If live music is about generating heat in the audience, grabbing a ticket to a live EOTO (pronounced ee-oh-toe) show is like getting a boarding pass to fly dangerously close to the sun. One buys a boarding pass and does his or her best to survive the onslaught of heat pulsating from the stage. These masters of beat synthesis certainly take the listener on a journey.
EOTO’s style is one of a kind. Armed with a wide array of beat-and-sound-creating equipment, Jason Hann and Michael Travis take flight night after night without a definitive direction of where to take the music. Every show is improvised. Every song is initiated completely on the spot with the energy of the crowd feeding the tapestry of sound.
A typical EOTO show has Hann providing the driving rhythm of EOTO tunes through, among other things, the use of a complete drum kit. Travis tends to provide some of the melodic aspects of an EOTO set through his use of computer equipment, a bass guitar and a keyboard. Each man’s role is wide, varied and intricate.
EOTO continues to earn much-deserved attention due to their unique style of producing music live and all improvised on stage. Fans and artists of the electronic and live music scenes have all taken notice.
In the following interview, Hann talks about being committed road warriors of touring, the inaugural and successful Electric Forest Festival and who exactly are the targets for EOTO’s lazers.
What equipment do you use to produce EOTO’s sound? Ableton instruments and racks, Nord lead synth, Roland Gaia synth, Mugician iPad app.
I’ve heard your sound described as live electro/house/dubstep. How would you describe EOTO’s sound? In a simple phrase – “improvised electronica”. You can break it down into styles of music, but we’re approaching more from a DJ perspective, but playing it all with live instruments.
How would you define the genre of music called dub step? Razor filtered bass lines, mixed with punching beats, with an ambient part that builds with doubling kick drums and rising synth lines.
How do you feel about the use of genre labels, essentially using words to describe the indescribable qualities of music? I like it when it helps to zero in on a way to explain a sound or a movement, or helps to explain where it came from. In that way, it’s like looking at a family tree to see where and why a sound originated. That can help to come up with a new sound when you know the history of where another sound developed.
What makes what you guys do onstage unique? No songs, no setlists, all live and improvised.
What was EOTO’s very first show? It was at Sonic Bloom 2006 at Mishawaka in Bellevue, CO. It was pretty scary, but it was a show that we nailed. We spent the next year and a half trying to match it. There’s something special about trying it for the first time.
You guys are some serious road dogs. Do you enjoy the travel? When I’m traveling, I just know that we’re working and trying to get better all around with our music and our business. I get in that workman modality of a ton of hours and rest when you can, wherever.
What makes the travel easier? Knowing that home is an amazing thing to get back to. I can recharge so fast at home near the beach with my family.
Last EOTO show in Madison was at Majestic Theatre. The previous visit to town you played at the High Noon Saloon. What do you think of those two venues? Always enjoyed the High Noon Saloon, but it feels nice that we’ve made a home at the Majestic. What a great venue. Hopefully we can come back on a weekend next time.
Who is the target for your lazers? I’m guessing any beings that are disrupting the positive flow from inspiring others to reach the perceived unreachable. Can anyone and everyone understand your lazers? Oh sure. It’s for all the people. They get what they want from them.
What is the name of the guy that names every EOTO live track? Brian Cohn and Heath Byington name all of our tracks. There may be over 4000 tracks by now. They deserve all the credit for naming them and getting them up online.
Do the actions of fans alter what you are or are not doing on stage at any given moment? Sure. We read overall body language of the fans from our first note. How does it alter what you’re doing? If they are not dancing then we know we need to maneuver a certain way to get things going. We’ll experiment a bit up there. Then, when we have them, we take them on a little joy ride.
How do you create the altered vocal sound we often see you doing at shows? I have a bunch of effects at my disposal that I trigger from my Lemur touch screen controller. I can put all kinds of delays and stutters to make it do some unpredictable stuff.
What’s been playing in your tour van for the last week?…In your iPod, if you own one? I’ve been listening to Musiq Soulchild, rediscovering Aaliyah with those Timbaland beats, and Trifonic. I’m always keeping up on the latest dubstep releases for my DJ sets and try to get new ideas for EOTO.
What was the first date you played with the String Cheese Incident? I sat in with SCI in 1999. It was 2004 when I played the 2nd set with them in Los Angeles at the Wiltern Theater (7/23/04). Then I played the 2nd night of their Las Vegas run (7/25/04). Then they asked me to tour with them that Fall.
How does String Cheese figure out the set lists? Usually we get every voice and song writer represented in the set along with balanced styles of music represented. The song keys and whether Kang is playing violin or electric mandolin, and whether Billy is playing acoustic guitar or not filters in. After this we may figure out a cover song, a transition, or a jam to help tie the particular set together. This is way more difficult than just choosing songs for the night. It can be pretty tedious to hammer out.
When String Cheese hiatus began in 2007, did you two go straight into touring as EOTO? Did you get a week or day or two @ home? Did you get rejuvenated at all? We didn’t know it as a hiatus at the time. It really seemed pretty final for the moment with a tinge of something will probably happen without knowing where or when. We did a few EOTO shows in 2006 and that gave us the confidence to try to put a tour together in 2007 to see what would happen. We had a great, yet humbling time with that, and when we knew SCI was breaking up we knew we were going to have a lot of open time. We filled that time (2008) with a ton of EOTO shows not knowing what the future held.
How fun was it at Electric Forest playing in String Cheese again with all our people together again? It really felt like we grabbed our mojo back out there. Amidst most of the other headliners being electronic acts, we felt like we played some of our best shows and you could really feel the chemistry on the stage. Prior to those shows was really the first rehearsal that we had where we weren’t trying to relearn all of our own materiel, which can be draining and not terribly exciting.
Some fans called Electric Forest a String Cheese festival; others said it was a bigger Horning’s Hideout. How would you describe the collection of musical acts that did their thing over that Fourth of July weekend in Rothbury, Michigan? Just a great weekend of a variety of music. You could get a full organic musical experience or a full DJ musical experience. There was something for everyone at all times and the Forest there grew to even more ridiculous heights. The original intention was to be a larger Horning’s. With Insomiac being such a big player in investing in it, naturally there was a huge electronic music presence. I loved checking it all out!
Are you excited to do another set of runs with the String Cheese Incident? Oh yeah, this November, getting in the bus traveling together. Should be all about making these shows intimate and getting on a roll night after night to play our best.
What are your thoughts on the change the internet brought to the way fans get music? Specifically talking about CDs becoming obsolete and downloading music online becoming so prevalent. Some artists choose to offer material online for free and it can really be a choice to take a different path. Pretty Lights offered an album or albums free online. Has it become an advantage to offer (live or produced recorded) music for free as artists? Not only an advantage, but a requirement. A band should offer songs for free these days if they want to turn new people on to their music. Fans looking for something new expect that.