21 Questions with Blendmode
Blendmode fuses many genres of music, including everything from jamtronica, psychedelic funk, and dance rock, into their own unique electronic dance music. Their music incorporates high energy rifts and exploratory jams into modern dance music that feed off of the energy of their fans. The band has been together officially since 2012 and prove successful with the intention of combining electronic instrumental rock with live improvisational jams. Due to their eclectic range of musical influences, BlendMode creates a musical experience that can be appreciated by a large range of audiences and has played at venues like The Blockley, The Stone Pony, The Ardmore Music Hall, Triumph of New Hope, The Saint, Legendary Dobbs, Silk City, Sullivan Hall NYC, XO Lounge, John and Peters, Drom NYC, Fontanas NYC, Muggs on Main, Lungusta Lounge, The Gin Mill, The Pickering Creek Inn, Chicos House of Jazz, Als Wine and Wiskey, 10th St. Live, and The Wonder Bar.
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Blendmode is:
Rob Reynolds: guitar Sean O'donnell: Bass John Pickard: Keyboards/Synths Jamie Doyle: percussion Rich Flamini: Drums Genre: Jamband, electro rock Origin: South Jersey, Philadelphia vicinity Influences: The Disco Biscuits, Lotus, Radio Head, Sound Tribe Sector Nine, Popadosio, Dopapod, DeadMau5, Daft Punk, Nerve, The Talking Heads , Phish, The Dead, Trentemoller, and many more 
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. To start off, how was your Halloween show in New Hope this past weekend at Fran’s? Any fun costume concept for the band?
No concept costume for us, just a mixup of costumes – a mask or two. John was the ghost of Bob Marley but had to take the mask off after a while.
2. How did you guys meet and where are you from?
The original crew started when our old drummer AJ, Rob and I [Jamie] began jamming a lot. After a couple months of playing together in freshmen year of High School in New Hope, PA we decided to try to make this work out and we became Blendmode. We were at a New Deal show New Year’s eve talking to this guy in front of us who said he played bass and that’s when we met Joey who would later play bass with us. When AJ moved to Colorado we met Rich, who is from South Jersey, through Joey. Then our keyboardist Cooper, Kevin Cooper, joined The Sakima Connection and went on to do stuff with them. Our current keyboardist John actually played with a show with us before, I think at the Red Lantern….we did play at The Blockley Together also. So we’d seen each other around, then when Joey found a good job up in New York we brought in Sean who’d been playing with John since High School, and that’s basically where we’re at.
3. Tell me about your day jobs
Rich: House Painter, Rob: Home improvement contractor, Sean: design engineer, John: bike messenger service manager and bartender, Jamie: Sherwin Williams Paint shop employee
4. Who handles the business of the band? (Promoting, booking, traveling etc)
That would be Rich mostly
5. Name a few artists or bands that have inspired/influenced you collectively as a band
James Brown, STS9, Disco Biscuits, The New Deal, Radiohead, Bonobo, Lotus, Phish, Moe, Classical music like Chopin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lamb of God, Allman Brothers, Ween, The Talking Heads
6. What is the largest venue you’ve played at?
The Stone Pony, we’ve played there seven or eight times. The Cutting room in New York was another one.
7. What was the first album/tape/CD you heard as kids?
My brother made me a mix tape of Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails…all the 90s good stuff. But dance stuff as well like ‘Pump up the Jam’ so that’s where that style of music came from for me. Actually, on my SEGA game console I used to record the music from Sonic the Hedgehog and just play the music, not jumping or playing anything
in the game, just record the music and sit there listening to it at school and stuff. I don’t know why I loved it, it was funky!
8. The festival season just ended and we’ve seen the volume of festivals amp up and there seems to be a buzzing amount of activity around summer festivals, do you plan on doing any or returning to any festivals in summer 2016?
We’ve been in contact with a few different people that we’re working with trying to get us in to a bunch of different festivals. Last year we kind got to the game a bit late but this year we definitely expect to do some. You have your time during the winter to cultivate who you are and then when the summer hits really bring it as hard as you can. We’ve always thought of ourselves as a late-night dance jamband. Our music suits itself best in a late night or festival experience.
9. The term ‘jam band’ seems to get thrown around a lot these days, along with jamtronica, dancetronica, electro dance rock…Do you place yourselves under one of these labels and as a band do you think it’s important to be put under a ‘classification’ to better identify with new fans?
I think we are little more orchestrated than some modern jambands, but yes we are a jamband. We are a jamband but would also consider us electro rock though, over anything else. I think The Disco Biscuits and Phish in today’s jam scene jam more than other jam bands out there, sometimes 60-70% of their live show, but we’re probably only jamming about 40% of our show.
