These days, it’s not that difficult to find Patrick Gemayel (P-Thugg) and David Macklovitch (Dave 1), the childhood friends who comprise the retro-electro-funksters Chromeo. They’re on tour, of course, wrapping up the third, and final, round of dates around their 2010 release, Business Casual. The pair, based in Montreal, Quebec, first burst onto the scene in 2004 with their debut, She’s in Control, and it’s worldwide club smash, “Needy Girl.” But it wasn’t until 2007’s Fancy Footwork that things really blew up. Since then, the tongue-in-cheek mobile dance party has funked-up the biggest stages across the globe including Glastonbury, Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Reading and Leeds -- among hundreds of others. On Monday night, they’ll be in town converting wallflowers at the House of Blues downtown. I recently caught up with Macklovitch before a gig in Boulder, Colo., and talked new music, putting his teaching and student career on hiatus, and that signature Chromeo sound.
Dave Macklovitch: Everything’s cool. But it’s the autopilot tour grind right now. We just try to maintain and make sure every show is good. We want each performance to be better than the last.
DM: People love it. And they react that way because it’s real. You know what I mean? There’s no big label telling us what to do. We don’t make songs for the radio. And we’re not thinking about anything but making it a party. We’re just two childhood friends, making weird music and having fun with it.
DM: I started writing about a year ago. But we’ve both been writing on our own and when the touring stops, we’ll put all of the ideas together and really get crackin’.
SoundDiego
Music. Community. Culture.
DM: Yeah. But I’m just doing music right now. It will stay that way for the next couple of months. I’m going at (his PHD in French Literature) at my own pace now. And at this point, all I’m doing is writing. So when I get off tour, I’ll be headed to the library and I’ll start writing again. They know I’ll finish it, when I finish it. I haven’t been teaching as much, but when I want to teach, I teach. Before, I was teaching 3 days, then I’d fly out, do a Chromeo show, fly back, and teach again. But I wanted to do a real tour this time. Thankfully, this does make me a little bit flexible when I want it.
DM: Naw. We’ll never burn out. We’re too smart. We plan everything very carefully. And we try to stay healthy and balanced in how we strategize all of the Chromeo activities. If you look at the touring we did around Business Casual, no one can f--- with us. We did one before it came out, we did one at the height of the promotion, and we’re doing one now - to make sure we go out with a bang on this record.
DM: Well, for example, things like hip-hop and R&B are more of an attitude for us. While our music might not exactly reflect it, people like R. Kelly and The Dream directly influence us because of the way they approach their lyrics. To us, that is really, really important. And we’re the kind of band that wants to turn all of the love song tropes on their head. But it’s a vortex. The 80s are our backbone, but there are a whole lot of other influences in there as well.
DM: I don’t think so. There’s one Chromeo sound. And if we lose that Chromeo sound, we lose who we are. But I feel like we can really stretch it. Everyone we admire can do that. A LCD Soundsystem song is unmistakable, but it could be anything from a jam to a ballad. He (James Murphy) can stretch it, but it still makes sense. Same thing with Kanye West. And that’s exactly what we always want to do as well.
DM: It’s the classic high-brow/low-brow trick. There’s no middle ground. If you want middle ground, you can listen to Maroon 5.
DM: Back to the studio to make some new music.
Blogger Scott McDonald covers music in San Diego for a few different publications and is the editor of Eight24.com
