It’s not for everyone, but Zoogma’s mix of the physical and digital has earned it a growing following.
Last summer, Mississippi-based live-electronic jam band Zoogma posited a question on its tour banner: “WTF is Zoogma?”
At once a sarcastic reflection of the group’s impressive increase in popularity and a testament to its bizarre band name, the question reflects Zoogma’s playful mixture of live instrumentation and pre-recorded sequences that has captured the ears of many.
“It’s hard, but we’re all dedicated to the same thing,” said guitar and keyboard player Justin Hasting. “It’s just the music we like making. You know, we like rock music but we also like electronic music and all kinds of dance music. Combining those two, you’re still giving kids the dance party vibe they want when they go see a DJ, but you’re also giving them guitar solos, keyboards and live bass and drums — they’re actually watching us play it.”
Prior to the band’s tour dates this week, it’ll be stopping in Athens, Ga., to practice and put together a host of new songs for a new album that is slated to be released later this year. After that, Zoogma will start its grueling tour schedule, a 24/7 cycle of sleeping, eating, setting up, performing and sleeping again.
Hasting noted the difficulties of both prepping music and playing on the road, which are not as glamorous as one might expect.
“It’s like a research paper — you gotta go and do a lot of work, really dive into a project,” said Hasting. “There’s really tons of work involved in the whole-day process, but I feel like that two to three hours that you get to play really does make it worth it, especially if it keeps growing and growing.”
Through his experiences with Zoogma, Hasting finds the added element of a full live band helps the group connect with people on a more visceral level than what the audience might get with a DJ.
Although mixing sequencing and samples with live musicianship isn’t a new idea, the style has gained a lot of traction recently in several music communities. Hasting believes this element is what has brought so many people to Zoogma, even if there’s been a lot of confusion along the way over what the group actually does during performances.
The group’s goal is to create the most interesting music — in Hasting’s words, the most “epic” — and see how far it can manipulate the sound into something that can please the crowd without losing the band’s more grandiose tendencies in space and progressive rock.
“Not everything at our show that you’ll hear is going to be extremely easy to dance to,” Hasting said.
That being said, there’s no denying that a large portion of Zoogma’s music is intended to get people on their feet. Hasting — who is glad to see people boogie at concerts — stresses the difference between his band and the hordes of MacBook-abusing disc jockeys.
“Some people have never heard us before and when they look at our equipment before we go on stage they see that everyone in the band has a laptop,” said Hasting. “What immediately pops into their heads is that we have four DJ rigs. Only our second guitarist and our drummer are the ones that do the sequencing stuff — my computer is just for keyboard sounds.”
Hasting admits it’s a strange feeling when someone criticizes the band’s sound after a show for being overly produced. While he’s always open to new ideas, Hasting and the rest of Zoogma are very pragmatic in their acceptance that some people won’t like the music the group plays.
“Some people are gonna like what you do and some people aren’t; you’re just going to have to give and take,” Hasting said. “I think it really just boils down to playing the music you feel like playing and if other people like that too, then it’s great.”
Zoogma may not have given a written answer to the question on last summer’s tour banner, but it has given a fairly definitive answer through the sound of its music: This is a group that plays the compositions and improvisations that it wants to play, critical opinions be damned.
And still, the legions of fans keep growing.
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