The Conscious Sound: Interview with IndigoSun

Musician’s Physician) at his office. He happened to be treating Scamp 14 act IndigoSun, giving me the chance to sit down with the psychedelic dance music trio. IndigoSun is: Kyle Liss – keys/synth/laptop Steve Florian – drums Mike Cantella – bass You guys just released a new album, A Love Song for the Human Race, described as “neo-soul,” “neo-R&B,” mixed with hip-hop. What exactly does that mean to you? Kyle: What we wanted to do with this project was dig more into genres that are closer to our hearts, but what we don’t necessarily do as much of. So one of those is “neo-soul,” which is an existing genre description. What it means for me is soul music influences with that kind of vibe but with modern harmonic. So like chord changes that come from a little more tempered jazz and that’s where the harmonic influence comes from. The rest of the music reflects from a more soulful, prophetic place mixed in with some hip-hop beats. Hip-hop was my first musical love as a middle-schooler . So exploring that was a huge blast. I’m actually rapping on the record a couple times. I’ve never done that before so doing that was super fun and I’ve been doing it on the stage the past month. So for people hearing us for the first time will be like “oh, they’re doing this too.” So that’s just a blast to delve into a genre that’s always meant so much into me and a part of my musical personality. Mike: I think for the first time we are being a little more true to our influences. The music itself is still very unique to us, but we’re letting a little more of our influences come through. The prefix to me means that traditional elements of soul and r and b music, now in the era of technology, synthesizers, Ableton, all this production in the modern age- it takes those really good feeling elements and foundation for grooves and rhythms of r b and hip-hop and infuses them with this new energy of futuristic sounding energy from the tambours of the synthesizers. Taking stuff that feels really good already and adding a layer of that makes it sound more futuristic. Steve: It was an idea we had for a while to do these other styles that we really like but aren’t normally integrated into our sound. Especially Kyle and Mike who are more into the hip-hop… I actually used to listen to death metal. It’s been interesting hanging out with these guys being introduced to all these cool music I otherwise wouldn’t have heard before. I really enjoyed doing the production of it which was different than other albums we’ve done. Especially the drums for me. There’s a track where the drums are totally electronic. I went and produced all the beats and worked on it. It makes you play different, it’s a different vibe. It’s cool doing the electronic production of a drum line beats – things that sound different than playing it on a drum kit. IndigoSun recently became a trio. How has that transition changed your style of music? Kyle: Lucas was our saxophonist for many years and he used to go to Berkely College of Music in Boston, and while he was away in school, we would be a trio which was most of the time. We were only a quartet for a few years over winter and summer breaks. So the rest of the times we were a trio. When he graduated college he became a full-time member, we traveled with him for about a year and a half, and he just recently moved to New York to work for Jay-Z’s blog, so he’s making music for them right now. It’s been a really interesting transition, and we feel really good to be honest. We wrote a lot of new music for the trio, and a lot of that is geared towards our future jazz / fusion / neo-soul kind of direction that’s a little more gospel, lyrical music. The electronic production that I do comes to the core a little more. We feel really good and a lot of our fans of echoed that which is great to hear. It’s been about 6 months now and we feel really good. Mike: It gives us more space. With more space comes more of a relaxed environment, where we can really focus on what the other people in the group are playing and respond to it naturally. The space is conducive to being more comfortable for me on stage, and communicating. Steve: It’s been really nice. I was pretty nervous about it as it was happening – Lucas was kind of our front man on the sax – such a cool sound. But what we’ve done now, I really like it. It’s more focused while at the same time allowing us to step out a bit more. It feels cool. And it’s a little closer to our jazz roots, not in the music itself, as we’re still doing electronic dance funk, but the interaction of it – it feels like a power trio in a very modern take. I feel like the live shows feel more electric now. So being a trio, with drums, keyboards, and bass, what is it like being a touring act without the guitar? How does it define you guys and make your sound unique? Kyle: I think it does just that! Of course we love that sound, and in terms of