10. What has been the furthest show from home you’ve traveled for?
Al’s Wine and Whiskey in Syracuse. Syracuse was fun, we got a good response out there. They put us up in a hotel and bought our tickets to the after-party shows like at the Landmark Theatre. They treat bands very well there.
11. How do you write your music…is it collectively or does one person usually do most of the writing and composing?
It’s definitely collectively done…sometimes we start jamming and we go back to our practice and say hey let’s do that that and try working them out. I believe Rob pretty much wrote the song Evolve we, but John for the most part wrote the song Revive. We’ve also been doing a new thing, where we’ve been passing around our Ableton tracks online to each other before-hand to work out and and coordinate some tracks on our own before getting together so then there’s a structure in place. We’re trying to do that more and more, but overall it’s pretty democratic.
12. So will that be somewhat of a birth to the songs to come?
Yes, we’ve been wanting that and have been working on collectively taking some of John’s songs, adding maybe some acoustic drums and some guitar on top of the track, percussion, bass, etc., but some songs don’t always transition well to being played by a live band.
13. Tell me more a bit about your musical backgrounds
Rob produces some of his own music and John does as well who is excellent with digital music, he has almost 30-50 almost finished tracks that are on the laptop that are all dance oriented. It’s been a bit slow going but we try to use everything around us that we have to make the best music we can and taking advantage of the Ableton software technology and producing music on our own. Rich has an electronic pad that he runs with instrument sounds linked to his drums and Rob isn’t just a guitarist, he has an electronic pad as well producing sound effects. John does sound effects also on his end of course, his mother Denise Montana was a disco pop-star in the 70s, his grandfather produced disco music, his dad played saxophone and clarinet and his dad played accordion.
14. What direction is the music moving at this point?
A lot of our old songs were very big and full sounding but I kind of think we’re moving in the directing of being more subtle or dynamic, I like that word. So we’re excited to see where it all goes. A recent song we played is a bit more ‘housey’ than some of our other stuff which is an exciting direction for us…we may have a couple songs like that then we may have a couple songs that are more rock-oriented. I think trying to have an eclectic show of different kinds of music is what we want but not just be a jack of all trades, really mastering each one. John is almost done setting up his keyboard rig to be complete which is part of using everything possible we can to produce our sound. It’s a lot easier to have the sounds set and ready rather than having to search around or change settings or look for the sound…We have the piano, the laptop for the sound effects, Moog for the analog stuff which helps me get the best sound possible, like having 5 keyboards to have the best possible sound for specific things.
15. What has been your biggest challenge as a band?
Arguing while writing songs. We’re all very passionate about this and sometimes there’s a bunch of testosterone flying around the room and everybody’s got ideas on where they think the song should go. Getting on the same page basically. I think that’s one of the most difficult part of having a more democratic writing process because if you have someone who is writing the songs you don’t have as much give and take and people throwing out ideas, it’s pretty much: this is the way it’s going to be.
16. Do you feel that live performances trump album work? Do you see more appreciation for the live shows and the live music scene than you do with recorded or studio work?
I think that it’s equal parts. I feel as though the older I’m getting the more that I’m appreciating song writing. In the past for me the live show was about the party and you get to go see your favorite band. The band that got me into this kind of music was The Disco Biscuits and you know they throw a party every time they play. I think music is based upon mood…you can have an experience listening to an album front to back that you can’t have at a live show and vice versa.
17. What do you think of online music sharing? Do you have your music online for sale or is it free to download?
We pretty much just share it out and on Bandcamp you can choose to donate money for the tracks for the downloads. The way the industry is these days it’s basically why bother? The live show is half of it, people come out and make a presence there. An artist like Pretty Lights setting a precedent to be one of the first people to release every single piece of music he’s ever produced free of charge, which gets his name out in mass amounts and now he’s king of the world right now, but he’s never made a dime off any of his music just his live shows and advertisements.
18. How often do you play covers? I was at Silk City for your last show there and heard an excellent cover of ‘The Disco Biscuits’ ‘Rock Candy’
We’ve been playing covers for a few years now, but probably depending on the set and what crowd we’ll be in front of. If we have a 45 minute set we’ll play all original songs. If we have 2 sets we’ll probably play two or three cover songs. Some Pink Floyd, some Biscuits, some New Deal
19. If you had to give up music, what would you do instead to be creative?
Mixed Martial Arts, Karate, Paint & Sculpt, or maybe a Base Jumper?? We have a lot of adrenaline junkies in this band but maybe take photos too.
20. I really dig the songs Evolve and Revive, both dancy and composed…what’s the creative process like for putting songs like these together?
The Revive song, the chords were taken somewhat from classical music, a constant moving classical chord progression. Then taking 10 or 12 chord changes we needed a beginning and end to the song. Adding dancy parts to it in the middle. Evolve has been around a while and the structure of the song has changed with us; as the band started getting into more electronic music, even the jams got more dancier.
