Ostensibly, jam rock and electronic dance music have little in common. One is predicated on improvisational prowess and organic noodling, and the other is littered with mainstream acts that often do little more than hit play on a laptop and pump a fist. But more and more, these crowds are convoluting.
Few artists float the increasingly integrated waters better than Boulder, Colo.-based Big Gigantic, which closes the main stage Friday night at the inaugural Summer Set Music & Camping Festival. The duo lumps a litany of EDM genres and live instrumentation into a smooth strain of mountain bass music that works at more traditionally jam-centric festivals like Arkansas' Wakarusa or Miami's massive dance bash Ultra Music Festival.
"The crazy thing then at the shows, depending on the bigger the show, you're going to get more college fraternity kids, people who like the jam stuff and people who love just straight DJs," said Big Gigantic saxophonist/producer Dominic Lalli. "It's really cool. I've never seen it come together like this."
Big G, as Lalli and drummer Jeremy Salken are affectionately known to fans, are hardly the first electronic/jam hybrid. So-called jamtronica juggernauts like Sound Tribe Sector 9 and Disco Biscuits, whom Lalli call "pioneers," have been doing psychotropic dance jams for a decade-plus. Even members of Colorado jam kings the String Cheese Incident have splintered off into Eoto, an extemporaneous dubstep-indebted project. Undoubtedly aided by the dubstep wubpocalypse, never before has the electronic element been so preeminent.
As for Lalli, his gravitation toward EDM occurred after earning a graduate degree from the Manhattan School of Music and moving to Colorado. The schooled musician cut his chops in the local jam scene playing sax in Denver's Afrobeat/jazz collective the Motet and electro-funk band Juno What?! Lalli befriended Alex Botwin (who spins Sunday as Paper Diamond) of jam band Pnuma Trio, who piqued Lalli's interest in production. "When I met Alex, I don't even think I owned a laptop at that point," he recalled.
Lalli's latest release, "Nocturnal," shows how much the certified sax man has honed his computerized craft the past few years. By and large it's the same soulfully gleaming, glitch-hop/electro skronk with sultry sax leads that Big G's become known for (think Kenny G meets Deadmau5), but the hip-hop beats are crunchier; the wobbles more bowel-bombing; the synth shots more vertiginous. "The exciting thing with 'Nocturnal,' I feel like [it's] the stuff that's always been in my head ... but I just wasn't there yet," Lalli said.
As the sonic walls separating college bros, jam heads and EDM kids continue to crumble, and fretboard-fluttering jam bands increasingly sound like ultra-funky cyborgs, Lalli is among the least surprised. "One thing that's consistent over time with music, something like this always happens and music goes in a new direction," he said, likening the electronic infiltration to the introduction of the electric guitar. "It's all normal that it's happening in its own way in 2012."
And kudos to Lalli for finding a sax-squealing, synthesized equilibrium.
