We caught up with the legendary duo Adventure Club before their show at Webster Hall in New York City to touch base on some serious bass, Adventure Time, software preferences and how the tour was coming along with their follow tourmates: DVBBS, DallasK & Hunter Siegel. They were absolute gentlemen throughout the course of the interview, then transformed into big room rockstars to blow the minds of the packed crowd at Girls & Boys, Webster Hall’s intensely popular Friday night party. See how it all went down below:
1. Do people call you Adventure Time, and have you ever thought about remixing any of the songs from the show?
Christian: Uh, yes and yes.
Leighton: There’s been no thought to remixing the show whatsoever.
Christian: Of course there was. You don’t remember? We were like “let’s do a…” It came up once, so the answer to that part wasn’t really well considered. To the whole mistaken as Adventure Time thing, it happens occasionally. There was one day we had like three or four interviews, and every single person interviewing us, the people who should know who you are. They all got it wrong, they all called us Adventure Time. It’s like they got together as a group and decided to fuck with us.
Leighton: I think a lot of the confusion comes from a lot of the fan art that we get. Our fans send us a lot of Adventure Time-related fan art.
2. Was there a moment where the two of you decided to move away from hardcore/pop-punk? Or just a gradual shift?
Christian: It’s a little bit of both We were doing the whole pop punk scene, but making electronic music on the side, just for fun. We had a studio for recording, to save on recording costs. That being the gradual part, but the one definitive moment was we put out a Brand New remix that we did. Not a brand new remix, but by the band Brand New, of Daisy. And it just got a whole lot of blog love and a lot of online support so we kind of took a look and stopped to re-evaluate at our musical careers at that point. Because we got more attention in a couple days than we ever had.
Leighton: Even the dudes from Brand New hit us up, they were like “Yo, we really like your remix,” and from that point on we just stuck to Adventure Club stuff.
3. What felt the better, seeing “Crave You” on MTV’s “Teen Wolf,” or getting 2 million hits on your music video for the remix you did of “Everything to Me” that made it to the UKF Dubstep channel?
Christian: Definitely the Everything To Me Video. That was a Love project, a lot of hours went into it, a lot of fans respect the video, watched the video, shared the video which meant a lot to us.
There were 4 people doing all of the construction for the set. Painting a hundred of those little Styrofoam monsters takes, it takes a long time. Like, we had to make a sweatshop. Those helmets, we made them ourselves out of fiberglass, it took like 3 or 4 trial and errors, we’d have to restart…
Leighton: Literally everything you see in that video was made by hand.
Christian: Yup, like, literally everything. The set we made out of boxes that were spraypainted to make them look like walls and stuff.
Leighton: Everyone involved in that project poured their heart and soul into it.
4. What is it like touring with DVBBS, Dallas K & Hunter Siegel? Who do you want to tour with next?
Christian: I feel like it’s too premature to say who we want to tour with next. We just started touring with these guys and we’re so happy with all of them.
Leighton: We had like a tiny preconceived notion about how touring would be with them, and that was completely shot out the window. As soon as we got on the bus, we fell in love with DVBBS, we fell in love with Hunter Siegel, we fell in love with Dallas K.
Christian: You were friends with Hunter Siegel before, I wasn’t. I knew him, we were friends, we were bus close. The other guys, I’d only met Dallas once, I’d only met DVBBS once, so it was kind of a handshake situation. Really just a shot in the dark, and we were kind of guess-working as far as how well it would go, and all expectations were exceeded. We love all of them, it’s an amazing atmosphere.
Leighton: Everyone on the bus is a big family now.
Christian: The dynamic, the actual tour, the shows themselves, they’re all really good. We all feed off of each other. Definitely a fortunate combination.
Leighton: I’d have to say the two acts we’d tour with though, would probably be W&W and Vicetone.
Christian: I’d love to tour with W&W.
5. How’s your relationship with Krewella these days? Are we going to see another collaboration like everyone’s favorite “Rise & Fall?”
Leighton: There is another collaboration that will come out. I can’t say it’s like Rise & Fall.
Christian: It’s just new.
Leighton: Our relationship as two artists are as strong as ever…
6. What can we expect out of Calling All Heroes Part II, the same kind of sound or something completely different?
Leighton: It’s kind of an expansion on the ideas that were presented in part one.
Christian: Calling All Heroes Part 1.2.0
7. For some of your original tracks, like the Boondocks Saints tribute and the TF2 Kaboom remix, how does that go from your head to the decks?
Christian: Fuck, with the Boondocks thing…We were really learning our production stuff, we were kind of really novice in that area, during the course of those songs. So, as much as we love them, they’re hard to play, because they just don’t come out. They’re some of our favorite tracks, they’re for personal things. The Boondocks Track, I mean, the movie’s so epic…
Leighton: We’ve based a lot of our lives around that movie.
Christian: We’ve watched that movie way too many times. And we just wanted to do it justice, we felt it needed that epic atmosphere, and we tried to capture as much of it as possible.
8. Any ridiculous stories from the Superheroes Anonymous tour so far?
Leighton: That we can share? I don’t know if we can say anything on the record. Not for our sake, but for the sake of everyone on the bus.
Christian: It’s a mutual thing.
9. Any tips for producers who are trying to emulate your sound? Do you recommend Cakewalk SONAR or do you think the youngsters should stick to FL Studio & Ableton?
Christian: Whatever DAW you’re working with…People dispute this, but as long as you know it well you’ll be able to get a good sound out of it for sure. I would actually personally advise against Cakewalk SONAR, as so many people don’t use it. I mean, we’ve been working in Cakewalk for so long that we’re kind of stuck with it. We love it, but not many people in the industry work with it so when it comes to doing collaborations & stuff, it puts a little bit of an obstacle in the way. So if you’re starting off, I’d go with something more along the lines of Ableton, something that’s much more accessible to the genre.
10. Besides your own tracks, are there any other artists that you love adding to your live sets?
Christian: Any and every Hardcore band.
Leighton: We love throwing in some like, old school hardcore band like Bring Me the Horizon.
Christian: Under Oath.
Leighton: Like, if I had my way, I’d play a set that would include like 10 W&W tracks. I’m getting giggly thinking about it. I fell in love with those guys a bit too much.
Christian: We like those guys, we’ve met them a couple times, so we love them as like, people now. So like, we want to play their music for so many other reasons now. I’d just play a full W&W set.
Leighton: Probably a lot of W&W, a lot of Gesaffelstein, and a lot of Cyril Hahn.
Christian: Hard Transition, in and out of all 3.