21. Upcoming shows or plans on the horizon for Blendmode?
We have an EP coming out in late Winter that we’re really excited about working on which is in pre-production right now and will be called Revive. We’re recording with a longtime friend Jarrett Landry and his company Voltage Grove. We’ve got a New York Run coming up: November 20th at Fontana’s in NYC and the 21st at Lot 10 in Ithaca. We’re also doing a Thanksgiving Leftovers Show at Fran’s Pub in New Hope on 11/27. We’ll be back at Silk City in Philadelphia on December 1st with DJ Wyllys and co. There are a few other live show dates being confirmed shortly, and we have a big announcement on the horizon so stay tuned!
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/BlendMode
http://www.blendmodeofficial.com/
https://twitter.com/BlendMode__
No concept costume for us, just a mixup of costumes – a mask or two. John was the ghost of Bob Marley but had to take the mask off after a while.
2. How did you guys meet and where are you from?
The original crew started when our old drummer AJ, Rob and I [Jamie] began jamming a lot. After a couple months of playing together in freshmen year of High School in New Hope, PA we decided to try to make this work out and we became Blendmode. We were at a New Deal show New Year’s eve talking to this guy in front of us who said he played bass and that’s when we met Joey who would later play bass with us. When AJ moved to Colorado we met Rich, who is from South Jersey, through Joey. Then our keyboardist Cooper, Kevin Cooper, joined The Sakima Connection and went on to do stuff with them. Our current keyboardist John actually played with a show with us before, I think at the Red Lantern….we did play at The Blockley Together also. So we’d seen each other around, then when Joey found a good job up in New York we brought in Sean who’d been playing with John since High School, and that’s basically where we’re at.
3. Tell me about your day jobs
Rich: House Painter, Rob: Home improvement contractor, Sean: design engineer, John: bike messenger service manager and bartender, Jamie: Sherwin Williams Paint shop employee
4. Who handles the business of the band? (Promoting, booking, traveling etc)
That would be Rich mostly
5. Name a few artists or bands that have inspired/influenced you collectively as a band
James Brown, STS9, Disco Biscuits, The New Deal, Radiohead, Bonobo, Lotus, Phish, Moe, Classical music like Chopin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lamb of God, Allman Brothers, Ween, The Talking Heads
6. What is the largest venue you’ve played at?
The Stone Pony, we’ve played there seven or eight times. The Cutting room in New York was another one.
7. What was the first album/tape/CD you heard as kids?
My brother made me a mix tape of Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails…all the 90s good stuff. But dance stuff as well like ‘Pump up the Jam’ so that’s where that style of music came from for me. Actually, on my SEGA game console I used to record the music from Sonic the Hedgehog and just play the music, not jumping or playing anything
in the game, just record the music and sit there listening to it at school and stuff. I don’t know why I loved it, it was funky!
8. The festival season just ended and we’ve seen the volume of festivals amp up and there seems to be a buzzing amount of activity around summer festivals, do you plan on doing any or returning to any festivals in summer 2016?
We’ve been in contact with a few different people that we’re working with trying to get us in to a bunch of different festivals. Last year we kind got to the game a bit late but this year we definitely expect to do some. You have your time during the winter to cultivate who you are and then when the summer hits really bring it as hard as you can. We’ve always thought of ourselves as a late-night dance jamband. Our music suits itself best in a late night or festival experience.
9. The term ‘jam band’ seems to get thrown around a lot these days, along with jamtronica, dancetronica, electro dance rock…Do you place yourselves under one of these labels and as a band do you think it’s important to be put under a ‘classification’ to better identify with new fans?
I think we are little more orchestrated than some modern jambands, but yes we are a jamband. We are a jamband but would also consider us electro rock though, over anything else. I think The Disco Biscuits and Phish in today’s jam scene jam more than other jam bands out there, sometimes 60-70% of their live show, but we’re probably only jamming about 40% of our show.
10. What has been the furthest show from home you’ve traveled for?
Al’s Wine and Whiskey in Syracuse. Syracuse was fun, we got a good response out there. They put us up in a hotel and bought our tickets to the after-party shows like at the Landmark Theatre. They treat bands very well there.
11. How do you write your music…is it collectively or does one person usually do most of the writing and composing?
It’s definitely collectively done…sometimes we start jamming and we go back to our practice and say hey let’s do that that and try working them out. I believe Rob pretty much wrote the song Evolve we, but John for the most part wrote the song Revive. We’ve also been doing a new thing, where we’ve been passing around our Ableton tracks online to each other before-hand to work out and and coordinate some tracks on our own before getting together so then there’s a structure in place. We’re trying to do that more and more, but overall it’s pretty democratic.
