Big Gigantic Talks Musical Inspirations, Overly Excited Fans & Big Grizmatik
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If there is a "box" in electronic music, Big Gigantic is definitely outside of it. Made up of Dom Lalli and Jeremy Salken, the genre-bending duo out of Colorado have taken the unbeaten musical path and it has turned out beautifully. Big Gigantic performs live with Dom on sax and Jeremy on drums. They are accompanied by bass, beats and drops that awe and inspire.
"We have been together for about 5 years now," Big Gigantic's producer and saxophonist Dom Lalli says. "A lot of bands were starting to do the electronic thing and DJs were just starting to blow up. We were just a couple of guys in the scene playing with different bands, different styles of music. Then I got on my computer and started to figure stuff out, kind of got the whole concept together. That’s when I found Jeremy we started to get the phrasing together. The response we got was just amazing. We made sure to just stick with what we were doing. We are players firstly and that’s what we do best."
Both Dom and Jeremy are classically trained musicians and growing up they both drew quite a bit of inspiration from jazz. The jazz influence is apparent in their colorful melodies and jams. Today, they continue to expand their musical horizons with a taste as unique as their own music. "We still listen to a lot of jazz stuff, a lot of DJs, producers, really everything," Dom explains. "Lately I’ve been actually listening to a TON of classical music because it’s just so deep." Jeremy also has a wide range of musical taste; "I definitely still listen in the jazz world of stuff. There’s also a lot of cool indie electronic stuff. I listen to Lorde all the time, I just love her vibe. She’s the biggest artist ever right now. If you just went into one of my playlists and looked at the last tracks I’ve played it would range from hip-hop to jazz to funk." It is no wonder that Big Gigantic's sound is such a unique fusion. A fusion that has led them to massive success after just 5 short years.
With great success also comes great fans. In the case of Big Gigantic, their fans are a dedicated and loving bunch. As expected, funny fan encounters come with the territory. "After the shows we sometimes go and sign autographs along the barricade. If the crowd is looking extra crazy I won’t go down there and I just shake hands from the stage," Jeremy explained. "But I’ve had people grab my arm and rip me down. Girls also try to grab your face and kiss you." Dom elaborated on the ever loving female fans; "Yeah, there are always those pictures that pop up on the internet the next day. It’s you with a girl and she’s kind of grabbing your face to make it look like you’re kissing but you’re pulling away so it looks like you might be kissing them. It gets pretty crazy."
One fan even found her way to Big Gigantic's green room once. "She snuck downstairs and came running through the green room," Dom said with laugh. "She was just screaming ‘Dom is perfection’ over and over again. Our tour manager was chasing her around and, as you can imagine, it was pretty funny."
Undoubtedly, one of the most amazing moments for Big Gigantic in 2013 was their performance alongside Griz and Gramatik at Electric Forest. Big Grizmatik, as the supergroup was dubbed, played one of the biggest shows of the festival and quite possibly the year. You could hear the excitement in Dom and Jeremy's voices as they told the story of the massive collaborative performance.
"Big Grizmatik was absolutely random," Dom began. "Dennis (Gramatik) and Grant (Griz) were doing Grizmatik. I think they had done one track together. We started joking around with them like ‘Oh all you need is me and a drummer to play live and we could be Big Grizmatik.’ Then all of a sudden it came up that someone actually threw us an offer. So we decided to take it and we got together right before and just threw together what songs we wanted to play. We just went out there and straight winged it. We had never jammed together or anything."
The Big Grizmatik show almost went down at Electric Forest in 2012. The supergroup was just a drummer away from Big Grizmatik as Jeremy explained; "It almost happened at Electric Forest not this past year but the year before. Dom went up there. There was a drum kit but it was like some weird stage in the forest so we couldn’t get the drums up there. That would have been the first Big Grizmatik though. After that we kept talking about it and festivals started begging us to play."
It would be fair to say the supergroup received a warm welcome at Electric Forest. Dom described it as "one of the biggest sets of the weekend. We just kind of got up there and got to it. I mean I obviously know their music but I would just sort of hear the line and figure it out. We didn’t sound check, we just went up there and winged it but it went great. That’s the beauty with stuff like that. There must have been 20,000 people, it was like the whole festival was there."
Big Gigantic, and other artists of their ilk, have helped pave the way for a new generation of experimental electronic music artists. Dom and Jeremy's passion for music is apparent as they continue to draw crowds around the United States and world. They recently released "The Night Is Young", a new album that continues to extend boundaries and showcase a remarkable musical ingenuity. As one would expect with a couple of music lovers like Dom and Jeremy, the album is available for free.
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