doing live electronica, that’s a very common instrumentation – keys / laptop, guitar, bass, drums. And I think because of not having that really sets out a little bit more, and allow us to have a more spacious, electronic production happen. It’s more unique so I think overall it lets our music be a more unique. Mike: It’s not an intentional thing, we’re definitely not prejudice against guitars; we love guitars. But we felt like it was good just with the instrumentation that we already have – never felt the need to add a guitar player because it wasn’t there from the beginning. But we still value the strings; I think the organic nature of string instrumentation has a place in music. So I stepped up and purchased a 6-string bass to have that higher range guitar frequency range. So I can record more things and do some soloing stuff up high that creates the higher guitar sound. Steve: Guitar is such a prominent, great instrument – it’s hard to find a band that doesn’t have one- so right off the bat it gives us a different sound. It really allows synth and the keyboards to really shine which is a huge part of our sound. Crafting the synthesizer sound has infinite possibilities – it gives the music a different element that it’s so synth-driven, keyboard driven, some really cool textures. I enjoy it, and then it’s really fun when we do jam with a guitarist, because guitarists are awesome and then we get to really shred and it’s like “Oh, we sound like Umphrey’s for this track.” You’ve played at the last 2 Summer Camps, ’13 and ’12, and will be returning again this year for the 3^rd time. How’s it feel to be a continued part of the Summer Camp line-up and being asked back again? Kyle: Man, it feels so phenomenal. It’s actually gonna be 6^th year in a row personally being at Scamp. Our 3^rd playing. For me, I went to Bonnaroo in ’08 and Scamp in ’09. It feels a lot like home to me, always been one of my favorite festivals. This year we were in the first wave of artist announcements for the first time so that was a great honor to be included in that group of some of our favorite artists like Lettuce, Beats Antique, Lotus, Orgone, The Motet – all artists we really respect and are honored to be mentioned with. Mike: It’s forward movement, progressing and being recognized. Makes us feel like home, being invited back, not like we’re venturing into something new but returning home which feels good. We try to capture that a lot in our music, “returning home.” Steve: It’s great cause it’s so close to home – everyone in the Midwest goes to Summer Camp. We have so many good memories being there, ya know – a lot of our fans come, “Indigo Family” as we call it. The energy is so great, and it’s a 2 way street, we vibe so much off what the crowd is giving us and at Summer Camp they’re really into it and it gets better and better. You brought up Lotus – two albums ago, Behind Closed Eyes, featured Mike Rempel on a few tracks. How did that relationship start up and what it’s like to be a fan of their band and then connect together like that? Kyle: I’ve been to maybe 28 Lotus shows. They were the first band in the scene I really fell in love with. I came from a jazz background and we went to see them, I really liked the whole dance music thing – it clicked for me – the live electronica – and so I went to so many shows, including a Lotus side-project called Ghost Steppers came to Chicago and IndigoSun played with them at this place called the Kinetic Playground. Then the next night I went to see Lotus at Schubas and Mike and I ended up talking. He’s such a great, down-to-Earth dude, a really cool guy, and he was just getting started with his solo project. He noticed I was Ableton, and we kept in touch talking about Ableton. When they were in Chicago we got together a few times and showed each other our productions, he was doing his solo stuff that was really really cool. In the last few years he’s been breaking out doing that. He played at Rootwire last year and has been doing some yoga stuff that’s super cool. So yeah we were hanging out in Chicago and eventually he told me something like ‘hey, ya know, if you ever need a guitar for your record I would love to be involved,” and we were just about to go into the studio so I sent him my Ableton sessions, he recorded it into his laptop on the road and we just took what he did and incorporated it into our studio. So it worked out really well and to be able to collaborate with him was awesome and we appreciate that from him. Is it fair for fans to hope for Mike to sit-in during your set at Summer Camp? Kyle: We’d love to bring Mike back to the stage with us, though it will depend on the timing of our two bands’ sets and whether he’ll still be at the festival when we play. So we can’t make any promises this far out, but we’ll definitely do our best to get him to sit-in! Thanks so much for chatting here, guys! We’re very much looking forward to Summer Camp!      ]]>