The Disco Biscuits are best known for their unique blend of rock and electronic music, as well as hosting an electronic music festival known as Camp Bisco. Timessquare.com had a chance to chat with bass player Marc Brownstein about their upcoming New Year’s Eve run, with three shows at New York City’s Best Buy Theatre and two shows in Chicago.

Times Square (TS): Disco Biscuits is known for having crafted a very unique fusion of sounds, sometimes referred to as “livetronica”. How is it that you managed to combine such a variety of genres and make it sound cohesive?

Marc Brownstein (MB): You’re always looking for your own thing, you want your music to be personal and unique and interesting and really if it’s not unique there’s no point in doing it. I find that that key element of bringing electronic music in with the rock was what separated the Disco Biscuits from the rest when we started out. In terms of making the sound cohesive? It just happened. We didn’t really set out to do anything in particular. We all had different influences, we all listened to different kinds of music, introduced those different kinds of music to each other and little by little we found a way to make it work together.

TS: Each of the members of Disco Biscuits is involved in some side projects, and I’m wondering how that effects in the music of Disco Biscuits, and how you manage to juggle so much.

MB: Well, I mean, every band that you play in is a little bit different, every group of guys you play with – a band is literally the sum of its parts and in most cases especially in improv music, the final sound of the band is going to be a different if you change out one of the members of the band, so when we go out and play as two or three other guys or just by yourself, you’re always going to have a different sound. For me, I wanted to make an electronic project on the side that was fully electronic. Ironically, we learned a lot about making electronic music from that and brought that back to the Biscuits and the Biscuits got more electronic. Now, this next year in another band we’re making it more rock - we’re bringing it back. Each of those different bands has a subtle influence on the others.

TS: In 2010 you released Planet Anthem, a highly collaborative project ranging over about three years. What did you learn from making Planet Anthem, and how has it affected your sound in your latest release, Otherwise Law Abiding Citizens?

MB: Planet Anthem was the most commercially successful album we’ve ever had. It wasn’t a massive commercial success, but there were so many little things that happened to us that we’d never experienced before. We put out four songs on MTV networks, there was all kinds of radio play for the single ‘On Time’ and the single charted on the dance charts – it hit number 20 on the Billboard dance charts which was really exciting, but at the end of the day it was really hard to translate those songs back to the live show. What ended up happening was, while we were writing that album, we wrote about 40 songs and when we knew a song wasn’t going to make it on the album we put it in the live set. What ended up happening was, by the time Planet Anthem came out we had ten to twenty songs that didn’t make it on the album, but we had developed into monsters for the live show, so we had this one batch of songs we were developing in to perfect studio recordings, and this other batch of songs we were developing into live song monsters. By the time we put Planet Anthem out, we were in the position to just go into the studio, after having spent three years making an album, and make the next album in three weeks, doing it completely live.

TS: I noticed that you have different opening acts for each of your three New York shows? Why is that?

MB: We have amazing talent throughout the entire week all the way through our Chicago shows. In New York on the 26^th we have this guy, Mord Fustang, who’s a huge influence of mine right now, and he’s just blowing up right now. We’re really honoured to have him playing with us, and he’s also playing the late night at B.B. King’s that same night, with Abakus. Abakus is a very interesting electronic artist from the UK, and I believe he’s the son of Dave Davies from The Kinks. Disco Biscuit fans love him – it’s just gravy for the fans. The second show we have Tipper who’s a lazer bass, glitch hop producer, and he’s again opening for us and he’s playing the late night at BB King’s. And at the late night he’s also playing with Orchard Lounge and Alpha Data – all the acts that are playing a show with us are opening for us and also playing a late-night either the same night or a different one. For the last show we’re doing in New York, Brothers Past and Orchard Lounge are playing with us, and we’re the late night at the Best Buy. We’re doing that because Phish is in town and there’s a lot of crossover in the Disco Biscuits world and the Phish world and we wanted to give our fans, and their fans the chance to see both concerts.

TS: You’ve already sold out two of your three shows at Best Buy Theatre, and it seems like you guys have been building a lot of momentum for your New Years Eve run. What are you looking forward to in particular, about playing these three shows in New York?

MB: Well, the last show we played was September 10^th at The Gorge in Seattle, Washington, and when you don’t play with your band for three or four months – the whole thing, the whole experience, strapping your instrument on and going for it – it’s what I live for. With this other band that we play in, we don’t play Disco Biscuits songs, we’ve done 5 or 6 weeks of touring with that after the last Biscuits show, and I got got to the end of that I started looking immediately forward to getting on stage with my The Disco Biscuits. I’ve been in it for sixteen years, and just getting up there doing what we do best, playing our songs, I can’t wait.

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