Caleb Shreve On Late Guest At The Party, Phantogram, 'Wrecking Ball,' Carly Rae Jepsen

So they originally reached out to me, because they have never worked with a producer or mixer before, and I did another remix off their first Eyelid Movies record. So they came to me to do the Nightlife EP and just after that, you know I joined the band. We had just started some remixes and we did that one, it was one of the first ones that we did. Then we started to do that like 14 remixes in 14 days, we decided to use that as the initial stepping stone to it.

Well, I mean we are kind of an electronic band, so I think that is a big part of where we come from is remixing and and making electronic music. We have always been, I think lately trying to do both equally in a way. Like doing remixes. I'm a producer; Alex in the band is a producer, so you know it is part of who we are and something we will always do.

I like the Lil Wayne one we did, I thought it was cool. I think we are trying to put that out too. I worked on that Wakey Wakey record so doing that one was kind of fun for me because I was there for the recording and producing of it. I left that one up to Alex because I was so into the original so that was a good one for him to do. I liked some of the throwback ones, like Kelis and ones like "Wrecking Ball" were fun to do, because they were pop songs and it is always kind of fun to f--- up a pop song, but I was not attached to those songs as some of the other ones.

No, we kind of just went for it. You know, there has always been kind of a funny thing, we kind of wished we get sued by someone like Miley Cyrus, that would be enough press for us. Yeah we just went for it, we got permission from Phantogram and Wakey Wakey, those are the ones we are putting out, but the rest of them we just did.

It is very drum and bass. Also electronic elements, I think the bass in our set up kind of takes the guitar part, often it is kind of distorted and covers the kind of rock element we want, without having to do full guitar work.

Well, they had found me online. They were fans of a couple records that I had produced and they wanted to produce the record in the States, because they thought their sound was more of a U.K. or U.S. thing. So they started looking for producers here in New York and I came up in their search a couple of times, so they just reached out to me in an email to do the record with me. And after we finished the record they wanted to move here and do it here. There was someone else in the band who had to go to Italy for something, but he ended up staying so...

That was a fun video to make. We did not want to be in that video. I was nervous at first about doing it. It is an Italian director and he wanted to do the video here in New York, and I think he wanted to make it a story of them coming from Italy to the U.S. and what they saw and experienced. I know one of the guys is actually the boss of one the bass player's of the restaurant where he worked at, and there is a lot of stuff around Brooklyn. I was nervous about it being a cheesy video of us just around NYC, so I think that is why I decided not to be in the video and it is almost a first person of the guys coming here and what they saw, experienced, and how they feel visually.

Well, we are doing our release show in July, July 17. The record, I think, is coming out July 12. We started writing new music, I mean as far as production-wise, I know there is another group of DJ's called Twin Shadow in Italy that the guys work with and then we are going to do more remixes with them. I'm producing all kinds of pop music right now. I did some stuff with Tegan and Sara. We just wrote some songs together last week. I think I'm going to do a lot of writing.

Yeah, I think that’s actually why the original singer went back. I think because it was too much of a culture shock for him. They live on the beach in Rimini on the Adriatic Sea over in Italy. So moving from there to Bed-Stuy... [laughs] I think he went back to Italy because he was kind of appalled that he was maybe not where he wanted to be. But the other guys love it they love being in Brooklyn. They love doing the grind of the music business here and everything.