With STS9 out on the road with Umphrey’s McGee, today, we look back at the November 2008 feature on the group.

In San Francisco, people are spilling off the sidewalk and right into the bustling street. Cars swerve to avoid them. With index fingers pointed skyward, however, the mostly dreadlocked masses seem unaffected by traffic concerns or potential hospital bills as they masterfully navigate the crowd clustered around the velvet rope. They are determined. They are looking for miracles. It is one of those perfect starry mid-August nights. In a few minutes Sound Tribe Sector 9 will take the stage to play one of its old haunts, a small Divisadero Street nightclub called The Independent. The concert, which precedes one at the much larger Greek Theatre the following night in Berkeley, has been sold-out for weeks. But that little fact isn’t going to put anyone here off. These people want in and the lucky few that actually succeed in procuring a coveted ticket typically fall over in hysterics when one unexpectedly lands in their hands. Most of the kids, however, will end up splayed out on this very sidewalk well past midnight, pushing their heads up against the side of the building in the hopes of getting just a small taste of the fete inside. It would seem rude to tell them how much money went into soundproofing the walls.

Once you get past the door, it’s not hard to see what inspires this kind of devotion. Sound Tribe Sector 9, or STS9 in shorthand, is not quite like any other band going at the moment: an instrumental collective that mixes old-school gear with state-of-the-art software; insistent grooves with free-form song structures; ancient mysticism with futuristic ideals. Oh, and then there are lasers – lots of lasers. The quintet has attracted lots of tags and labels since forming in Atlanta more than a decade ago, but none of them quite fit in reality. What happens onstage is bewildering. As two artists splash paint onto a large canvas off to the side, the five clean-cut musicians work feverishly behind an array of laptops and instruments to create a radiant musical score. With its constantly shifting styles, it’s not a sound that could be conjured on a whim, but clearly comes from a deep psychic connection between the band members that evolved only after years of dancing around bonfires on the beach and sharing the same stale air on tour buses day after day. Midway through the show, when the group takes its customary backstage breather, the evening already feels like a major triumph. Guitarist Hunter Brown, keyboardist David Phipps, percussionist Jeffree Lerner, bassist David Murphy and drummer Zach Velmer sit around a picked-over deli tray looking a little taken aback by the boisterous reaction. And they’ve still got another 90 minutes to really push fans over the brink of ecstasy.

For a long time, Sound Tribe Sector 9 and anyone outside of its tight knit clan chose to ignore each other. That is no longer the case. Over the past five years, the group has steadily seen its profile grow bigger. Its last album, 2005’s Artifact, made it all the way to No. 12 on Billboard’s Top Electronic Albums chart. Its fourth and latest, Peaceblaster, was released earlier this year and did even better, entering the same chart at No. 10 while scaling No. 2 on the iTunes Electronic Music chart. On its summer tour, the group played arenas with Umphrey’s McGee and filled major outdoor amphitheatres on its own. And at the beginning of September, the band returned to Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado for two massive sold-out shows (the venue holds just under 10,000). The band isn’t quite sure what it did to get here. “Everything may be getting bigger around us but we’re still doing the exact thing we’ve always done,” Lerner says. “Putting our heart and soul into the music and everything we play.”

A week later, the group gathers at its studio in Santa Cruz to delve deeper into that question and a few others. Located between stunning beaches and towering redwood trees, the coastal California college town is famous as a gathering point for progressive minds. The Santa Cruz City Council was the first in the U.S. to officially denounce the invasion of Iraq. Its law enforcement officials have been directed to make marijuana enforcement their lowest priority. The city is also a wellspring of feminists, liberal activists and independent media pioneers. The members of Sound Tribe moved here together in 2000. “We kind of took a little leap of faith,” Velmer says. “We did our first West Coast tour and we were trying to expand our horizons a little bit. We had a friend with a house in Santa Cruz, so we thought, ‘Let’s just go there and we’ll figure it out.’”

It was a better fit than anyone expected. “We were really inspired by the things around us – people, culture and nature,” Lerner says. “The excitement of the new experience just fed into what we were doing. It took away some of our foundation, everything we were building on, but at the same time it just threw everything to the wind and everything was wide open. It wiped the slate clean.” Various members have moved around other Northern California cities, but always seem to end up back here save, Murphy who’s recently relocated to Boulder. Call it a two-pronged gravitational pull that suits the band’s strong political and spiritual leanings. Besides, it’s just a wondrous place to be.

Well, most of it, anyway. The band’s actual studio is tucked behind a nondescript commercial building off a grey thoroughfare, facing a parking lot and not much else. “It could be a dentist’s office, right?” says Brown, standing at the door. But the musicians have customized the inside to their liking. Instruments, mixing boards and computers occupy every conceivable open space while the very back wall of the complex serves as a de facto scrapbook. There are beautifully crafted gig posters, personal photographs and little scraps celebrating the people, ideas and causes that drive the band.

