From producing melody driven bass to edits heavier than a black hole, Adventure Club has been tearing up the bass music scene for years and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. The Death Or Glory Tour has been packing venues across the nation and for a good reason! The duo create a perfectly balanced set that not only includes EDM and Dubstep, but combines metal, pop-punk, hip hop, and everything in between. Before the mosh pits and jumping began, we got to sit down with Christian and Leighton of Adventure Club and get to know a little about how they met, influences on their music, and what all of their fans can be expecting from this year.
Leighton: Can you scooch again? How about that?
Anastasiia: Adventure Club Sandwich.
Christian: Never heard that before.
Anastasiia: All right guys. Okay first of all thank you so much for doing this.
Leighton: Thanks for having us.
Christian: We could be a Club Sandwich.
Leighton: Is there anything else? Or are we stuck with a Club Sandwich? Is there any other food with the word Club in it? Club soda?
Christian: That’s kinda boring…
Leighton: It says Vanilla…
Anastasiia: That song with Crankdat? Crankdat AC?
Leighton: Crankdat AC…
Christian: We’re stuck as a Sandwich…
Leighton: Crankdat AC… Crankdat AC, you get it? Air conditioning but we also got that new song with Crankdat?
Christian: *thinking* Hmmm okay…
Leighton: I didn’t realize that AC also has red and blue.
Christian: We’re on the bus. Things are moving a little slow up here. I’ve got it though. I put it together. Yeah. I pieced the whole thing together all by myself.
Leighton: All by yourself?
Christian: I wasn’t listening to you guys. I was just contemplating, deep meditating.
Leighton: Okay. Thanks for having us.
Anastasiia: Oh, thank you for doing this. We would like to know everything about you guys obviously. So how did you guys meet and how did you come up with a name?
Leighton: I feel like I can take that…
Christian: I’ll take the first one?
Leighton: Well, the first one, I mean is my experience
Christian: Is my experience.
Leighton: True. Okay. I’ll preface this with…
Christian: There is two sides to this story
Leighton: There was a poster put up in a high school with the request for band members and then I figured you can take it from there.
Christian: No, you keep going.
Leighton: Nah it’s all yours now.
Christian: So Leighton was putting a band together and they needed a guitarist and they had try outs and a mutual friend of ours, told me, “You know, you should go to that band tryout. So we went and back then we were kind of scary looking. I was kind of scary looking…. I had short, I don’t know if I’d shaved my head, somewhere around there, I’d shaved my head
Leighton: And a bunch of ear piercings, piercings everywhere.
Christian: And I really liked the gym when I was like 17-18. I liked it a little too much I think, except I didn’t like doing leg workout.
Anastasiia: Were you skipping leg days?
Christian: So I was very unproportional. I walked in like a tank top, my amp and my guitar under one arm and like a steak casserole, Tupperware full of steak and potatoes in the other, just put all my shit down and I’m like, “I’m your new guitarist.” I’m like, “This is your life now. Deal with it!”
Anastasiia: That sounds like a great story.
Christian: Yeah. So that’s how we met. We lived really close to each other. We were about like 17. A lot of shenanigans ensued, you know, we grew up together. I had an amazing time,
Leighton: Played multiple bands together,
Christian: All kinds of different bands together.
Leighton: Every musical project we ever did, like other members would rotate but Christian and I were always there.
Christian: Every bad decision you make as a teenager we’ve also done together.
Leighton: Yep. There was a lot of good ones.
Christian: I forget what the question was.
Anastasiia: How did you come up with a name?
Christian: No the first one was the how did you meet? Yeah, yeah, we were on, we’re still on top of it. How did we come up with a name? When we started making Dubstep specifically when we started making like EDM music, it was Dubstep, we were focused on and at the beginning we were coming out of like a metal band kind of like a heavy band. We thought we were going to do like really, really, really heavy shit exclusively. And we thought like, you know, we’re looking at all these guys with these really like heavy grimy ass names and were like, wouldn’t it be funny to have something, you know, that’s kind of like, not like that.
Leighton: So you’d see the name you’d be like aha it looks like it would be friendly.
Christian: Such a wholesome fun. And you know what? The music style changed over time. A little bit. Yeah.
Anastasiia: What was your bands name?
Leighton: *laughing wickedly* If you try harder you’ll find it, if you can dig deep enough, you can find it.
Anastasiia: I will definitely do it! Starting off as a metal band, was it hard to make a transition into EDM?
Leighton: I think that’s the other reason why we switched over. So in the metal world there is a lot of breakdowns. There is a lot of similarities. Breakdowns in metal and hardcore sub.
Christian: Dubstep was that that gateway. Because I wasn’t at all into like dance EDM music before that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was something different
Leighton: And at the time, so there was no like, edits, there was no like remixes of like music that we listen, there was no remix of like Thrice, Brand New. There was like maybe one or two Bring Me The Horizon remixes back then. I think that’s what sparked our intrigue.
