Releasing one of the year’s premier electronic-music albums, pursuing an epic tour schedule spanning Coachella to Lollapalooza to Ultra – apparently all that wasn’t enough for The Glitch Mob. If anything, it’s just proven to be the beginning… The Los Angeles-based trio comprising Justin Boreta, Ed Ma, and Joshua Mayer continues their movement into 2011, gearing up to commence on June 23rd one of the group’s most involved tours ever, as well as release some of their most innovative new music yet. It’s all a triumphant extension of the excitement that followed upon last year’s release of Drink The Sea, the Mob’s debut artist album, which rose to unexpected heights amidst already heightened expectations, with fans following as the band pushed into uncharted boundaries, yet still emerging victorious.
Put out via The Glitch Mob’s own Glass Air imprint, Drink The Sea represented the group’s growth up from the underground into a full widescreen vision. From the cosmic cover art by Sonny Kay (famed for his haunting imagery for Mars Volta) to the cathartic, psychedelic, unclassifiable grooves it holds inside, Drink The Sea would launch a whole new phase in the group’s evolution upon its 2010 worldwide release. The album’s first single, “Drive It Like You Stole It,” sped to the top of the most popular songs on Hype Machine's charts, clearing the road for a number of successes to follow. Drink The Sea would land at #15 in its first week on the Billboard Dance Chart, while the Mob became the #1 most added on CMJ’s “RPM” charts, debuting in the top ten. Drink The Sea would also rise into iTunes’ top Electronic Album charts, hitting #1 numerous times throughout the year, and still maintaining its position within the top 20 today, cementing it as one of the year’s best-selling independent electronic albums. That success allowed The Glitch Mob to perform headlining tours built around major international festival appearances that, in addition to Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Ultra, spanned Sasquatch, Camp Bisco, Electric Daisy Carnival, Electric Zoo and Nocturnal Wonderland as well as Wireless Festival in the U.K. and Parklife in Australia. “After writing Drink The Sea, we spent a lot of time touring – two national tours, Europe, and Australia,” Boreta says. “While on the road, we were bursting with inspiration and ideas for the next phase in the evolution of our sound.”
This was the year where The Glitch Mob learned the expanse and commitment of its community like never before when the band initiated a wide-ranging charity project via Drink The Sea’s ambitious remix project to benefit post-earthquake Haiti. Over two volumes, landmark artists such as King Britt, DJ Vadim, Eprom, Salva, ESKMO, and Kastle, among others, remixed Drink The Sea’s original material into 24 tracks to sell through Download To Donate and Causecast, ingenious charities started by Linkin Park to bring funds via music to aid tragedies around the globe. “That was a milestone for us – our first foray into getting our music involved with a cause we believe in,” Boreta said. “We realized there's no better time than the present to use the power of music to create awareness.”
The Glitch Mob supplemented this activity with a series of staggering remixes for other artists, including an official remix commissioned for Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy Reconfigured project, joining the likes of Moby, M83, Boys Noize, Com Truise, Photek, and Pretty Lights. Other recent official Glitch Mob remixes included those for TV on the Radio, Linkin Park, and Ed Banger’s Krazy Baldhead; those tracks, along with original material from Drink The Sea, found themselves in key placements for television shows (“CSI,” “Damages,” “America’s Got Talent”), film (Captain America, Tim Burton’s “9”), and commercials for GoPro and Fiat, among others, injecting Glitch Mob’s subversive presence into mainstream pop culture. As such, The Glitch Mob similarly tweaked expectations in mixtape mode with the follow-up to their beloved 2009 Crush Mode (“Grab the Crush Mode mixtape. One of the first things to really get my blood going,” raved New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones). For 2010, the Mob collaborated with clothing line Mishka to present Drink The Sea Part II, which featured familiar acapella raps and vocal samples from the likes of Jay-Z, Nas, Lil Wayne, Drake, Dr. Dre, Mobb Deep, Fabolous, Young Jeezy, La Roux, M.I.A. and Daft Punk tailored to Glitch Mob beats. “We explored a lot of new techniques musically and technically,” Boreta says of the post-Drink The Sea projects. “They also effectively served as a creative exercise in envisioning where the next album will go.”
After all this banner activity, The Glitch Mob is gearing up yet again. This summer finds them preparing to release some of its most groundbreaking new music and commence yet another tour that, in its multimedia production and sonic gambits, takes everything that the band has done onstage to new levels. On July 5th Glitch Mob will release a double-sided single – a salvo for the group’s upcoming full-length in 2012 that features moody synths, vocoder funk, and heraldic melody and body-moving percussion, all imbued with fractured longing and melancholy amidst the slamming rhythms. “We took what we learned from Drink The Sea and ran in a new direction that felt right to us,” Boreta explains. “Over those two tracks, we wanted to explore two very different feelings while keeping them in the same world – creating songs that are immersive in a live environment, but really make a great headphone listen, too.” Even before that, Glitch Mob begins a summer tour on June 23rd that finds it both finding communion with its strongest following while exploring untapped zones to build in even newer, fresher audiences. “We love performing,” Boreta notes. “We were so inspired from spending so much time on stage last year that this will be our first attempt to materialize everything we learned.” America and beyond: you have been warned….
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