This week's FADER mix comes via LOL Boys, the collaborative effort of Montreal's Markus Garcia and LA's Jerome Potter, longtime internet friends who've just released an EP, Changes, on Friends of Friends. In conversation, the guys affectionately finish each other's sentences, but in spite of that closeness, and though they're physically together for stretches of time here and there, they've never recorded in the same room. The way they make music is perhaps a testament to the fairness of their friendship; they pass songs back and forth, a deliberate rule that ensures no one's ever in charge or taking orders. Their mix recasts sentimental radio fare from this summer and pool party seasons past, layered with delicate jazz cymbals and tickled piano. The pace is consistently, appealingly reclined, like laying back in a camp chair, misting fan in hand. Download the mix, read an interview with Garcia and Potter conducted over three-way iChat and check out the tracklist, filled with refreshed favorites, below.
Download: LOL Boys' FADER Mix
There’s a lot of piano on this mix. Is rave over, and lounge the next big thing? JEROME POTTER: There is a lot of piano i guess! I guess the idea was to take some of our favorite pop songs, or things we are feeling in general and make nice chill edits of them for the summer. Also to show that we are really influenced by pop music. MARKUS GARCIA: Rooftops and beaches and pools. POTTER: Bedrooms and cars. We just want people to go into it with no expectations. Structurally, our songs are very much house-informed, but it's all just pop music in the end.
Can you speak on how those pop influences show up in your new EP? POTTER: Well on this EP we got to work with vocalists. So, given that opportunity, we challenged ourselves to make songs, as opposed to making “tracks.” We started listening to a lot of stuff that originally made us become internet friends too. Like Q and Not U, TV on the Radio. But then stuff that's way more mainstream, a lot of R&B.
Where do you envision people listening to the EP? Are you making pop songs for dancing to IRL? GARCIA: Beats by Dre headphones. POTTER: Some of the songs can definitely work in the club, but we wrote this EP thinking about outside the club. Like before and after; what you listen to before you go out or when you come home. When you're with someone, or when you're alone. When you are happy or sad, yin-yang. That balance is important to us. Especially since we are a duo. We are very yin-yang.
How do your personalities complement each other? GARCIA: We live on opposite coasts. POTTER: So we bring different geographical influences. In LA we have what seems to be infinite space. But Markus and I have pretty similar, internet-heavy lifestyles.
How often do you see each other? POTTER: We were both in Montreal in the month of December. Apart from that time though, we really only see each other on tour. Which varies, but I'd say typically once a month. We "see" each other online almost everyday. It's nice that with the internet, location is irrelevant. Physical space is in a way erased. I have been on message boards since I was about 14, being involved in music. I remember meeting kids from those boards at concerts when I was in high school, and that’s continued to this day. Or even people from MySpace, Friendster, Orkut. GARCIA: Wow... Orkut. POTTER: We met in person for the first time not that long after we decided to begin the project. I visited Markus in Chicago when I was on break from school. GARCIA: I think I was sleeping in a converted storefront next to the Congress. Jerome threw a pillow at me. He had long hair that was wild. We got along very well.
Which message board did you meet on? POTTER: It was a NASA forum. They had a weird music section. GARCIA: “Tunes you would want to listen to in outer space.” POTTER: Most people were talking about post rock and stuff but we had a thread about Chicago house. There was some remix contest and we were both doing solo stuff, but since we had some common interests we were like, Hey, let’s try this out by doing it together over the internet. We were happy with it so we decided to start this weird project, being an internet based group by sending project files back and forth. It’s becoming more common, though. Purity Ring works this way as well. GARCIA: We were constantly showing each other new music, so when he was DJing and I was DJing, we are always on a similar tip.
Would you guys ever want to share a studio? GARCIA: For sure, but we haven't recorded together. POTTER: We definitely have come to grow used to this process. We have done everything the same way, even when we have been in the same city. It makes a true, collaborative art project. When you are in the studio together, there is always a balance of control. The way we do it, at one point, one of us has 100% control of the direction of a song. Then it'll be sent to the other who then has 100% control, then it shifts. It's different but it makes it exciting to see where the song ends up.
The songs you've been making aren’t especially funny. Do you ever regret the LOL in your name? GARCIA: Lullabies is a tight name for a group though! Thats how we pronounce it you know. I like going through customs and telling the person asking what band I’m in, because I am traveling with so much equipment, “LOL Boys."
Tracklist:
1. Lil Wayne - Nightmares of the Bottom
2. Cloud - Turning
3. Avicii - Levels
4. John Legend - Tonight
5. Radiohead - Talk Show Host
6. Fiona Apple - Every Single Night
7. Christina Milian - Chameleon
8. Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe
9. Kanye West - Mercy
10. Jeremih - Keep It Moving
11. Kreayshawn - Summertime
12. R . Kelly & Jeremih - Misunderstood
13. Basement Jaxx - Romeo (Acoustic Version)