With a sound that is difficult to attach to any one genre, Santa Cruz-based, Boostive, draw from roots, dub, ambient, electronic, hip-hop, jazz, and world music, creating a live set that takes you back to when you were a kid and stuffed way too many Skittles in your mouth; although you are not sure which flavor you’re experiencing at any given moment, the combination tastes pretty damn good.
Before they officially formed, Boostive was four high school friends jamming together in a garage in Southern California. Seiji (producer, bass, guitar, keyboard), Dylan (guitar), Andrew (drum, bass), and Nathan (saxophone, keyboard) had been banging on instruments together for many years in their hometown of Ocean Beach before they moved to Santa Cruz and added Mulligan B (engineer, guitar, bass), Travis (trombone) and Al Bundi (MC) to the group.
Over the last four years, Boostive has opened for the likes of The Pharcyde, Hieroglyphics, Slum Village and Zion I.
SantaCruz.com recently sat down with the guys as they prepare for their upcoming show on Thursday, April 23 at the Catalyst Club, with Ancestree, Perro Bravo, and Burnt.
How was it to play Serenity Gathering – one of the largest and fastest growing festivals in California?
NATHAN: The festival was based in San Diego this year so for Seiji, Dylan, Andrew and I going home to play a huge event like that was a cool experience. We played the Bridge Stage and the Main Stage at Serenity as well as two shows in our hometown of Ocean Beach at Winstons and The Sunshine Company. Four shows in three days was hectic but a lot of fun.
What are you playing live? Do you have anything new in the works?
DYLAN: A lot of what we play live right now is brand new and most of the set is not released. We have been writing and building up a lot of new material over the past few months and are waiting on new studio equipment so we can get started recording it here soon.
Have you always recorded your own stuff?
ANDREW: In the past we have worked with recording studios and producers but it just didn’t work out like we wanted. It wasn’t that we were taken advantage of or treated poorly; we’ve just found that with our sound the only people who can really nail it down are ourselves.
SEIJI: Yeah, like that one drum sound – we could not get that right for weeks!
ANDREW: I tried different drum covers, sticks – I just couldn’t reproduce this sound that we were looking for and one night we went to a Hiatus Kaiyote show and I woke up the next morning and nailed it. Weird instances like that make recording ourselves a much better option for us. We actually recorded most of Feed The People here as well.
With seven people in the group how does your writing process work?
DYLAN: Seiji has an MPC and he does his own thing making beats. Then he brings them to us and we riff off that. Most of our sound comes from jamming and just letting things flow from the base that Seiji’s beats give us.
You are constantly incorporating new instruments and members to your live set, any exciting collaborations coming up?
NATHAN: Our good friend Lindsay, who is one of the singers from the amazing local group Joomanji, will be performing with us at our show at the Catalyst. We worked a lot with them on Feed the People. We have some new stuff with them in the works as well. We are also pretty stoked to be playing with Ancestree, Burnt, and Perro Bravo next week at the Catalyst, some really solid groups.
Info: 8:30 p.m., April 23. The Catalyst, 21+. $10.
