PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | Waking Up to the Fire is the second full-length album from Washington, DC band Drop Electric, set for release October 22. Ramtin, Navid, Neel, Sho, and Kristina played in the clouds at the opening reception of Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds at the Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia, where we feasted on the reception food and talked about vinyl and their fast success selling out venues across DC and NYC.
Drop Electric will headline TVD’s first in a series of curated showcases to be held at the Fillmore Silver Spring this Thursday, October 3, alongside DC bands Technophobia and Honest Haloway.
During our conversation, I received a glimpse of the hard work these serious musicians put into their music. Drop Electric has already garnered success nationwide. The band cites Bob Boilen for exposing their music on an All Songs Considered episode, helping to propel their career.
Drop Electric has used their gift of exposure, recently signing with Lefse Records—alongside Mister Lies and Teen Daze, and the former label for Youth Lagoon and Neon Indian. They are also signed with Pusher Music—alongside David Lynch, DJ Shadow, and Crystal Method—a licensing firm who put out tracks for movie trailers.
Drop Electric songs have already been used for movie trailers, and you have expressed a deep love for film. Do movies influence your music, and how does that play into your visuals?
It absolutely influences our music. I can watch a movie and afterwards I write a song directly influenced by what I watched. Our live show visuals are a big part of our presentation—it’s a combination of various music videos we have made and other movie parts.
For example, one of our new songs, “Carl Pagen,” is ah homage to Carl Sagen, so we have movie clips of him as our background visual when we play that song. We also like to incorporate trippy and often disturbing elements to our visuals, working to make a conscious effort to make our live show as varied as possible.
You stated that you found Sho and Kristina from a craigslist ad, which has really worked out for you. How does Drop Electric write songs as a band of five—is there one primary song writer?
Everyone contributes to the song-making process, which has been a really positive collaboration between all of us. After our first album, Finding Cover in the Ashes, we put out a Craigslist ad, and that is how we found Kristina, who we then later found out could sing! Before that we were mostly instrumental, so everything has really taken off since Kristina joined the band.
What other DC bands do you think more people should know about?
We really like Technicians, ACME, Go Cozy, Boris Milic, Whales, Elikeh, and Laughing Man.
What was your first experience with vinyl?
Sho: I started collecting vinyl a couple of years ago. My parents live in Tokyo, and so I go to all these small random record shops in Tokyo when I visit them. It’s crazy looking around and seeing the music that I don’t know. I used to pride myself that I knew a lot about music, but then when I go into a record shop I realize how little I do know. I randomly pick up a record and buy it, and that is how I like to discover new music. There is also so much history ingrained with the vinyl record, and in this day and age you don’t have physical copies of things, so it’s cool to have that.
Kristina: I think everything sounds better on vinyl. My first record was Vivid by Living Color; now my favorite records are my Roberta Flack albums.
Neel: I got a record player about year or two ago, and it has rejuvenated my love for listening to whole albums again. It’s made me also rediscover older albums that I have forgotten about….I love it.
Ramtin: I really love vinyl. My girlfriend and I spend a lot of evenings listening to records. I like a lot of old gospel records. I’m from Iran originally, but my dad lived in America in the ’70s so I grew up listening to his old records because he loved it. I still attach records to that time in my youth and my dad’s love for American music. The older the music, the more I love it—there’s a warmth to the music that you can’t replicate now.
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TVD Presents: Drop Electric, Honest Haloway, and Technophobia
The Fillmore Silver Spring
Thursday, October 3
$12 | Doors 7:30pm
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