The Core: STS9

Mike Greenhaus on October 15, 2024
The Core: STS9

The long-running livetronica outfit circle back with a new, high-concept concert recording, Chromalight.

Connecting Light and Sound

HUNTER BROWN (GUITAR): Red Rocks is like a New Year’s run for us—it’s a point every year where we look to raise the bar, take that next step in what we’re doing and really go for it in a big way. It’s an incredible venue and natural wonder, and that’s always inspired us to use the space beyond just the stage—to try and tell a story with the environment. Every year, we have a theme— except this year—that we pour everything into and we try to use Red Rocks itself as the main character. That’s always been a lot of fun and really inspiring.

Chromalight is something that we’ve been thinking about for a long time, almost from the beginning of the band—this question of how we can look deeper into the connection between music and light. How do they harmonize? Chromalight was that coming to a head. One of the easiest ways to explain it is that it’s like chromesthesia or synesthesia, where some people have this involuntary response to color, shapes and movement. We’ve always been so fascinated by this question: Is there an actual connection between soundwaves and lightwaves? We were hoping to use that concept and our production to raise the energy of the music at Red Rocks. And what we found, through our conversations and research, was really fascinating. At the end of the day, there is no natural connection or harmonization between sound and color—people come up with their own connections. Through chromesthesia and synesthesia, people may naturally associate A minor to this color or C major with that color. So we looked at it as: “How can we create our own philosophy with this?” And together we mapped out the songs—with colors and energy— with our lighting engineer, Tiberius Benson, using Red Rocks as a jumping off point.

[What you hear on] Chromalight was the first time that we played any of these songs, and we had such a good feeling from it. It’s something we’ve never done before—release 14 brand new songs, the first time we ever played them. They’ll change and they’ll grow over time, but it was exciting to release something so fresh, so off the cuff.

This is also the first show where we connected our instruments to the lights, both conceptually and technically. Most of the instruments on the stage were connected in some way through MIDI to the lights, so we were able to be connected with the front of house in a way we’ve never been before. That’s something that we want to continue to push and continue to do. This is the first time we really tried to say, “The drums, bass, guitar, modulated synths, percussion and all of these other things are going to control the timing, color and movement of the lights.”

DAVID PHIPPS (KEYBOARDS): For every song that we played in the set, we spent hours workshopping different ideas and had all these really fun and deep conversions that we would come back to. There were questions—“Is the set going to be in the order of a rainbow?” And then, as the Red Rocks date was coming up, we had to try to consolidate all of these ideas into 14 songs that met that theme and intention. We didn’t think that it would become a live album, especially when we had other songs that had been growing and getting better, year after year, that aren’t on albums. To leapfrog all of that and put something out that’s so new and guaranteed to change and evolve—as we play the songs in front of more people, get feedback from the audience and from ourselves as musicians— was interesting.

ZACH VELMER (DRUMS): We plan our tours pretty extensively, so we usually spend almost a year working out these concepts and themes for our Red Rocks show. And then, obviously, you start to refine it as you start getting into it and the pieces start to take shape. The presentation, the production and all of that starts to come to life like any art project. But, just to say it, though we have always connected our lights and production with our sound, technology has allowed us to be able to do new and clever things. It’s advanced unbelievably, leaps and bounds comparatively speaking. So we’re continuously pushing boundaries in that realm, where the production meets the music.

New Cycles and Big, Broad Strokes

ZV: As Hunter said so eloquently, Red Rocks is always a point where we’re able to push boundaries in all realms. It’s a special show, and it’s the start of a new cycle—a place for us to debut new songs, new concepts, a new theme or a new production. We’ll then have to scale that from Red Rocks into a theater or another type of venue, but it’s a place for these big, broad strokes and to show how we are going to show up in STS9 for the rest of the year—until the next Red Rocks show. We’ve played Red Rocks 34 times, and it has consistently been a place to push the way we present our themes and tell these stories— at the end of the day, we’re storytellers. So in that way, it’s always been the quintessential moment where we’re sharing a story, a piece of STS9, this ongoing theme—STS9’s ethos.

