DYNOHUNTER’s ability to blend electronic influences with live performed saxophone, bass, and drums has positioned them as one of the most promising live acts in America today!

For those that are not aware, how would you describe your sound and style?

Dynohunter is a live house/techno trio consisting of drums, bass, synths, saxophone, and percussion. We like to describe our take on the house/techno universe as Rainforest Tech or Organic Techno. Essentially we create all the music in the studio and then we begin to reverse engineer it to play it live in a trio setting. By that we mean taking parts/lines/pieces out to perform on the spot and be able to inject our own human feel into every song and that can be expressed differently every night. We love incorporating sounds of nature whether it’s birds or waterfalls or wind gusts into the production and meld that with tribal rhythms and nods to world music in the melody, harmony and bass lines. Since we are a band with live drums and live bass we aim to have a super deep, warm and human groove going on. With that as the foundation, we try to create the Dance sounds, beats, & vibes of the house & techno world that we love and that have been a deep source of inspiration both musically and spiritually. When we play live there can be large improv sections where the sax is featured and we can jam and improvise to build more intensity and expand on the feel of the track depending on the vibe of the night. I guess those components of a human rhythm section, world music influence, sounds of nature, live improvisation, and the House & Techno sound is what ultimately creates our unique take on the genre and why the rainforest tech/organic techno tags came about. The performances for us are all about the connection with the crowd and creating synergy between us and them. It is all about creating a feeling and a higher vibration and when everyone does there part together, band and crowd, its a very special feeling in the room.

In scene full of DJs and producers, it’s really refreshing to see musicians like you guys performing dance music live. How long did it actually take you to rehearse your music before your could play together live?

Over the years we have refined and altered the approach to achieve the best and most efficient set up for the group. We definitely do not want to sacrifice the quality of the track just to play certain parts on our instruments. The goal of this project is to bring the production and live performance together and not necessarily have one be more important than the other. We would like to believe the tracks from the studio stand on their own and the fact we perform live is just a bonus. That being said the current set up and gear hasn’t changed much in the last year and probably won’t till we feel like we can up the challenge to ourselves and not take away from the overall show. Usually after finishing a track we put it in a dropbox folder where we can all listen and figure what we want to play. At that point we all do our homework and show up to the next rehearsal with a pretty good handle on those parts, it helps that we’ve all been playing instruments for over 20 years each and perform as instrumentalist professionally outside of Dynohunter. I think the most exciting thing about performing our music live is the jam sections, during those sections we loop specfic sections of the tracks and really let the instruments steer the bus!

Is everything that you do pre rehearsed or are there times when you play on the fly?

We definitely rehearse the individual songs and the general idea of the DJ transitions until we feel very comfortable. However, each set ends up different from the one before in terms of how long the transition between tracks is and when it seems right to bring in parts of the drums or bass lines. Also those improv sections change every time. At that point it comes down to eye contact and familiarity with the tracks to be able to really make those more powerful and smooth. But we generally do decide on a general set list night to night at this point because we want to keep the quality level and tightness super high.

Have there ever been any moments when things didn’t exactly go to plan ha?

No performance is ever perfect but we try to execute the game plan to the best of our ability. With so much going on between live DJ transitions and playing live sometimes things can go a little sideways but we always find a way to make it work. Being able to make it work goes back to lots of stage hours and being aware up there. At the end of the day the beauty of house and techno is that it is more of a stream of conscious then it is planned down to the second.

Talk to us about some of your best gigs you’ve played so far and do you have any videos to share?

Just this last weekend we played Electric Forest Music Festival for the first time. Our set was 2-3am on the forest stage which as you can imagine is surrounded by huge trees. The system was pumping the lights/projections/lasers were on point and most of all the energy from the crowd was unreal. It was definitely the best set we have ever played and the fact a few thousand people got to share it with us was very special. We do have a short video a fan took that looks captures the vibe and we will have a full recap video of the set coming out shortly.We also just dropped our second Live Sessions Video from our headliner at The Bluebird Theater which is a live video with live sound. We created the Live Sessions series to give fans a closer look at how we perform live.

So tell us how you’re recording the music you’re releasing on Beatport? In a studio? Directly in to computer? Do you ever cheat and use soft synths for your productions?

In our home studio we use Ableton live and a macbook pro 2011 with Mackie monitors and a sub, along with a whole host of high quality analog modeled plug-ins, pretty simple small set up really. We like it that way, as it allows us to work quickly in the studio and easily go back and make adjustments and automations to soft synthesizers and plug ins. We definitely use soft synths and know a lot of the best actually are, but what we don’t do is use presets or loops. To us that would be cheating. We also record a lot of live bass and percussion as well as live sax. We are constantly striving to produce new & unique sounds that we feel create the Dynohunter aesthetic whether they are modern sounding or harken back to the old school, we love both and they both have their place in a Dynohunter set. With our new EP, Paradise Nocturno, we wanted to really pay respect to a more old school housey tonal aesthetic while still having a modern sound. We love using the classic tones of the 909 drum machine, the Moog synthesizer, Fender Rhodes & Upright Piano and we love using the Neve 1073 preamp and Eq and 1176 Compressor on practically everything, it helps impart an in your face warmth, grit, and bigness to tones. We also used a lot of tube compression saturation & tape emulation to give us that classic vintage vibe.

What are the next steps for you guys and have you got any big bookings coming up?

We have a very busy summer and fall. As you know we just put out our EP Paradise Nocturno and have been on a tour of the same name. We will be playing the 2nd weekend of Electric Forest starting tomorrow June 28th. Other festivals include 2 sets at Night Lights Music Festival in Buffalo, NY; Arise Music Festival in Colorado; Guitarfish Music Festival in Truckee, CA; River Jam in Omaha, NE; Solshine Festival in Colorado; and Hulaween Music Festival in Florida. We will also be making stops on our Paradise Nocturno tour in Tempe, AZ; San Diego, CA; San Fransisco, CA; Chicago, IL; and Kansas City, MO. Looking forward to a busy summer, thanks for chatting with us, Clark & Fred