News

Live & Listen's 'Bands You Should Know': Zoogma August 12, 2016 14:34

-

Live & Listen is pleased to continue a brand new weekly feature known as Bands You Should Know.  This new concept will highlight a different band each Friday with an interview, general background information, current happenings, as well as videos and audio from each band.  After nearly two years of various interviews and artist spotlights, we feel that installing a consistent weekly feature is the perfect move as we progress forward.

For our sixth edition of Bands You Should Know, we sat down with Justin Hasting (guitar/synthesizer) of Zoogma, a Nashville-based live-electronic band like no other.  This is one band that we've been fortunate enough to witness the steady progression from college bars to national festivals.  Zoogma crosses into multiple genres on nearly every tune, bringing elements of electronic blues, rock, and even hip-hop to the table.  This band continues to push boundaries with each album, and they show no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

Interview by Jordan Kirkland: Live & Listen
-
Let's start off by talking about the formation of Zoogma back in 2010.  Was there much experience amongst you guys playing together before things got officially rolling?
 -
Justin: Yeah.  We sort of jammed around town a bit in 2009 too, but even before that, my first band that I was ever a part of, which I joined about a month after getting to college, was with our drummer, Matt (Harris).  We found each other on Facebook.  It was a time when you were able to get Facebook when you became a freshman in college.  So I got Facebook, and I was just going through the music stuff.  I knew that I wanted to play music, and I saw an ad for a band looking for a guitar player.  
 -
I went and met up with them, and Matt was the drummer.  It was like a hill country blues band.  So we were playing North Mississippi Allstars and R.L. Burnside, and then other stuff like Grateful Dead and Phish.  We would go out and play bars around the area on the weekends.  So, that's sort of the new stuff we're working on now with Zoogma. It's kind of a 360 all the way back to that.  But yeah, me and Matt did that for a while and went to a couple of festivals and decided that there was some more stuff out there than the blues that we wanted to play.  It all sort of happened after that, and we met the right people.
 -
-
Photo by Zach Stone Photography
-
Very cool.  And this all began in Oxford, Mississippi at Ole Miss, right?
-
Justin: The band did start in Oxford. So, when we first started in early 2009, we were a five-piece, and every member of the band lived in Oxford.  Then after about a year a few of the guys moved and/or pursued family life. We knew Brock from Memphis and had him join after a few jam sessions, then we pulled in Ryan from his old band, Energy D, as a replacement on bass. Ryan had already heard half of the songs anyway, so he was an easy fit. That's more or less how it all kind of worked out.  
 
You guys blend a tremendous variety of genres together to create such a unique sound.  I know that the approach towards the live electronic aspect is different than a more traditional band.  How do you guys go about creating original music in such a unique way?
 -
Justin: Well, I think that the live electronic thing is such an interesting concept, you know?  If you're in a rock band, you're playing rock music.  If you're in a blues band, you're playing blues music.  If you're in a live electronic band, you're playing live electronic music, but what does that even mean?  I think that a lot of the diversity of our sound just comes from everyone's individual backgrounds.  We all sort of come from different places.  I think where we sort of agree is that we want the end result to be sort of newer sounding, which you can call that electronic, or whatever you want to call it.  There is always some type of sub genre going on with it, you know?  
 -
If you look at the music we've recorded over the years, at first it was a little more like this, then we did a little more of a rock thing.  We've done a bunch of remixes, and then this past one had a very funky, future kind of vibe.  The one we're about to put out is very much bluesy, in that element.  So, I think just figuring out ways to keep the electronic thing constant and evolving, but also figure out ways to make that also interesting.
-
Watch Zoogma's music video for "Molasses" here":
-

