In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Pretty Lights had some interesting things to say on his new album, A Color Map Of the Sun as well as his production, tour, and hopes for the future.
A Color Map of the Sun, set to release on July 2nd is a first for Electronic/Hip-Hop head producer Pretty Lights in that this will be the first album that will not be free. It will be released for a fee both digitally and physical. Boasting with a huge amount of musical talent it’s no surprise that this album will follow this path. Another interesting aspect of this album is that Pretty Lights will also not be doing a traditional tour of this album, or that he will not be a “Producer-Dj” on stage. Instead, he had this to say:
The concept of producer as performer is the boring-est thing you can think of…”, “That’s why producers and DJs have developed this scene where everyone is trying to bring the biggest video wall or projection map and the most lights. This production war is essentially what it is, this battle of the video walls. I I’ve thought long and hard about that. And my conclusion is for this album, I cannot and will not tour as a producer-DJ.”I don’t want to do it like every other producer-gone-band has done it, where they produce all these records that sound incredible, then they form a band and go on tour, and they make their band try to recreate their production. It never works – it always sounds like it’s lost a massive element of soul,” he said. “What I’m planning on doing is to have a band but still perform as I normally do, and it’s full-on production accented by live musicians. I use the live band to mix, so I go out of a track into a band playing a live break, and then transitioning into electronic production. It’s rock and funk and soul segueing between hip-hop and dub and electronic music, so it’s this multi-genre journey through live and electronic music.
So does this mean that the usual light show we come to expect will be absent whenever he and his musicians take the stage? It’s something that has yet to be seen, however any fan of Pretty Lights will surely come to support the artists new endeavors.
Speaking of new endeavors, Pretty Lights also spoke about Hip-Hop and on his own personal inspirational artists:
“I had the pleasure of speaking to Nas on the phone regarding one of my tracks,” he said. “This album and this project and the turn that I’ve made, I’m hoping leads to bridging the gap between production in electronic music and the hip-hop world – breathing new life into it, but also collaborating and really creatively working with some of my favorite big-name hip-hop artists. That’s the ultimate dream of mine, to produce a track forJay-Z, for Nas and for Atmosphere.”
Starting with a new and risky business model of releasing his music for free, it’s no doubt that Pretty Lights has a respectable fan base and following, however only time will tell if selling A Color Map Of the Sun will be huge success or a hurtful failure.
This time it really is up to the fans.
