Hi Amit, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. How are you and what are Infected Mushroom up to at the moment?
We are doing great. Feels nice to be home after a couple weekends in Asia. We are spending some time with our families. Erez [Eisen] just got married, and I have three rascals running around.
For your tour of Australia it’s going to be an old school set. What made you decide to bring back the oldies?
We like to do these kind of sets now and then. It’s been a while since we performed this retro live set, and we feel the Aussie psy crowd will really appreciate it – they are hardcore.
For career musicians, whatever they create always seems to get compared to their early stuff. How do you think your newer tracks stand up to your older material?
It is hard to compare our new stuff with the music we were making nearly 20 years ago. Back then it was very purely psy, yet still infused with that Infected sound. Now our music is very diverse, covering just about every genre imaginable, yet it still has that signature IM sound.
Given you’ve been in the industry for a long time, how have you noticed EDM music’s evolved since its inception? Are there any places in particular that have surprised you with their growth of the genre?
The scene has exploded in places like India and Southeast Asia. Every country in the world has their own journey with EDM; some are still new at it, and some are veterans. I’m happy to see that our music is now at the forefront of worldwide culture.
You’ve got a lot of fans who are dedicated to a specific idea of your sound, which can sometimes stifle the chance for you to evolve. In making decisions that may be outside of your original sound, are you conscious about how these die-hard fans may react?
No. Listen, we love our fans more than anything in the world, but we are going to evolve whether they like it or not. It’s just a natural process for an artist. This is why we do old school sets every once in a while, so the fans who dig that old sound can still enjoy it. For as many old-school fans we might lose for evolving, we’ll gain four-fold for pushing cutting edge music.
For your recent Animatronica tour in America we heard that people from Burning Man put your stage setup together. How much thought goes into the visual element of your show?
We put tonnes of thought into the visual elements of the show. It’s important for people that come to see Infected leave feeling like they had a memorable experience, more than what they would get from just going to a nightclub. Also, we like to tickle all parts of the audience’s brain – the music and the visuals feed off each other. But yes, this year our Animatronica set involves Burning Man style mushrooms: one huge one in the back with moving parts that shoots cryo, and two little angry guys in front with lights that also shoot cryo into the audience. Couple those with our light and laser rig and it’s quite a trippy night.
You’ll soon be heading to Earthcore, which you’ve played before. Do you have any fond memories of playing the festival down there?
Every moment we had there was memorable. We love Earthcore and are super stoked to be heading back. We’re ready to blow the roof off.
INFECTED MUSHROOM will appear Earthcore, which runs Thursday November 26 – Monday November 30, in Pyalong, VIC.