 -
I'm glad that you said that, because I feel like so many people tend to shut themselves off from certain genres before they have ever given it a chance.  I think that goes for all genres.  It's just really easy for someone to decide they don't like something if they have never even given it a chance.
 -
Justin:  Well, I think with electronic music, and it's just because it's had a short lifespan so far, a lot of people don't necessarily understand whats happening, or even how the sounds are being created.  Especially with the technologies that we have available to us now.  Anybody can go in and make something that sounds cool.  You don't have to have a music degree or even a lot of musical knowledge.  So, it's sort of hard to determine the musicianship on the electronic side from the stuff that people might criticize.  
 -
I think every genre has it's critics.  The electronic genre is definitely evolving though, and in a good way, to me.  I feel like a lot more people are jumping on the live thing in recent years.  You see Pretty Lights, Gramatik, Big Gigantic, and GRiZ all doing it.  All of these acts that are now incorporating more and more live elements into the show, because that's what people are wanting.  I think everyone is agreeing that you can still have electronic music while incorporating good musicianship with it that makes it even better.
 -
I agree.  I think the live element is what ultimately leads a lot of people towards stepping outside of what they are accustomed to listening to.  
 -
Justin:  Right.  Especially older generations, or even people that are our age.  It was just so new for us that I feel like a lot of people don't really grasp what's happening or how the sounds are created.  They just think to get a trap song or something, you just plug into a program and move some audio files around and it's there, you know?  Sometimes it can be done like that, but it's different.  
 -
-
Photo by Live Edit Labs
-
So, you mentioned the remix album that you guys released in June.  You guys collaborated with 12 different artists as a follow up to last year's New Era EP, right?  
 -
Justin: Yeah...so we put out New Era in late January, and we knew we wanted to do a remix thing.  So we started hitting people up, and we were really surprised that so many people were interested in doing it.  We thought we would get maybe 5 or 6 guys and maybe have two versions of each song, which would have been cool.  It turned out that we ended up getting like four of each track.  It was really cool, man.  You have a piece of music that you've written, and then you give all of the puzzle pieces to someone else and see how they put it all together and reinterpret everything.  It was pretty cool.
 -
I would imagine so.  You guys brought in Khris Royal, Modern Measure, Dynohunter...
-
Justin: Yeah...Unlimited Aspect, Vibe Street, Turbo Suit, Dalton Richmond, DELTAnine...man there were so many people on there, and they are all our good friends, too, which makes it even more fun. Khris Royal was actually a part of the original track, High_5, but definitely had his sax twisted and scew'd by everyone on the remix side (laughs). What a player that guy is.
 --
You mentioned something earlier about the band taking a bit of 360 degree turn and getting back to some of those earlier roots.  Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?
- -
Justin: Sure.  I think it was probably two years ago that we did this bluesy remix.  We always like to do things that are tied to the Southeast and some of the music we grew up with, whether it be a Three Six Mafia remix, Outkast, or whatever.  We did a remix of R.L. Burnside's "Let My Baby Ride," but we remixed it with a Young Buck track and dubbed it "Let My Shorty Ride."  We went back and rerecorded all of the musical parts to it and then produced the track.  It was more like trill-country blues, you know?  It had an electronic hill-country sound with live guitars/drums/bass.  That is still the most listened to, downloaded, everything track that we've ever done.  We thought, "You know...maybe we hit something there with that combination of genres."  
 -
So when we finish any record, we always sit back and think, "Ok, what now?"  There is never time to just chill for a while and not be recording anything.  We released New Era and needed to decide what was next.  We sort of revisited the blues thing; jamming on those kind of ideas, and writing songs like that.  They were just so easy to write.  It was really fun, because once we decided we were going to do that, we would go to record stores and pick up a bunch of old blues records, and pick out what we really liked about them.  I think we started to take some of the old ideas and concepts of the songs that we really liked and turned them into something that sounds a little more current. 
