Las Vegas Weekly

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Describe your multi-faceted underground dance music style.

I love all forms of music—’20s and ’30s swing records, Beethoven, death metal, gangster rap. I like to combine all those and enhance them with electronic signal. I reference highlights of everything I like, combine them in new and whimsical ways and then surgically infuse it with the heaviest reinforcement possible. From jungle to techno to trip-hop to house to dubstep—I focus on the heavy and enchanting.

How do the personalities of your songs differ?

I play between extremes. I love filthy, ugly, intense sounds, and I also love beautiful, emotional, magical sounds. I want to make collections of songs that span that wide and diverse spectrum. One song might have a personality that’s playful, another might be tense, or magical and stirring, and another that’s just filthy.

Do you have any collaborations coming up?

I love collaborating musically. I’m making plans with Les Claypool from Primus and have Lupe Fiasco on the new album.

What change to the EDM genre most affected you since starting Bassnectar?

The crack house laws of 2000-2001, when raves were basically outlawed, forced people to take that sound to new places and really push the frontier. Then the festival scene opened up to hardcore bass music.

Explain your interest in social experiments.

I’m 50 percent obsessed with music and 50 percent obsessed with community. There’s a lot of unexplored terrain when it comes to how thousands of people interact when their nervous systems are being over-stimulated by the most intense sound and lights possible.

To what end?

Encouraging simple acts of gratitude for whatever it is that people find magical. It’s about enabling organizations while encouraging fans to get involved so it becomes more circular.