This afternoon, March 1, Pretty Lights released a 31-track live edits album of classic tunes performed throughout stops on last year’s live Episodic Tour. The new album highlights Derek Vincent Smith’s keen knack for detail and the live band’s abilities in fusing electronic music with sweet, smooth jazz and jam. In Smith’s words:

WE ENDED UP DEVISING SOMETHING WE CALL FLIPS

We’ll start with a produced song, and everyone has a philosophy for playing on top of the produced songs. Alvin has acoustic drums that he’ll play on top of it, and we also have drum triggers for electronic drum sounds so we can get a produced sound from the live kit. When I call a ‘flip’ everyone knows that I’m about to filter out the produced track. When the produced music disappears, the live musicians completely switch their sound to something that’s more electronic. Borahm will drop into a synth bass, Alvin will switch to an electronic kick and an electronic snare. It’s like a quick crossfade. It allows us to go from the produced track, with the band accentuating it, to a fully live band without losing something…It’s completely improvised but we’ve put

A LOT OF TIME INTO MAKING SURE THEY KNOW
STYLISTICALLY, WHERE THE BOUNDS ARE

Check out Flips, stream the 31 live edits below:

The new live edits album comes preceding an anticipated video album for this year (the first since the 2013 release of “A Color Map of the Sun”) which Smith announced in an interview with the Denver Post last year, since confirming through the sharing of cryptic videos on his social accounts and a rare interview with Off Beat Magazine.

I’M TRYING TO MAKE A FILM AND A RECORD

that’s really about the connection of people — the amazing things that happen between people on the same frequency. It will be an episodic thing that makes a full piece.

EVERY SONG HAS AN EPISODE
IT CONNECTS TO MY EPISODIC MUSIC FESTIVAL

When I was booking that tour, I wanted to call it ‘The Weekend’s Episodic Festivals.’ I didn’t know why I wanted to call it that, but it’s all going together. Every festival, we’d have a film shoot that became the building blocks of these episodic film pieces. It’s pretty (cool). With no release date set yet for the forthcoming video album, this month’s surprise has no doubt kicked the year off right. The 31 reworked live PL classics should hold us over in the meantime.

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