Christian: That was the one, yeah, that was one of the very first tracks sleep with one eye open for dope remix.
Leighton: And so yeah, we started reimagining songs that we wanted to hear electronically, “Daisy” by Brand New. “Broken lungs” by Thrice. That’s kind of what kicked everything off.
Anastasiia: Who was/were the producers that you listened to at first that made you realize this is what we want to do?
Christian: I mean Sonny is always going to be there. You know, everyone says it, but like, you know, we’re not old, I mean, I guess we are now we’re getting a little old to the scene, but back then we hadn’t really been around for awhile. You know, like we were kicking people that like, like Skrillex was like some of the first dubstep I heard, you know? And I was like, what is this? So cool! You know, these sounds are so cool. This production sounds like something I’ve never heard before. My ears were happy, my brain was happy. Yeah, he was doing something… he still is! very, very cool stuff. And that’s one of them. I know Flux for us too,
Leighton: Phonically Nero too.
Anastasiia: Your sets are perfectly balanced in terms of heavy Dusbstep mixed with melodic tunes. How do you find this balance?
Christian: Because I mean that’s our balance. You know, we don’t have to find it. It’s like we like both of it so much that it’s like, you know, you just feel it. You’re like, you’re going heavy, you’re having a great time and then, you know, instead of like, just hammering it until the end of your set being dead. It’s like you just need that little, you need the roller coaster. So then you get to the lowest and you start feeling it, we just read it because that’s what we feel ourselves, you know, intuitive. I would call it maybe intuition.
Anastasiia: That is awesome. How do you guys produce your tracks? Who usually takes the lead on what?
Leighton: Christian definitely takes the lead on once the track starts and there’s many different ways. Sometimes we’ll have a songwriter or a senior coming to the studio. Get out a piano and get out some guitars, have them write some top lines, happy, write chorus or guitar parts or sometimes we’ll be sent a vocal. Other times Christian will make an instrumental and then we’ll get top line sent back to us. It happens whichever way. And then I think maybe like half of the process, Christian’s very, very skilled at the DAW. And so for me to be there a lot of the time it’s kinda like, it’s him pressing the space bar.
Christian: Like Chinese water torture?
Leighton: Yeah. And so yeah i’ll come in and like finish it off vibe-wise.
Anastasiia: You guys work with a lot of artists from different genres but What producer or DJ surprised you with their lyrical ability?
*silence*
Anastasiia: A tough one?
Leighton: No, there’s one that I know is really good…Grabbitz. His great, this guy also got a great, great voice.
Anastasiia: That’s awesome. Who are some up and coming artists that you are following?
Christian: Oh that’s up Leighton’s alley. Leighton’s always the one showing me shit like I dunno how he can find some stuff he does. He’s real good with that.
Leighton: Up and coming?
Christian: The guys spoke you up now.
Leighton: You guys spoke me up! Now I’m drawing blank on everything!
Christian: Combination: Propped you up way too high and then backed off a question. No responsibility.
Leighton: Who am I listening to right now? Listening to Yakz, Wooli, Tynan, William Black, ARMNHR, Svdden Death…
Anastasiia: All of the favorites!
Leighton: If you haven’t heard them, check them out. Alternately, you can see them on our tour.
Christian: Yeah. That’s it for us man.
Leighton: I’m so slow up there. Kaizen, Kaizen, Kaizen.
Christian: Who?
Leighton: Kaizen.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Anastasiia: Hmm. All right. Whenever you are looking for some heavier banger to drop in the middle of the set, who are some of the artists that come to mind?
Christian: Tynan, Wooli, William Black, ARMNHMR, Svdden Death…
Leighton: DRINKURWATER got some pretty heavy stuff. Just been setting me recently. PhaseOne definitely.
Anastasiia: Oh yeah.
Christian: Bus tour, things are moving real slow.
Leighton: YDG. Sullivan King.
Anastasiia: Can we expect a collab sometime soon?
Leighton: Hopefully. We’re playing a show together in Chicago.
Anastasiia: All right. For all the AC fans what’s in the store for 2019?
Leighton: So much music finally.
Christian: Yeah. It sounds like he’s making a joke but he’s just so happy. So am I. The pipeline is set up. The music’s there, the music’s always been there.
Leighton: We have to navigate the channels properly. Cut the red tape.
Christian: It’s tough, back in the day we just used to like bootleg tracks and remix them, and the day they were done you put them out.
Leighton: No matter what time. We finished Shangri-Lah remix at 3 AM, and still put it out.
Christian: Good old days! But we actually probably ended up releasing some songs we shouldn’t have. But you know, those are just the songs and you know, no one really listens to again and then they just move on to this stuff they like. So is it really that bad? I don’t know. Probably not. …To go on another tangent.
Anastasiia: Thank you guys so much, that was awesome
