that this one isn’t his great opus.
“If I had time to sit down and make the sick record I want to make, this wouldn’t be that record. This record is more like a record along the way,” he says. “It’s showing how Pretty Lights is developing, and it’s part of the whole revolution.
“I like it, but I’m anxious to make my ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ next.”
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