Much has been made of Sound Tribe Sector 9’s connection to the Mayan belief system. For a long time the group would play a special annual show to coincide with the last day of the year according to the 13 Moon Natural Time Calendar. It also wasn’t unusual to see huge crystals onstage. They explain that around the same time they discovered musical mavericks like Miles Davis, De La Soul and Jane’s Addiction in their late teens, they were also devouring books that not only helped them derive the band’s name but shaped their basic philosophy of living. But these are things the group has moved away from as it has grown up or simply decided it’s best not to talk about anywhere. “Just to be cognizant of those things and look beyond our borders for inspiration was something that definitely set us on fire,” Brown says. “It turned into something that led to journalists trying to get more out of us than we were capable of giving. People construed it more of an ideology or maybe a gimmick. It always just came down to the books we were reading.” The basic principles remain in place, sure, but these days the members of Sound Tribe Sector 9 prefer to keep the focus on more practical matters.

None of them, for example, actually believe the world is going to end on December 21, 2012, as stated in Mayan prophecy. “At the same time, we are at an interesting place,” Murphy says. “Everybody thought everything was going to go haywire in 2000. Obviously none of that stuff happened. People thought it was a fluke and a hoax but at the same time look how drastically different the world is now from 1999. There was a lot that happened that shifted us in a different place we were at the end of the century. Some people have a certain interest in the world being a certain way. Maybe the 2012 thing is shifting back in a more positive direction or further down the road.”

As it turns out, Peaceblaster is not only Sound Tribe Sector 9’s most cohesive album to date but also its most overtly political, a powerfully charged set of music that makes a statement with its bold red, white and black cover and suggestive title before even a note is played. Unlike its predecessor, Artifact, which was recorded over three years in a succession of different cites and studios and tour buses, this album was recorded in one intensive session that started last October. “In that time, we built a studio, wrote, composed, played, performed, recorded, mixed and mastered it,” Velmer says. “Simply stated, we wanted to play. We were excited. It was brewing – inspiration and ideas and the freedom of us twisting the knobs. We were growing as artists and human beings. And then we had a new level of camaraderie and the openness to push each other, almost like Olympians. We were so ready.”

As intense as things became inside these walls, the band members were always sharply tuned to the world outside, deriving additional impetus to fuel tracks like “Shock Doctrine” and “Metameme.”

“I think it’s more political than anything we’ve ever done,” says Brown. “The times are more urgent than they’ve been since we’ve been a band. It’s just a reflection of what we’ve been doing and thinking about and talking about over the last eight months. That’s what we wanted Peaceblaster to be, a snapshot of a period of time and politics have a lot to do with that history. There are a lot of themes that we don’t necessarily want to define, but those things were intentional: The simple, stark album cover and the song titles.” Lerner adds, “That’s what we felt was maybe proper and necessary for our culture; the megaphone being the big symbol there, using one’s voice to do whatever.”

The band spent a lot of time defining the themes that shaped Peaceblaster. They wrote poems and lyrics to help them get to the heart of the message, often recording vocals just to delete them later. The process of completing the album was mostly a process of subtraction, taking away all the superfluous parts that got in the way of the end result, the sense of urgency to the sound. For an instrumental band, making an album brimming with distinct ideas brought with it a whole different set of challenges.

“Our underlying intention isn’t to say what we feel is right or wrong,” Lerner says. “It’s merely an expression to inspire people to find what inspired us to make the music, what inspired us to do any of it. If the world was a perfect place maybe that wouldn’t be necessary for us. As much as we care about the music, we care about people, the planet and the country. There’s no separation for us as far as influences and what goes into the art.”

The thing that made Peaceblaster different is that, for the first time, the band knew exactly the kind of album it wanted to make. “We knew what kind of outcome we were looking for,” says Murphy. “We wanted to do something that related more to the energy of the live show, a little more in your face. A lot of our previous albums were more experimental. We really wanted something that related more to what we were playing live. It gave us more of a direction and concept.”

The band members say that anytime they’re in a room together, talk inevitably turns to politics. They don’t always agree on issues, but they all inherently believe that people need to be involved in the system they live in. “We can complain about a lot in America and the government but at the end of the day we agree we live in the best place in the world, as long as people use their voice and opinions,” Murphy says. “We try to take a real nonpartisan look at American life and government and encourage people to get involved. We all disagree about stuff, which is always healthy. We always try to push each other and understand where one of us might be coming from. But for the most part, we’re all pretty likeminded people.”

One dollar from every ticket to every concert Sound Tribe Sector 9 plays is divided between three constantly changing charities. The band devotes a good deal of its time researching where its money is most effective. Additionally, the group wholeheartedly backs a slew of nonpartisan causes through its website, such as HeadCount, Rock the Vote, Democracy Now, Rock Against Cancer and the local Women’s Crisis Support. They also do an annual benefit for a small tribe in Senegal.

“We saw how easy it is to do something about the things you care about,” Velmer says. “Music is a gathering point. We wanted to open that up to all platforms.”
“It makes it feel like it’s an important job,” says Brown. “As exciting as it is playing for 10,000 people, it’s just as exciting doing those little things. We want to be that living example.”

The upcoming election has obviously fired up the band, although it defers from endorsing any particular party or cause. Rather, the band members point fans to their constantly updated site, Peaceblaster.com, which posts various news items and links to the news the band member’s feel requires the most attention. They describe it as the ever-changing album booklet, what they would have put inside the CD booklet if they had unlimited space. Many of the posted items focus on issues that will play a big role in the election.

