LL: It's really been a continually changing roster of equipment. At first we were probably slightly overdoing it with like ten devices on stage at once... a synthesizer, various midi controllers, samplers, and effects machines and some other bonus items even, but we are going about things a little more reasonable now. When there are shows coming up more and more frequently it can be a bitch to tear your studio apart for every one, so we have lightened up to usually three or four key pieces of gear (usually a couple midi controllers with all the right bells and whistles, and another toy or two) and that suits us rather well. Two laptops generally serve as our respective control centers, and we're running both running Ableton Live because its the absolute illest program for what we are doing. Our set is an evolving melting pot of everything new we've been working on, often laced with a handful of brand new re-edits of what other jams we are feeling at the moment. You can also expect a good amount of rap lyrics thrown in there for everyones enjoyment.

Basically, when we go out to see our favorite producers play live we hope to see them busting their asses, so we take the same approach with our own shows. It makes it far more exciting for both us and the attendees to take some chances on stage and really make it live as fuck.

LANDO: We use two separate laptops connected to a couple midi controllers which are synced to Ableton Live and other plug-ins/secret weapons on the computers to manipulate the sound live. A Korg Kaoss pad is also connected for extra random effects. We're basically playing various loops at a time, using our own material mixed in with a lot of other material we dig from other artists/friends and essentially remixing them live on the spot, kind of like a dj hybrid sort of thing, along with the added club rap acapella every so often. Every set is different and mostly improv. and we try to have mad fun with it, though there's a lot of concentration involved. Every attempt at producing is different and we generally find our sound through trial and error, adding effects here, or chopping and detuning a sample there, until we're satisfied with a finished product.

Lazerin' Montreal's Turbo Crunk party, April 2008
Photo by Blingmod

SFBG: You're pretty well-known and propped for your treatment of recent hip-hop/crunk blowouts like 50 Cent's "I Get Money" and Lil Wayne's "Stuntin Like My Daddy" (which works my azz off, btw). But you do much more than lay the boom-glitch-blap over the tracks -- you pretty much deconstruct and rework 'em. Is this an intellectual/philosophical effort, or do your productions come more spontaneously from you jamming together on the technology?

LANDO: I guess a little bit of both, I mean, a little more on the spontaneous jaming side of things but there are tools and programs that we're more experienced with and use often more than others. We don't have a set formula as to how we make tracks by any means. We both just start picking at it, using everything we know and the tune slowly but surely begins to blossom. If there's something one of us isn't feeling we'll compromise and try other options to make the overall sound work best for the both of us.

LL: It's really all of the above. Now that we've been working together for a couple years now, we are more and more finding a sound that is very 'in the middle' of both of our styles, and I think at times we may even hear the material to be remixed, and probably imagine something not too far from one another.
There is also definitely a spontaneous element to our productions for sure. I think we both really get down with the idea of just chopping the living hell out of something and rearranging left and right until we stumble upon something that sounds right.

SFBG: What do you consider your sound's relationship to hip-hop, and what other styles (dub step, reggae, electro, glitch) would you say really influence you?

LANDO: Well of course hip-hop is the root of our sound and we both began our own respective projects working with back to the basics, raw sample based hip-hop beats way before we even met. But our sound now is almost directly related to a huge mixture of all our influences which over the years has to do with much more than just hip-hop. Most of our music is infused with a little bit of electro, hip-hop, techno, disco house, grime, hyphy, maybe a little IDM, and psych/progrock. As long as it has that hype factor, we're game.

LL: Hip-hop is definitely still at the core for me. The drum programming, tempos, and vulgar language are all still present for sure. Grime and dubstep are also big influences with their nasty low end, and we're both into that hot new electro shit coming out of France too. Our roommate Ryan a.k.a. Ghosts On Tape is a huge influence, he is one of my favorite live acts, and I think we definitely get some faster tempo influence from his more dance-able stylee.

We're both also feeling a lot of that old electro, psychedelic rock, and early synthesizer music for sure. As far as people we might be thrown into a category with, our homies in Montreal like Megasoid and Blingmod and are influences for sure, as well the cats in LA such as Glitch Mob, Flying Lotus, Daedelus, etc. There is also a bunch of guys in Scotland doing big things right now that I get pumped on as well.