12. So will that be somewhat of a birth to the songs to come?
Yes, we’ve been wanting that and have been working on collectively taking some of John’s songs, adding maybe some acoustic drums and some guitar on top of the track, percussion, bass, etc., but some songs don’t always transition well to being played by a live band.
13. Tell me more a bit about your musical backgrounds
Rob produces some of his own music and John does as well who is excellent with digital music, he has almost 30-50 almost finished tracks that are on the laptop that are all dance oriented. It’s been a bit slow going but we try to use everything around us that we have to make the best music we can and taking advantage of the Ableton software technology and producing music on our own. Rich has an electronic pad that he runs with instrument sounds linked to his drums and Rob isn’t just a guitarist, he has an electronic pad as well producing sound effects. John does sound effects also on his end of course, his mother Denise Montana was a disco pop-star in the 70s, his grandfather produced disco music, his dad played saxophone and clarinet and his dad played accordion.
14. What direction is the music moving at this point?
A lot of our old songs were very big and full sounding but I kind of think we’re moving in the directing of being more subtle or dynamic, I like that word. So we’re excited to see where it all goes. A recent song we played is a bit more ‘housey’ than some of our other stuff which is an exciting direction for us…we may have a couple songs like that then we may have a couple songs that are more rock-oriented. I think trying to have an eclectic show of different kinds of music is what we want but not just be a jack of all trades, really mastering each one. John is almost done setting up his keyboard rig to be complete which is part of using everything possible we can to produce our sound. It’s a lot easier to have the sounds set and ready rather than having to search around or change settings or look for the sound…We have the piano, the laptop for the sound effects, Moog for the analog stuff which helps me get the best sound possible, like having 5 keyboards to have the best possible sound for specific things.
15. What has been your biggest challenge as a band?
Arguing while writing songs. We’re all very passionate about this and sometimes there’s a bunch of testosterone flying around the room and everybody’s got ideas on where they think the song should go. Getting on the same page basically. I think that’s one of the most difficult part of having a more democratic writing process because if you have someone who is writing the songs you don’t have as much give and take and people throwing out ideas, it’s pretty much: this is the way it’s going to be.
16. Do you feel that live performances trump album work? Do you see more appreciation for the live shows and the live music scene than you do with recorded or studio work?
I think that it’s equal parts. I feel as though the older I’m getting the more that I’m appreciating song writing. In the past for me the live show was about the party and you get to go see your favorite band. The band that got me into this kind of music was The Disco Biscuits and you know they throw a party every time they play. I think music is based upon mood…you can have an experience listening to an album front to back that you can’t have at a live show and vice versa.
17. What do you think of online music sharing? Do you have your music online for sale or is it free to download?
We pretty much just share it out and on Bandcamp you can choose to donate money for the tracks for the downloads. The way the industry is these days it’s basically why bother? The live show is half of it, people come out and make a presence there. An artist like Pretty Lights setting a precedent to be one of the first people to release every single piece of music he’s ever produced free of charge, which gets his name out in mass amounts and now he’s king of the world right now, but he’s never made a dime off any of his music just his live shows and advertisements.
18. How often do you play covers? I was at Silk City for your last show there and heard an excellent cover of ‘The Disco Biscuits’ ‘Rock Candy’
We’ve been playing covers for a few years now, but probably depending on the set and what crowd we’ll be in front of. If we have a 45 minute set we’ll play all original songs. If we have 2 sets we’ll probably play two or three cover songs. Some Pink Floyd, some Biscuits, some New Deal
19. If you had to give up music, what would you do instead to be creative?
Mixed Martial Arts, Karate, Paint & Sculpt, or maybe a Base Jumper?? We have a lot of adrenaline junkies in this band but maybe take photos too.
20. I really dig the songs Evolve and Revive, both dancy and composed…what’s the creative process like for putting songs like these together?
The Revive song, the chords were taken somewhat from classical music, a constant moving classical chord progression. Then taking 10 or 12 chord changes we needed a beginning and end to the song. Adding dancy parts to it in the middle. Evolve has been around a while and the structure of the song has changed with us; as the band started getting into more electronic music, even the jams got more dancier.
21. Upcoming shows or plans on the horizon for Blendmode?
We have an EP coming out in late Winter that we’re really excited about working on which is in pre-production right now and will be called Revive. We’re recording with a longtime friend Jarrett Landry and his company Voltage Grove. We’ve got a New York Run coming up: November 20th at Fontana’s in NYC and the 21st at Lot 10 in Ithaca. We’re also doing a Thanksgiving Leftovers Show at Fran’s Pub in New Hope on 11/27. We’ll be back at Silk City in Philadelphia on December 1st with DJ Wyllys and co. There are a few other live show dates being confirmed shortly, and we have a big announcement on the horizon so stay tuned!
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/BlendMode
http://www.blendmodeofficial.com/
https://twitter.com/BlendMode__