While everyone in the record industry is scrambling trying to figure out how music can continue to exist in a bleak future, LA’s ediT and his group, The Glitch Mob, aren’t scared. For them, music will continue to live as it always has.
“It's not just something that you pop into your CD player and nod your head to,” he says. “The Glitch Mob is something that is best experienced with an insane sound system, a sold-out crowd going bananas, and a positive vibe in the air.”
That’s how I heard the Mob for the first time. Not on YouTube, not on MySpace, not on mp3. I saw them play a show, with an insane sound system and everybody going bananas. One thought stood out in my mind while I watched hundreds of kids losing their minds: This is the what the future sounds like.
The Mob makes huge synth-based hip-hop beats and mangles them in real time. Hearing it live can make you feel like you’ve just stepped out of a time machine and somehow ended up at the coolest party ever. There’s some kind of transformative aspect to the environment that makes people more adventurous. “I think no matter how complex or avant-garde music is, it will find its way to a mass audience as long it's good. We are not necessarily trying to be avant-garde or different. This just happens to be our sound, and it happens to be dance music.” It’s music with a social function.
“We are definitely trying to use our music to unite the masses. Even if it's just for an hour and half we offer an experience and a space where one can forget about their everyday lives and troubles and just let loose on the dance floor. Hopefully they will be inspired to do something positive. Whether that means making their first track, or a sick piece of art, or making a bunch of friends at the show and starting a cause. Whatever it means to them, or whatever they take away from the show, we are hoping that it's something positive.”
Isn’t that what music is supposed to be about? Where iPods and headphones have turned music into something private, a way to escape people, bands like The Glitch Mob are making music to bring people together.
Jamie Thompson currently makes music as The Small is Beautiful and has been a member of Islands, Unicorns and Juiced Elfers.
