Slated to perform at Life In Color (formerly Dayglow) on Saturday at CU’s Balch Fieldhouse with many other acts, Basscrooks is gearing up for a huge production of music, dancing and—of course—paint. Akbar Mohabbat and Elliot Oveson, the dream team that makes up Basscrooks, sat down with the CU Independent to discuss Life In Color, Denver’s music scene and the success of their latest remix, “Titan.”
DJ Empir3, left, and DJ Wushu, right, of Basscrooks, being interviewed by CUI’s Sarah Elsea at “The Goose.” (Gary Sheer/CU Independent)
CUI: The two of you had solo careers before forming Basscrooks. What kind of stuff were you two doing?
Akbar Mohabbat: Prior to the “marriage,” as you can call it, we were both separately working and we didn’t know each other. In St. Louis, my friends and I were running a weekly show called Mashup Monday. Elliot had come through because one of the kids in St. Louis was friends with him from back home in Indiana. He came back about two months later and, believe it or not, opened for LMFAO around the time of “I’m in Miami, Bitch,” which wasn’t even that popular yet. We exchanged numbers then. We kept in mild contact. After some minor conversations, he told me he had ended up in Denver, and that tickled my fancy to head to Denver.
CUI: How would you say Denver’s electronic dance scene compares to other cities?
Elliot Oveson: For me, it’s great because it seems to be more of the mid-tempo dubstep-type music. The amount of shows that go on in Denver is awesome.
AM: There are true fans. This Saturday, we have Life In Color coming up. But there’s also Bingo Players, Funtcase and Cookie Monsta…and I guarantee all those shows are going to have 75-80 percent of the room filled. In those other markets, you don’t see that. Currently, Denver is the Hollywood of music. Just as Hollywood is for actors, this is the Mecca right now for bass DJs, dubstep, drumstep…
EO: There’s so much music. On the same night, there could be four or five headliners, where, in a lot of other cities, they could only support one of those.
CUI: Your remix of “Titan” by Clockwork has been blowing up. Has that been your most-hyped track to date? How has that been for you?
AM: The “Titan” song was just this snowball. I’d like to say that in today’s market, the fans and the crowd trust blogs and websites over the rankings of radio and top 40. The charting is irrelevant these days. The “sheeple” are dead.
EO: We can thank the internet for that. The internet has allowed anybody the opportunity to present themselves.
CUI: I saw on your site you had Dayglow-watermarked photos. You’ve played a Dayglow/Life in Color concert before? When were those and who did you open for?
EO: Yeah, this’ll be our third one, actually. Both of the ones we’ve already done were in St. Louis. The first one was in a warehouse, the Koken Art Factory. We opened up for Nervo. The second one we did was in St. Louis on the Illinois side where we opened for Swanky Tunes.
AM: We’re veterans now.
EO: Not that many people have gotten to play more than one. I think we’re doing something right.
AM: When we played Dayglow in St. Louis, they’d never had bass-heavy EDM artists. It was a shot in the dark with them. After we had put our set together, [the Dayglow team] sent us requirements way out of our element.
EO: We didn’t think it was bad, it was just different.
AM: Totally different. They wanted house. The thing was, they trusted us, and they let us go with it. It just worked very well. The overall production of Life in Color from show to show is getting better and better.
CUI: What do you think you guys are bring to the Life in Color lineup that would be missing otherwise?
EO: I’d like to think our track selection is really good and appropriate for our time slot, from ten to eleven.
AM: Even if you gave all five of us musicians the same song list, you’d get five different results of a mixtape. We usually do well with mixing and programming our mixes … we spend 20 to 30 hours before we even do a one-hour set. Another thing that we stray away from is the “top 10” songs, or what’s “popular” at the current moment. We try to find music that is equally as good but not as mainstream, per se.
Life in Color tickets are on sale through Ticketfly here. Tickets range from $50 for a general admission ticket to $250 for an all-access VIP ticket. Program tickets previously available in the UMC are sold out.
Contact CU Independent Senior Staff Writer Sarah Elsea at Sarah.elsea@colorado.edu.
