Drop Electric
In about two hours, Neel Singh would be perched in a power stance atop the stage at The Fillmore Silver Spring, slicing against the strings of his Les Paul with a violin bow. He would be generating sounds plenty of human beings have never heard before, with Technicolor lights flashing and a projector popping trippy art house scenes on a screen behind him. He would be losing his mind in front of people — friends and strangers alike — playing music he helped create.
It was all going to happen soon on the night of Oct. 3. But at that moment, Singh and the rest of the Washington-based rock-meets-electronic-pop group Drop Electric needed food. And they needed it fast.
“You can go out, but you can’t bring them back in,” snapped a woman in a blue employee shirt guarding the front of the venue, pointing to a few noncredentialed friends they had in the pack as they tried to shuffle by. Singh looked at her for a moment before he said, “We can’t? Oh, okay,” and turned back to his bandmates.
Drop Electric is still a local band and its sincerity is clear as day. On that night, they seemed to feel truly grateful to everyone who’s ever helped them land an opportunity like headlining this show at The Fillmore in Silver Spring. But while they’re polite, they’re not pushovers.
After being shut down by the gruff woman at the door (“What makes you think you have escort power?” she barked), the band congregated near the sound board. They spoke quietly for a few minutes before hushing and then herding to a back door at the left of the stage that led through basement dressing rooms to a parking lot behind the venue.
In 40 minutes, the same group emerged from the same door, smiling and with full stomachs.
Drop the electronica
Almost as soon as Singh and his St. Mary’s College buddy Ramtin “Ramsey” Arablouei started Drop Electric in 2009, they were writing the electronic-esque tunes that would eventually end up on 2010’s Finding Color in the Ashes. Self-released, the album helped lay a foundation for the band as a contender in a Washington music scene craving a breakout group to call its own.
Late in 2010, lead vocalist and 2009 university alumna Kristina Reznikov joined the ranks, kickstarting a process of sonic evolution the band shows no signs of stopping. Its new LP Waking Up to the Fire, released today on Lefse Records, is different from anything Drop Electric has previously released.
“If we have an opportunity to make another album and have it out on a label, it probably won’t sound like this one,” Arablouei said. He already predicts that a hypothetical next album would clock in a notch heavier, likely tapping into rock sounds more than Waking Up to the Fire does.
The main reason Drop Electric won’t settle on a sound is because its members consider themselves tinkerers almost as much as musicians. In their Bethesda house, Singh, Arablouei and Reznikov spend hours wrenching and squeezing sounds out of various instruments in their home studio to match what they hear in their heads. Because they also have a practice space and plenty of instruments, Arablouei said, “Everything is done there; it’s kind of like the clubhouse.”
“We basically sit behind Ramsey and go, ‘No!’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Yeah do that, that sounds good!’” Reznikov said of Arablouei, the band’s live drummer and the house engineer. While he handles much of the technical side of recording, Drop Electric’s writing process is an organic and collaborative one in which the traditional chords-plus-lyrics model is abandoned in favor of discovering a bracing sound and building out from it. Songs occasionally feel foreign but never formulaic.
This resistance to easy classification has been something of a nuisance in the past. When the group was first starting out, music critics and listeners labeled them a post-rock band or even EDM, neither of which fit the band members’ self-perceptions. It’s indicative of where Drop Electric is: both blessed and cursed to not have found themselves securely in any one area yet.
“Call us post-apocalyptic,” Reznikov said, her expression half-serious, half-joking.
“It doesn’t bother us,” Arablouei added. “If someone calls us electronic, who cares? At least they’re calling us something. Well, I mean, if someone called us country, I’d scratch my head a little.”
No beards, no problem
After the Fillmore show, Sho Fujiwara was ecstatic — and not just because the set went smoothly. “Holy [expletive], I got the last beer!” he announced with mock-childlike excitement, pulling his hand from a cooler full of ice water in the dressing room.
Fujiwara has been playing keyboards and guitar for Drop Electric since he joined in 2010. He and band member Navid Marvi (guitar/bass) played a crucial role in filling out the sound. Adding to their tonal contributions, the two also lend to the band’s cultural diversity, a characteristic uncommon in an indie music scene they see as saturated by white men.
“We’re not like hipsters; the skinny white dudes with beards,” said Arablouei, who was born in Iran. “We’re not a typical indie band. We’re not like … what’s that one really [expletive] popular bluegrass, kind-of-rock band from England?”
“Mumford,” Reznikov said.
“Yeah, Mumford & Sons. We’re not that band, we don’t look like those people, and sometimes that makes people less into us.”
“I kind of have a beard,” Reznikov suggested, running her fingers along her chin.
“No. You don’t.”
The band also goes against the cultural grain by featuring a female lead singer. While this dynamic is less common in their musical domain, they believe it works to their advantage. Reznikov belted out notes at this Fillmore show that sailed through the venue like those of Victoria Legrand of Beach House — but with more rock and less dream pop. She said she hasn’t experienced any overt discrimination and any problems she’s faced have been within the band.
“Being a girl lead singer is hard,” she said. “Because these guys drive me insane.”
Almost famous
To this day, the closest Drop Electric has gotten to stardom is when NPR’s Bob Boilen came to a show and found himself wooed by their 2012 single “Empire Trashed.” Boilen called their music “epic and cinematic,” featured the song on his radio show and opened a door to future success in the industry.
Trying to capitalize on the buzz, the band set out to make a new record following Finding Color in the Ashes. They did but failed to find a label and now stands as the album that almost was. But that’s not a knock on its quality.
“It’s all my friends play in their cars,” Reznikov said.
With the release of Waking Up to the Fire, the band’s expectations are more realistic. “We’re just trying to be zen about it,” Arablouei said. “If you have too many expectations, you may get disappointed in this industry.”
Despite the levelheadedness of its members, Drop Electric is confident the album will provide a long-awaited step up. The members listed a booking agent, a summer tour and some attention from reputable indie music outlets like Pitchfork as what they hope to gain from the album’s release today.
“We don’t want it to make us world-famous; we just want people to hear it,” Arablouei said.
Above all else, music is a proactive venture of passion for Drop Electric. All their music is written and mastered by the group, and the music videos they use to accompany songs, even during live performances, are handled by independent filmmakers such as Brooklyn-based director Christopher Michael Beer. They prefer to keep things in-house.
After the show, several band members and friends lounged around the dressing room drinking the last few beers and talking about things like how realistic Grand Theft Auto V’s gameplay is. Eventually, a man walked in, introduced himself to Arablouei and handed him a white envelope.
“I’m sorry it’s not more,” he said. “I just wanted to give you thousands and thousands of more dollars and…”
“Don’t worry, man,” Arablouei cut in. “We didn’t do it for the money. This is just exciting for us.”
