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Pretty Lights brings his mashup ways to Identify Fest at Shoreline
 

By David Jenison

 

It’s not every electronic artist who can say he came up with jam bands. Derek Smith, the artist-producer behind Pretty Lights, cut

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Pretty Lights brings his mashup ways to Identify Fest at Shoreline

 

By David Jenison

 

It’s not every electronic artist who can say he came up with jam bands. Derek Smith, the artist-producer behind Pretty Lights, cut his teeth in a Denver music scene where jam fests and the String Cheese Incident ruled the day. Though lacking a background in the genre, the Ft. Collins native performed at festival after-parties and eventually at the main events. He soon got tapped to perform at Bonnaroo, and when 8,000 people showed up, Pretty Lights officially became high wattage.

With over a million downloads to date, Smith makes his music available for free on the Pretty Lights Music website. The inspiration for the free downloads, however, came from his previous life as a band member.

“Being in a band trying to sell CDs and merch to get food money on tour made me realize how futile that was,” he said in a recent podcast interview with The Untz. “That is where the free download thing happened. I’m just going to put it out. If I want people to hear this, I don’t give a damn if they give me $10.”

His latest releases include the 2010 EP trilogy Making up a Changing Mind, Spilling Over Every Side and Glowing In The Darkest Night and this year’s Unreleased 2010 Remixes. This is a lot of production for an artist who admittedly had a humble musical start.

“I didn’t grow up with a musical mom that turned me on to the dope shit when I was a kid,” he explained on Untz. “Mom was rockin‘ the country music in the car, and dad was listening to Jimmy Buffett. My musical childhood was a drought. When I finally discovered some real shit, it was in junior high with Nirvana. I eventually got into the underground shit, and only then was I exposed to Dark Side of the Moon. It was like reverse musical exploration. I went from modern popular to the underground and then found out what happened in decades past.”

Smith works all of these influences into his music. Lots of people remixed Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” but Pretty Lights also tried its hand at Pink Floyd’s “Time” and a Nirvana-NIN-Radiohead mashup. In terms of original music, Smith humanizes his electronic sound with shots of vintage soul and funk.

“When it finally clicked that you could sample and manipulate and tune and match and stretch and add and build and collage, I started with programs like Reason and thought the stuff sounded cheesy,” he remarked. “You can make that stuff sound dope, but from my perspective, it needed the warmth and soul to make it something that stands the test of time.”

This originally meant using samples. “It is difficult for me to plug in the guitar and have it sound like what I heard in my head because I want it to sound like it’s 40 years old,” he continued. “That is one of the biggest reasons why I felt I needed to sample. I am stoked on my new record because I am finally at the point where I can get a dope studio with all analog gear and put it to tape and cut it to vinyl and run it back and put it to tape again until it sounds 50 years old.”

Pretty Lights brings this cross-fertilized sound to the Bay Area Sept. 3 as part of the electronic music-oriented Identity Festival that will make a stop at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View.

 

prettylightsmusic.com, idfestival.com.

 

 

 

 

Boogie Nights

 

Your go-to club getting a little blasé? Ready for something new to get your dance juices flowing? Then point your footsies and tootsies towards Identity Festival at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. With artists like Kaskade, Steve Aoki, Aeroplane, Nero and Nervo—plus a Vendor Village offering glow sticks and LED gloves—this will be the perfect way to liven up any and all boogie down productions.

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