HB: The three Red Rocks runs before Chromalight, we did almost a trilogy: “Push the Sky,” “Sky World,” “Walk the Sky.” They were sky-related themes. And each year, we debuted a song or a group of songs that embodied the theme that we were talking about. It was something we leaned into right before the pandemic and post pandemic—being able to play live music is such a special thing, so we wanted to come up with the best story we could tell. We have a huge catalog of music that we can pull from and we like to mix things up. There’s all the normal stuff that hardcore fans are super excited to see—old songs being brought back, songs being played in different ways. But beyond that, what can we bring into our story? The “Sky World” trilogy was three, multiyear runs pushing this theme. So we thought, “What do we do after that?” We said, “What if the sound was the lights and the lights were the sound. We have all this information being passed on stage through these cables, so how can we literally hook all that up to the lights?” And that was Chromalight.

Stormy Weather

ALANA ROCKLIN (BASS): We had this unexpected weather [when we were supposed to play Red Rocks this past July], and we always want to deliver. We’re sitting back there and our first thought was, “Oh, my God, there are people here who have traveled so far. We can’t believe this is happening.” We went live on Instagram to try to connect in some way and then, when it came to us that we had to reschedule the show, we said, “What can we do that’s just gonna be so far and above and beyond? How can we can share the love we have for what we do with our fans—especially at Red Rocks and for the people that support us at those shows?” So we decided to do four sets [at our rescheduled show on Sept. 29]. We’ve never done four sets in a day before. It’s a two-for-one deal.

DP: I was talking to someone who has been involved in Red Rocks over the years and I don’t think anybody’s ever done four sets in a single day at Red Rocks before. One set is going to be Axe the Cables, which is always such a treat. We’ve done Axe the Cables at Red Rocks before and it’s really special to be playing in that stripped-down format, but in such a grand venue. We are pretty much gonna play from doors until the end of the night, so it’s gonna be really fun.

The Blip

ZV: We call [the pandemic] “the blip”—this interesting moment in time. As artists, I don’t know if we would’ve taken a break for ourselves. We’ve talked about it a lot, and we were talking about it during COVID too—it was what it was. It wasn’t just artists who had to take this break, everyone on the planet was in the same position, taking a moment indirectly for themselves. What that did for the music was this refinement and reframing of what we do and this overall gratitude. When something is taken away from you and then you get to do it again, you really start to appreciate it. We are able to play music and to come together and collectively create. So there’s a lot of silver linings to what happened, and the music that came out of it—the inspiration that came out of it, our communication, our camaraderie—was equally beautiful in so many different realms. As challenging as it was, just being able to play again and reframe it all was beautiful—a chaotically beautiful reintegration. We now have this gratitude to be able play music again. The feedback from the fans and the feedback that we received from each other has been really magical.

HB: We are working on an album—we have been since COVID. We had a lot of momentum, creatively, going into COVID. We had just caught this musical stride, and we were determined to not let that go during the pandemic, even though the world came to a stop and it forced us to get off the road. We didn’t want to lose what felt like bubbling momentum with our music, with each other, with the band. So that, in part, inspired the new material— how we spent our time during [the pandemic]. \

We are close to finishing our next album and are in the mixdown now. We’ve started to master the first single and finishing an album always seems to inspire new material. I don’t know what it is, but at the end of an album process, we’ve always got two or three new songs that are bubbling up, that we’re trying to fit on the album or just trying to finish given this momentum that we’ve got.

A few things on the album are a little bit shorter for us, but they’re still in the three-four minute range. That’s a new thing, but there wasn’t a conscious effort to have something under five minutes. They just felt like complete thoughts. And there are a few things on the album that are over six or seven minutes, which is usually what we do. We wanted to make sure that the album represented, more than ever, what we actually sound like right now. Every album that we’ve ever put out has been looking ahead, reaching a little bit further than our grasp—and there is still plenty of that in the songwriting and the creativity— but we wanted this album to sound like us, when we are on stage. It doesn’t sound like a live album, but it sounds like a live band, and that was important to us. Also, we’re so old school that we just love listening to albums.