 --
That's really been a lot of fun, and like I said, the songs are just kind of writing themselves.  We'll come up with one part, and it kind of all unfolds from there.  It's like I was saying earlier, with live electronic music, you never really know technically what genre you're playing.  You decide to play a drum and bass song, and as a guitarist, you're thinking, "Oh, well all I have to do is play drum and bass guitar."  What is that? (laughs).  It's whatever you want it to be.  If you're going for something specific, like blues-electronic, you know to play blues guitar over this.  It's just a little more directional. 
-
It's nice to have a direction where you know you're going tonally or technically, just kind of keeping things going in a certain direction.  Not to say that the opposite is negative, we've done plenty of that (laughs), but you have to move in and out of direction, I think, in order for the undirected ideas to have some magic to them. But, these "future-blues" songs have been coming up really fast, and we're pretty stoked about it.  It's pretty groovin'.
-
Listen to Zoogma's "Let My Shorty Ride" here:
-
- -
Will you guys be getting back into the studio in the near future?
 -
Justin: Oh yeah.  Most of it is pretty close to being finished.  We are waiting on a couple of the mixes to come back.  We will probably release our first single in the next few weeks.  I think for this one, we're going to try and release it all piece by piece, instead of waiting to record five or six songs and putting them out together.  We're going to keep releasing each track over the course of however long (laughs) and just see how that goes. 
 -
I guess that really falls in line with how you guys have done things in the past.  All of your music is available for free on your website.  The band even advertises that. It seems like that strategy really makes sense with how you guys have approached this new age of the digital music world.
 -
Justin: Exactly.  It's always changing.  There are no rules anymore.  We could put out a 10-track record and maybe release three tracks beforehand, and most people will hear those three songs.  Maybe they'll hear one or two other ones when the record comes out. Then, you have three or four songs on the back end that people might not even get to.  That makes it feel like kind of a waste.  I feel like attention spans all point towards "have it now."  It's just crazy how it all kind of works now, so we've moved towards not giving people a whole bundle of stuff, but rather one thing at a time.  Keep doing that over a course of time and see how it goes.  
-
-
-
You hear a lot of bands going in that direction, especially with the fact that album sales are essentially extinct.  I know that creates many disadvantages and forces you guys to get creative in order to support yourself and make a living as a professional musician.  There must be some advantages as well though, just in terms of being able to get your music in front of so many people.
 -
Justin: That is very true too.  It used to be that you put out a record and try to figure out how to get it online, because it wasn't a big social network thing when we first started.  It was all about word of mouth.  Passing out CDs at festivals, gigs, or wherever.  Just getting your music into people's hands.  That's how we did it at first, and of course you can still do that now, but there are definitely other ways to accomplish it in a more digital sort of format.  It's always changing.
 -
You're right.  Most new vehicles don't even come with CD players anymore.  Thankfully, they have bluetooth, and that's the direction things are moving in.  It's crazy how different things are today.  I know that's frustrating for the avid CD collectors out there, but you can't blame the bands for not wanting to invest so much money into CDs that might not sell.
 -
Justin: Absolutely.  We made hard copies of our record that we put out two years ago, and we still have leftovers.  People still bought them initially, but Spotify blew up right after we put out that album.  Soundcloud was exploding too, along with all of these other types of media.  Like you were saying, I mean I have a six disc CD changer, but the CDs that I have in there have probably been in there for three years, and I haven't listened to them.  It's crazy, but it's fun.  You have to embrace it, and like you said, it kind of kicks you in the ass every once in a while and makes you focus on keeping current and creative.  It keeps your mind rolling.
 -
Listen to Zoogma's "Molasses (Unlimited Aspect Remix)" here:
-

