Don't be surprised if Ooah, Boreta, and edIT of The Glitch Mob take a bow before they take to the stage for their free concert in Whistler on Saturday, April 12.
The trio always take a moment to meditate together before they launch into their electronic music repertoire.
"(We do it) every single show. It's a moment just to reconnect with each other. For me, personally, in these moments I take inventory really quick and give thanks for the show we're about to crush, and the opportunity to be in the place and experience," says Boreta.
The Los Angeles-based group is part of the Outdoor Music Series, performing at 9 p.m. in Skier's Plaza in Whistler Village during the 10-day World Ski and Snowboard Festival, which kicks off this weekend.
Formed in 2006, Ooah (Josh Mayer), Boreta (Justin Boreta), and edIT (Edward Ma), last played the resort in 2009. They remember being behind a plexi-glass performance booth (that's a shout out to Tommy Africa's back in the day).
These days, things are not at all contained, but the full Glitch Mob system — so rad that it has its own name (The Blade) — is staying in California.
They have a good reason for this, though.
"Unfortunately, we won't be able to bring our full production because it's literally the next day after we play Coachella," says Boreta. "We have to fly up to Whistler in the morning, and our show is not really fly-ready. We've got to truck The Blade around."
The Glitch Mob has to return to Coachella afterwards, for another night's performance.
They compensate for being Bladeless with a "hybrid DJ set" that they fly to gigs with.
"We have a festival backpack set that we built, which is a scaled down version of the bigger show. We still play all original music, all the same songs, but the festival versions," Boreta says.
"We're going straight to the airport after we play Coachella and stay overnight in the airport. We love playing music, it's our passion. We hadn't played Whistler for so long and we love it up there. It's so beautiful," adds Ooah.
Boreta says: "We're down for the adventure."
Their latest album, Love Death Immortality, has been out for two months. One fan wrote on their YouTube page for the album: "This is the bomb. I mean a robotic kind of glitch bomb."
The band is happy about the reception so far.
"It's been going really well. People seem to love it... real positive. It was a fun direction for us to go after the last record," Ooah says. "We are the sort of group that tries to switch it up again every time."
By this he means that Drink the Sea (2010) was more about the inner worlds of the three of them.
"It's more of an introspective journey-type piece, and we wanted to take the same heart and story that we explored in that and bring it to the live stage," Ooah says.
Love Death Immortality was "meant for us to take our sound and share with the world on much bigger, brighter and more epic level. We aim for the same core emotions... but we wrapped the album in a more live-energy package," he says.
Boreta adds that while the L.A. beat scene was their launching pad they feel as though they are outside of it now.
"For us, the L.A. beat scene was, at the very beginning of this whole process, part of the Big Bang of our whole thing. It was something we'd do weekly, we played underground parties as an extension of the Burning Man scene," he says.
"But ever since then, we've gone off in our own world. The L.A. beat scene is still part of our DNA and we're friends with everyone who we started with. We consider ourselves beat scene uncles! But we're off in uncharted waters right now."
By this, he means they're the oddballs in the scene because they can't be pigeonholed. He says it's not a conscious decision, but comes more from the creative process.
"We just do us. We like pushing ourselves. We don't really fit in. Our music doesn't fit into one category; it's not really just in electro, or drum and bass, or glitch hop. The album could be chopped up and stuck in a ton of different categories. Even Drink the Sea was but in some rock categories, people thought it was more indie," Boreta says.
"We like that the fact that it's hard to categorize, same thing with our live show. We play electronic drum and perform electronic music in a way no one else is really doing."
Ooah says with Love Death Immortality The Glitch Mob wanted to try and tell the collective stories of their fans, their "glitch mob."
"The thousands and thousands of people out there, who help bring this thing to life. When we sit down to make music we try to tap that, channel it, and try to think about those emotions and take it from there," Ooah says.
Four other free performances take place earlier in the day on Saturday, April 12.
Hip hop superstars De La Soul take the stage at 3:30 p.m., Animal Nation play at 1:30 p.m., Prevail and Neph perform at 2:40 p.m., and DJ Grand Theft is soundtracking the Big Air Invitational at 6:30 p.m.