“I’m hopeful,” Velmer says. “It’s going to be a huge step for our country. Obviously, if Obama is elected it would be a huge statement. But whoever gets there has a lot of responsibility.”
“I don’t think we can change things simply by voting,” Phipps says. "You have to get involved.
“We’re just hoping Americans take more responsibility for America,” says Brown. “We have to leave it in a better place than we found it.”

It certainly helps that the band is completely independent, releasing music through its own 1320 Records. Major labels have approached them in the past, but as self-described control freaks they couldn’t imagine relinquishing any of their ideals for a major corporation. “We’re trying to find a new paradigm,” Phipps says. “We see bigger acts like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails going that way now and to see the result is really inspiring for us. We were talking about giving our music away for free a year before Radiohead did it.”

“For a number of years we really struggled with that just because we knew there was nothing a corporation could do for us,” Murphy says. “Our growth came organically. Not really writing pop music, our success lies solely on how good we are as a band. That encouraged us to go further being on our own label. As long as we have good management, good booking, good publicity, we could reach all the people that were going to like our music anyway. We’ve tried to take a smaller look at the whole thing. There’s no need to go overboard and be something we’re not and see money faster and see more money than we would at a record label. Peaceblaster has done better for us than all our other albums combined. Maybe people support it because they don’t see Sony on the label. It’s worked for us, mainly in being stubborn and not going with a label.”

What’s more, Sound Tribe Sector 9 has been able to control all its output through 1320records.com, making full MP3 and FLAC albums of its live shows available almost instantly on the Web site. The label has also recently taken on other acts, including Count Bass D, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey and members’ side projects such as Landscape and Breath.

“With the way the record industry is we’re able to cover all the digital outlets on our own and target music stores where we know we can sell things,” Brown says. “We’re hitting the things we feel are important to support.”
“It’s a new day and age in the music industry,” Murphy enthuses. “We’re really stoked that we have a lot of people that care about our music and want to support our band. We sell more tickets than a lot of Top 40 acts. So you can’t be too concerned with what people call your art. The jamband thing is good and bad. It’s an amazing group of music players and fans – people that genuinely love the music and want to support it. How could we not embrace that?”

The summer tour with Umphrey’s McGee represented a major step for Sound Tribe Sector 9. After years of fighting off the jamband tag, they have finally decided to let go, that maybe labels aren’t that important after all in defining what your music is and isn’t. It’s obviously still a sensitive topic. Brown reaches for an acoustic guitar and instinctively starts strumming when the conversation starts, but for the most part the musicians have come to terms with it.

“I think if you would have asked us about that a couple years ago we would have a few things to say,” Brown says. “But today I just think more than ever we try not to understand it ourselves and just go for what we’re doing. It’s something we’ve dealt with for so long, it doesn’t affect us as much.”
“It usually comes from journalists that write about crowds at our shows,” says Phipps. “If you’re not listening to the music and you’re more attracted to this naked dude twirling at the front, that’s what you’re going to write about.”
“It’s the distractions that lead to the distortions,” says Velmer. “We work so hard at what we do. It’s almost like somebody making the electric car and nobody even talks about the car, they just talk about the problems. People are haters.”
“It turned out to be the most fun, most cooperative experience,” Phipps says of the Umphrey’s co-headlining tour. “Put up against each other we were so different – the virtuosity, song selection. It felt like a really great show for everybody and for the bands. It kind of lifted the last veil for me of worrying about the jam culture and thinking about culture in general.”
“What we do is so us, so STS9,” Lerner adds. “What we do doesn’t have a genre. It’s an original, inspired sound. So I think sometimes when people reach out to their readers they try to find that thread that they can relate to but we’re just our own thing. It’s tough for people to really nail that down without calling us a jamband. We just care about the music.”

They wonder aloud why no one ever tries to pin down likeminded trailblazers like Tortoise or Björk. They certainly don’t begrudge the people that come to their shows, people who despite the profusion of dreadlocks that gathered outside The Independent, actually appear to come from all walks of life. It’s merely something lazy journalists can’t get past.

“They’re people with heartbeats that appreciate music,” Lerner says. “If you have clothes on or no clothes on, does it really matter? They’re people who appreciate music and make our lives possible.”
“We’ve always been humbled by the number of people that come to our shows,” says Brown.

Spend any substantial time in their company and you get the sense that the members of Sound Tribe Sector 9 have had to conquer some pretty insurmountable odds to finally land on some solid ground with Peaceblaster. Running a band with five strong personalities is difficult enough, but throwing politics, mysticism, technology, causes and business into the mix only seems like a recipe for disaster. Yet there’s no way a band that didn’t have a deep-rooted sense of respect for its players could ever create such powerful music.

We’re just lucky enough to be friends together. We had that foundation to work from, which was really lucky for us. We were always able to come back to that friendship and brotherhood. In the last few years a lot of it has become that we enable each other to do this. It’s a lot about honesty and communication. The challenging part was going through those growing pains."