(aka Colorado’s Derek Vincent Smith) can’t stop working — even while on a well-deserved vacation. Since coming on the EDM scene in proper back in 2006, he’s made good with eight releases, all the while touring restlessly around the world. Last year, aside releasing “A Color Map Of The Sun,” nominated for Best Electronica/Dance Album at the 2014 Grammys, and its remix album, Smith embarked on his Analog Future tour, which had him performing with a five-piece live band.
Reverb caught up with Smith during his long-overdue break in California. But it hasn’t been all boat drinks and fish tacos: He’ll return to Colorado this weekend with a brand new set of music for the Snowball music festival.
Your publicist set up the interview in Pacific time — where are you right now?
I’m on the west coast. I came out here for the Grammys and some other things were happening having to do with a new project that I’m working on. It made sense to chill out here for a little bit. I needed a vacation.
You’ll be performing at your third Snowball in the festival’s four-year history. You’re like the Godfather of Snowball at this point.
Yeah I guess I have played three out of four years — pretty crazy. I’m stoked about the fact that the fourth year has changed a bit. I really enjoyed it up in Winter Park and Avon, so with the recent changes that have been going on in Colorado and the difference in the weather, and the fact that snowboarding during the day is still highly accessible…I was pretty stoked when I heard Snowball would be changing to the city and a little later . Because Denver’s never had a festival like this. Urban, spring time, legal herb. What more could you ask for?
There’s pros and cons, but I definitely see a large amount of pros in the switch. There’s a lot of ideas tossed around to make it more of a winter sports thing. Big air, snowboarding jumps on the site, snow machines if it’s not already snowing. I’m not sure what’s been decided on, but I know there’s a good effort going on to make the vibe of the festival proper.
I take it you’re pretty intimately involved with the festival.
I think that’s kind of a misconception, as far as my involvement in the organizing or curating. I know that an artist said something like that, but I think the word “curate” needs to be clarified.I wasn’t gonna do Snowball at first but I ended up jumping on and wanting to take part in it because I’ve had so much fun in the past and I believe in it and I see the pros of the switch (to Denver).
It also created a challenge for me. I wouldn’t normally play in Denver twice in four months. I , and now I’m playing Snowball in April. I wouldn’t normally do that, but when I was sitting down thinking about what , I realized that it was essentially me thinking that I wouldn’t have a fresh enough show to put on four months later. Especially with a vacation in between. That served as a motivational challenge for me to step it up. Even though I’m playing four months from New Year’s Eve, I was very confident in being able to pull together a completely new show that’s worth seeing and that will really rock the festival.
Doesn’t sound like you’ve had much time for relaxing out there.
It was shorter than I anticipated. I’m always working on new music even when I’m not supposed to be.
What can you say about the new set you’ve put together for Snowball?
For my last tour, I played with a five-piece band on top of what I was doing. One thing I did on that tour, we had two hours that we called soundcheck, but was really writing time. I would come with ideas to soundcheck and we had a recording set up. We were constantly recording. We had a recording session on tour literally every day through proper gear I brought to make sure it sounded dope.
I wanted to continue to have that element in the show, but in a more produced way. So I figured I’d change the lineup and added in my good friend Chris Karns, formerly DJ Vajra, who’s a world-champion turntablist. We worked amazingly together, where I could throw him some samples from tracks and actually produce something live. He could drop samples of the horns my band had been playing and cut them up in new ways.
He’ll essentially be using his turntablism skills to take elements of what my band had been playing on Pretty Lights tracks and take pieces of the new material we wrote to manipulate them in a new way. It’s gonna be like a wide-remixed version of the Pretty Lights Analog Future band with a lot of new music. I just saw so much potential in the lineup of a live drummer, myself and a turntablist that can manipulate beautifully and on the fly.
The driving force was to push live music production, to see where it could go—to keep the improvisational element with it becoming loose and noodley. And keep it super hip-hop—I want to make it a dope hip-hop set.
DJing gets reduced down to just pressing buttons by its detractors. It sounds like you’re trying to find a way to make it as live as possible.
It’s very true. There’s been some confusion among people who aren’t familiar with my music or shows. I’ve never been a “hit play” producer or performer. I’m pushing to integrate new elements and technology and arrange music on the fly and perform it on the fly. I want to push that even further, where I’m taking all of it and actually doing live chopping and having preset templates for a live loop and be able to cut it up.
I haven’t been referring to Chris Karns as a DJ even though that’s what he would typically be called, because his role in the lineup is turn table skills. He’s really gonna be a turntablist. We won’t even put it through the soundboard — it’ll be through stereo guitar amps to turn it into a warm sounding instrument.
What can you tell us about the new project you said you were working on out there?
My last record, “A Color Map Of The Sun,” I went into with massive ideas and became very much about the story. We made a documentary about it because it was so cool how it went down. At the end of it, it felt like a practice run. I’m sure all artists have thought after an album is done. I wanted to do something better.
I’m starting a project where I’m not abandoning the approach of my last record—I’m expanding it. I’ve had one recording session so far where I’ve brought my whole crew out to Shangri-La studios in California and we just worked for a week straight. We used an incredible variety of instruments, invested a lot in rare and antique instruments so I can really capture the diversity of timbre, sound and era that I have in my head. bring together the best parts of the last 100 years of musical style and evolution. I’ve opted to not set limitations on myself. The jumping off point for this project has been far beyond the ending point of last project, which has been incredibly exciting. It’s immediately dope, and it’s only gonna get better.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s all-purpose news blogger and album reviewer. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
