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PHASES' lead singer, Z, featured in the middle, spoke to Kscope on Wednesday about their upcoming Saturn show. (Photo courtesy of phasesmusic.com)It’s cold. We have finals, and we are, in general, hating life right now.
What’s my ideal cure to the end of the semester blues? Skipping town and jetting to a warm beach, where I can hang with celebs and increase my Instagram followers exponentially.
Since that’s unrealistic, finding music that makes you feel like you have no responsibilities is the best solution. That’s why PHASES, an electro-dance pop band made up a group of friends from sunny Los Angeles, California, is here to give you a figurative escape.
The band’s lead single, “I’m in Love With my Life” has picked up pop culture momentum in recent weeks. NYLON magazine named the tune a “new morning mantra” and Buzzfeed called the track a “Pop Song You Can’t Miss.”
On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to speak with Z Berg, PHASES’ lead singer, on their sound and on-going tour.
Kscope: Is this your first tour as PHASES? And how is it going?
Z: We are on our second leg of our first tour. [We’ve been on tour] for the last three months and we’ve been home for the last three days because of Thanksgiving, but we are on our way to Charleston [S.C.] right now, but it’s been really really fun so far. It’s been about four years of summer in Los Angeles, so I’m very excited about the rain that we see here, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Kscope: So are you originally from the Los Angeles area, or elsewhere?
Z: Yes I am. Born and raised.
Kscope: So this [the south] is definitely a change in scenery…
Z: Yes it is, but you know I’ve been touring since I was sixteen so I’m more comfortable moving than when I’m standing still.
Kscope: Since you’ve been touring since you were 16, how has your musical career evolved into Phases?
Z: You know my band before PHASES, and I think in our all of our projects, we—I wrote everything in my band before PHASES and we were involved in a lot of bull sh—. [Z laughs] but we removed all of the bull sh— now. Like we all write, we all play, we all sing. These are people who have been my best friends since I was like 16, so I’ve known them for most of my life so, I don’t know; it’s a very different thing. And also since it is so collaborative, we are all very different. We have different tastes, and I think this band—none of us would be able to make this music alone—so we’ve been sort of in the ‘Power Rangers’ way, you know, we morph into one, super-human band and finally kill that monster.
Kscope: I know you that you guys were originally called JJamzs, but now that you guys are more collaborative, has that changed your sound too?
Z: Well, yeah. The thing about JJamz is that we started playing music years and years ago as JJamz as a side project. So we were all in other bands and we were all on tour. So I would come home from tour for a second and then jump into the studio and write some songs and record together anytime we had a moment. So JJamz, it never really felt like we had a real band, and like it was real life.
But then all of our bands broke up, and we picked up our JJamz records and then it just, it was sort of time for us to figure out if this was really what we wanted to do. And I think all of us felt that ‘Maybe we don’t need to do this. Maybe we need to go our separate ways,’ but the second we tried to leave each other, it brought us closer together. I think we’re stuck together for life, with this lot.
And also, it was really the music that really made us stay together. It really challenged us and made us do something that excited us and made us want to do this, and make something new and make something we had never done before. So PHASES came out of our desire to make something great, something unique that makes us want to stay together.
Kscope: Your sound is so energetic and happy, when you’re creating songs like “I’m in Love with my Life” are you in an upbeat place or mindset, or are you wishing you were?
Z: I think it’s a combination of both. I think the point is about this record is that it’s a dance record from start to finish. It sounds pretty upbeat. It’s always fun to dance to, to get ready to, it’s always fun driving music, but once you start listening to it, you realize that ‘I’m In Love With My Life’ is the only one that’s pure happiness. There’s a lot of songs about heartbreak and loss, love and friends, sadness and…life. But it all underlies that happy sound. It kind of expresses that bittersweet combination that’s my favorite kind of music.
Kscope: Since it is a dance record, what’s your favorite energy to get from an audience?
Z: I think when you play a show, particularly the shows we are playing right now, we’re opening, so most people don’t really know us, so we’re walking on eggshells. But basically, we have half an hour to forty-five minutes to make a connection with a room of people. So I’m a connection addict. I’m a love addict…Like I smile at every person I pass on the street when I’m walking, so I crave that connection. When you walk on stage, to make a good show, you and everyone in that room have to make that connection for however long you’re on stage and it’s like the most exhilarating feeling in the world. And whether it’s five people or five thousand, if you can manage to get that whole room to feel the same things you do for a period of time, that’s like why we do what we do.
Kscope: What’s been your favorite place on tour so far that where you’ve played?
Z: …It’s always fun to play in New York. San Francisco is always a fun town, D.C. is also fun to play too. Our best show last March was in Boston. It was by far the most balls to the walls, kickass crazy crowd. The fun part is that you never know where you’ll have your weirdest adventures. One time you’ll come to a city and nothing will happen and you’ll be like “huh” and the next time you’ll be like “What on earth, this place is WILD.” It just kind of depends on who you meet. It’s the best part.
Kscope: For your Birmingham show, what should we prep for and why should us college students go?
Z: Well, if you like fun at all and if you like dancing at all, this is definitely the show for you. I also do a lot of dancing, and I’ve been told that’s a lot of fun, haha. And mostly, we spent a lot of time trying to make this the best live show any of us have ever played. We spent months sampling every single sound we recorded on this record, and putting them into our keyboards and our drum sets, making this kind of our robot-human hybrid of electronic, old-school sound. So we’re playing a show that’s live, but it sounds exactly like how we’ve recorded. For me it’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been apart, so I think it’s pretty cool. So you know, I bet you might too.
Kscope: So before we end things, where do you see PHASES in the next two or three years?
Z: Hopefully we’ll be touring our asses off and do all the things we do. I love this job for this reason. My goal in life is to go everywhere, to do everything, to see everything and meet everybody. So with all of this working, I just want people to hear our music so we can come to every town in the world and hang out. So if all goes well, we’ll be everywhere at once.
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PHASES will open for BØRNS on Tuesday, Dec. 8 at Saturn. Tickets run from $12-15. If you can’t make it to this show, the band will go on tour again next year with Maroon 5 and will perform at Hangout Fest in Gulf Shores.
For a full review of their show please visit Kscope's Medium blog:
https://medium.com/the-kaleidoscope/phases-fills-saturn-with-80-s-vibes-f6f690250ec2#.xqkxo86lt