AR: We have a Bandcamp subscription, and we found that to be freeing in a lot of ways because it allows us to share music with each other. It’s where we have all our boards; it’s a way of developing a community out of the music we have recorded. When we came back from the pandemic, we hadn’t played together in quite a while for a myriad of reasons, even beyond COVID. And when we did get together, we improvised for 10 days and we recorded it. Then we mixed and mastered all that and released it as we saw fit. [The results were packaged as The Bubble Sessions and made available exclusively on Bandcamp.] And doing that has been cathartic for us. In the midst of all the DSP stuff that’s going on and how that goes, making albums has been a way for us, as Hunter says, to keep that old-school energy of how we feel about albums, and things like that, alive in this really amazing community. I love buying vinyl, and we’re never gonna just ignore that. It’s just not who we are.

Refinement and Curation

HB: We’ve played about half of the material on the new album live so far. This recording process gave us a chance to go into those pieces, solidify them and communicate about the arrangements. So even with the songs that people have heard, there’ll be new things within those songs on the album—new forms, new arrangements— while still keeping the core of what that material is. We’ve got a lot of new material. That’s the truth, and there’s a few things that we’ve got that aren’t going on the album that we really wish were.

DP: It’s so hard, man. We just wanna play this new, awesome music as soon as we write it and think, “What are we gonna do, hold it back for the album?” It’s a constant battle. Even getting ready for the Red Rocks show, it was like, “Are we gonna play that new part that’s on the studio version of the song or should we keep it to the old-school live version and wait for the next show to play the new version?” It’s complicated because we want the album to be the most exciting thing it can be. We love making albums and we are doing this all ourselves with the help of Alana’s husband, Brad [Bowden]. We are mixing, recording, editing and arranging it on our own, and Hunter is the captain of the ship. We built a professional recording studio and, not to brag, but I’m proud of how we create and record music. It’s been that way since the very beginning. Every piece of music was mixed down on an analog desk with all 10 hands on the console as it was running to tape. We’re very hands on in that way, and that’s maybe why it takes us a little bit longer, but it’s just something that we’re proud of.

ZV: [Putting together the live show] takes a lot of energy and time. And there are many permutations of the process. STS9 has around 220 songs in the catalog that we’re constantly sifting through, so how we get to the final setlist is a process. It’s not all done right before the show—there’s a lot of curation that goes into the process. We ask ourselves everything from, “When were we there last?” to “What did we play there last?” to “What did we play at our last show?” and “What’s after this show?” And then there’s also questions like, “What are the songs that we haven’t played this year? What are some of the songs that we want to get back into the repertoire?” We build song lists, and then from the song lists, it’s a refinement. Just like we play Red Rocks through the lens of a theme, these themes keep flowing on tour.

As this publication knows, there are the hardcores and we want to make it fun for the people that travel and want to see all the events. Furthermore, through our social media and through these other conversations, we know that there are certain people that have seen the band 75 times but they haven’t necessarily seen this song or that song, and that person might get the song they want because they actually reach out and say something. So one person can move the needle, deciding if we’re gonna play a song that we haven’t played in 15 years. We listen to that, we are on the pulse of that and we might even say, “Why haven’t we done that one recently?” There’s maybe no reason that we haven’t played it. It just hasn’t been in rotation.

As Hunter said about Chromalight, we could talk for hours about the curation process, but it is no easy feat. We’re showing up, number one, for ourselves musically so that we can play, have fun and truly show up. I do think it’s a win[1]win because, when we show up for ourselves, we show up for our fans as well because we’re having fun. And then they’re gonna have fun. I say this on stage all the time, but it’s a very symbiotic thing. It’s a dance between the band and the audience. Things happen magically and synchronistically that we couldn’t have planned for because of our fans and because we’re playing live. Sometimes accidents turn into the most magical, momentous things that we’ve ever done. But it’s not like we’re writing the setlist on a piece of paper backstage 15 minutes before we go on. There’s spreadsheets, there’s tabs, there’s all kinds of stuff. It’s a beautiful situation that takes a lot of care and communication between the band members. It takes refinement.