_
Exactly...and it goes across the board far beyond the music industry.  It's just technology in general, you know?
 -
Justin: Oh yeah.  I've talked to a lot of journalists who have gone through the same thing, where they used to have great jobs as editors of magazines, and all that has disappeared, you know?  It's so many industries that reach people.  They have had to change their whole ideology and how they do things in order to accommodate to the new technology, and how it gets to everyone.
 -
So, kind of changing topics a little bit here, but I know that summertime is always super busy for you guys, with a steady mix of club dates as festival spots.  What have been a few of the highlights so far this year, and what are you guys most excited about moving forward?
- 
Justin:  It's been one crazy ass year in so many ways.  We did a tour earlier this spring with Turbo Suit, and those guys just recently broke up.  So, I would definitely say that a highlight for this year was really getting to know those guys before they called it quits.  They are some of my best friends now.  I'm really sad that they quit, but I'm also really excited that I was able to get to know those dudes really well.  We had some really amazing shows with them all over the country.  That was definitely a positive.
 -
Let's see.  In terms of festivals, getting to go back to Hangout Festival this year was amazing.  I got to see a lot of bands that I had been wanting to see for a long time, as well as bands that I've never taken the time to really listen to.  That's one thing I really like about that festival.  Most of the festivals that we play are pretty centric on jam and electronic music.  Most of them are about 75% of the same bands and DJs every time.  You get to festivals like Hangout, and 75% of the lineup is people you've either never heard of or never seen live.  So that was a real treat, just to walk around and hear a bunch of unfamiliar stuff.  It's always cool to hear what else is out there. 
 -
Where else did we play?  SweetWater 420 Fest in Atlanta was another highlight that we have always wanted to do.  Summer Camp was awesome again this year.  That was probably my favorite time we have ever had there honestly.  Where else did we play? I feel like I'm missing a couple, but I will say that I am looking forward to getting to Backwoods Festival in Oklahoma in September.  I haven't spent a lot of time there, but it sounds like it's going to be a really cool festival.  The lineup is massive.  
 -
I'm definitely excited about next weekend in Birmingham.  That last time we were in Birmingham...I think we had one of the biggest crowds we've had in years there, and it was raging.  We're stoked to get back there.  That's also the night before we do an official Umphrey's McGee afterparty in Nashville.  They're doing a symphony show at the amphitheater, and then we're doing the official afterparty.  Hopefully we can get some of those guys to come out.  We should have some other really fun special guest type things to do.  It's gonna be a fun night.  
 -
People at the Birmingham show will definitely get to hear a lot of this new stuff that we're getting to put out.  Also, we have our first headlining show coming up at The Ogden in Denver.  I'm really looking forward to that.  Denver has always sort of been a home away from home for us.  I think it is for a lot of people, just because the music scene thrives so much there.  That's one of those places where we've been able to keep growing at a consistent and steady pace.  The Ogden show is definitely something we've all been wanting to do for a long time now.
 ---
-
-
That's awesome.  That has to be a great feeling to work your way up to one of the premier venues in Denver after playing out there so many times over the years.  
 -
Justin: Definitely.  We've had people that said, "Yeah you guys won't play there anytime soon.  It's just not in the cards."  We wanted to at least try to do it though.  People said no, but those people aren't working with us anymore (laughs).  Now we're doing it, so it's a great feeling.  It's the little things when people say that you can't do something, and you prove to them that you can.  It happens a lot in this industry, honestly (laughs).
 -
Well, before we wrap this up, here's something on a little more of a fun note.  How do you guys typically like to spend your free time when you have a break from the studio and life on the road?
-
Justin: It's kind of hard to stay away from music, you know?  Living in Nashville, or atleast three of us do, we definitely go see a lot of great music here.  This past week, I got a little turbo and went to see Boston, which was fucking awesome.  Then, I saw Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy the night after, which was also mind blowing.  We're all pretty big food people, and we all love whiskey.  We do a lot of cookouts, and we live in the same general vicinity.  We'll go to each others houses, have parties, drink good bourbon, and just enjoy each other's company.  
-
It's one of those things though, like we were talking about with the whole industry nowadays.  We don't ever really stop.  You just have the right times to not get burnt out, obviously.  There's always something.  I came home from Werk Out and had my birthday on Monday, and then we're hitting the studio on Tuesday.  We're getting back in the swing of things and trying to finish that.  Next weekend, we'll go play the shows.  It's always happening, you know?
-
It's important to always get out and see new music.  That goes a long way towards inspiring new, creative ideas.  Like you said, you have to stay current and on top of what's going on.  
 -
Justin: Yeah, yeah...exactly.  We're just like everybody else.  We just want to go eat good food, have drinks, and see music...when we aren't the ones who have to play.  Seeing things that can inspire you or enjoying the company of your friends that you don't get to see all of the time.  
-
It's gotta be nice to just be a fan every once in a while.  Did you have a chance to catch that Twerkapod set the other night at The Werk Out?
-
Justin:  Oh yes...I was there.  That was so much fun.  It was funny too, because I was hanging out with those guys during the daytime, and that set was at like 3:00 AM.  I was talking to them earlier in the day, and those guys are always super professional, but I've never seen them all so focused and concentrated.  You look at the setlist and think, "Man...a 90's tribute.  That's hilarious."  Then, you think about the fact that you had three bands, with that many members.  They had to decide on a setlist.  Then you have to have different people on every song.  You have to learn an entire set of songs.  
-
It's just a lot of work that goes into doing something like that, and they did it flawlessly.  It was just funny to see, because it's these three bands that play this awesome, progressive music, and they're all super focused and nervous about playing a 90's alt rock set (laughs).  That was awesome.  They killed it.  It was too much fun, and we were all kind of celebrating my birthday that night, so that was a great way to cap off the night.
-
-