Camp Counselor Kyle Explores EOTO's All Live, All Improvised Sound

EOTO is a Summer Camp favorite, having played the festival every year since 2009. As a fan of theirs, I was thrilled to learn they’d be returning again this Memorial Day Weekend for Summer Camp’s 15th year! EOTO is an electronic act made up of String Cheese Incident memberss Michael Travis and Jason Hann. The duo’s performances consist of a little bit of everything musically, with sounds ranging from dubstep to Drum and Bass, Hip-Hop to Electronic Fuzz, and everything in between! They also add a unique twist to all of this – all EOTO shows are 100% live and 100% improvised! How many electronic acts can say that? With so many electronic acts touring with top-notch visual production these, true pure improv is a genuinly rare thing in EDM. Many of today’s acts have their audio and visuals so perfectly timed and cued that there is no room for improv at all, let alone the flexibility to create an entirely new set from scratch night after night. That’s what’s so special about EOTO – not only do they have all the energy of any electronic act out there and outstanding visual production to boot, but no two shows are similar! They are the snowflake of the electronic music industry. Fun fact – EOTO originally stood for “End of Time Observatory”, with the members pronouncing it as E-O-T-O, soon letting it blur to “EeOhToe”. If you haven’t seen EOTO before, check out this awesome clip of their 2013 Summer Camp appearance on the Moonshine Stage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Towtg5wiqgc For those curious about their craft, EOTO isn’t shy about sharing what they do on stage and how they do it. Technically speaking, the equipment they use is 2 MacBook Pro computers MIDI synched together, Ableton Live running on each computer, Propellerhead Reason software, Jazz Mutant Lemur Multi Touch pad, 2 Behringer BCR 2000 MIDI controllers, Juno 106 keyboard, Nord lead keyboard, Korg MS 2000 keyboard, Korg Kaos pad, Korg Pad Kontrol, 5 string P Bass, Les Paul Custom Guitar, ONYX 12 Channel mixing board, 2 Behringer Xenyx 502 mixing boards, netgear ethernet hub, Paiste Cymbals and last but not least, Pearl Drums.   Check out this video with Michael and Jason walking through the steps of what they do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAuq00Ze-Gw I was lucky enough to be able to catch EOTO in Buffalo, NY on March 14th and as usual, they put on awesome show. If the experience was any preview of what they have in store for us at this years Summer Camp, we are in for a treat!