SFBG Who does your graphics, and how much would you say your visual presentation is a part of the whole Lazer Sword package?

LL: We're both in charge of the graphic side of things. I used to do a great deal of graffiti, and I think that shows in our art. I think most people who aren't from SF probably know us from coming across our MySpace, and would like to think it reflects what our music sounds like to an extent. Loud, flashy, and maybe even slightly abrupt. I can imagine people associate our sound with our visual presence a bit.

LANDO: We both do our own graphics, for now I guess. Bryant's really good at fonts and collaging things and I tend to mess around with different effects and patterns. The whole neon rave look mixed with gangster rap clash is always a must and definitely represents the mixture of styles in our production quite well so we tend to stick with that. We think the visual aspect is very important, our music is very vibrant and club/party oriented at times so the flashy colors and "lazer like" glow is always fitting. When we finish a track, of course we're mad excited about it so we get right to work with the images. It definitely gives tracks more of a presence online.

SFBG: The lazer bass (or as LL calls it, awesomely, "future blap") sound is really blowing up, what with the Turbo Crunk scene, Glitch Mob (especially ediT), Daddy Kev, and others -- who else in the Bay Area are you affiliated with or admire who's following the sound?

LL: We don't really refer to our own sound as LAZER BASS, but I can see for obvious reasons why people would make that connection (we have LAZER in our name, and we like to include a heavy slab of BASS in our tracks). Future Blap is something I made up joking around... Blap is a term coined by the Bay Area rap legend E-40 (meaning a hot track, a slapper, a banger). Its a regional term and we are proud to be repping the bay, and although we are making this music right now, and we'd like to think we might sound how one would expect Bay Area rap to sound in the FUTURE. We don't have a big interest in pigeonholing our own genre, especially since our tracks widely vary in style at times, so if thats inevitable to keep from being categorized with a genre I would be most at home just sticking with FUTURE BLAP. Anyhow, besides our main man Ghosts On Tape, there are a few other local gangstas like Mophono and DNAE Beats who are hustling big time on stage, but I think our style pushing toward a more experimental or extreme side of things.

LANDO: Well we're always going to hype the man (our roommate) Ghosts On Tape up because we're both really into his stuff and he slays shit, though his music is a bit different. There's also Eprom who's got the illy glitched out thugwarp style, and best of all, these two young dudes out of San Jose that not too many cats are hype to. They're 17, still in high school, they go by ¡Me Gusta! and they got that blippy space hyphy shit that thumps and no ones' ready for it. Trust me soon, they'll get equipment and start creeping out of the crevices. We use some of there material in our current set.

SFBG: Is your EP on B.E.A.R. dropping soon? What's gonna be on it?

Lazer Sword: Soon soon soon, we know peeps are anxious and we are too but these things take time. I guess that's a good thing. It will have 5 tracks of fiery madness and trust us, it's on its way.

SFBG: A more philosophical question, in case you think about it: Do you think there's a deeper meaning to the lazer sounds you drop and do they mean anything deeper to you than sick noise and beats? How did you land on that sound and why do you think it really moves the party right now?

LL: We don't usually use the word lazer as an adjective. We chose our name from a preset effect on one of our prized effect units, as we thought it represented the "futuristic" (LAZER) and the chop-and-paste (SWORD) element. I feel like our stuff draws more of an "ohh shit, this is bangin!" response than pull any deep feelings from the listener...

I think our live show offers something for both the production enthusiast (men) and the dance party (women) fairly equally, so the ratio is always something to party about... Lazer Sword shows are probably a good place to go if you are looking for some action actually.

LANDO: Sick noise and beats, more or less. Yeah that may sound lame but with this type of music, i think that's as deep as it needs to get. Don't get me wrong, we're pretty damn passionate about our work but after all, it's party music. When the shit hits you get down and that means a lot to me.

LAZER SWORD
With XO Skeletons and VC4
Fri/2, 9 p.m., call for price
Balazo 18
2811 Mission, SF
(415) 255-7227
www.myspace.com/lazersword

GLITCH MOB
With Lazer Sword and Flying Lotus
May 9, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $20
Mighty
119 Utah, SF
(415) 762-0151
www.mighty119.com