With dual frontmen trading lines at top volume and a dueling pair of DJs, there is no risk of boredom at a Big Digits show. The recent addition of a projected video backdrop now lends a level of full-on audiovisual confusion to their live set. My fascination with each of the elements of their show made it a bit difficult to keep track of everything the members of Big Digits were doing on stage, but the potentially dangerous levels of sensory overload didn’t prevent the crowd from dancing along frantically–although no one was a match for the energetic moves of TD.

Before the show (but after getting chased out of Harpers Ferry by some overly enthusiastic sound checking), we joined Big Digits at a place down the street, in a booth meant for far less than six people. TD, Mac, Mark E. Moon, and Mikey spoke frankly about the benefits and burdens of making music that sticks them somewhere between the hip hop scene and the electronic scene (we’ll let you decide where an invite to play a show at a Hot Topic puts them in your own mental music library), and about some of the challenges of being participants in the Boston music scene in general. It wasn’t all so serious though; we also got the scoop on the time that Public Enemy lyrics saved Mac during a confrontation with a state trooper and the night that TD found out what his spirit animal was.

–Tim Burdick

We are here with Big Digits– introduce yourselves.

Mac (M): My name is Mac. I’m from West Newbury, MA.

Mark (MM): Mark E. Moon, from Long Island.

TD: TD. I’m from Seattle, WA.

Mikey (Mi): I’m Mikey, and I’m from Worcester, MA.

So, with you from Seattle, and you from Long Island, what brought you all to Boston?

TD: I’m sure they’re both long and somewhat boring stories that are not worth recounting. I wanted to live on the East Coast, but I didn’t want to live in New York. The story had some twists and turns, but brevity is the wit of the soul. My story would just be extremely boring to anyone-

MM: He moved here to be near Tanya Donnelly.

TD: That is not true. I didn’t even know who Tanya Donnelly was.

MM: So, who did you move here to be near?

TD: It was to be near Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I believe she has a summer home here.

How did you guys meet and how did you come to make music together?

TD: Well, years ago I lived in an apartment in Somerville with a young lady who was dating Mac. Mac would come around and we’d talk about music. Because- [To Mac] were you DJing at WMFO at the time?

M: Yeah.

TD: Actually, before that I had known Mark from comics. I used to work in a comic book store in Harvard Square. So, Mac and I would talk about music, and eventually he came to me and was like, “Hey man, I’m starting this project”. It was something very different from what it is now, and then Mac’s computer crashed and that went out the window. He came to me later, and was like, “I want to start this rap thing. Would you want to do that?” and I said yes. So, that’s the way we kind of started. We started out as pretty straight ahead rap stuff and then we both wanted to do a little bit more with it. So, we spent some time exploring different ideas and avenues. We knew Mark was an excellent DJ around town, and we asked him if he would want to live DJ for us, like regular rap groups have. Then, we had known Mikey from around town for years and we wanted to have more people involved. There were times when Mark couldn’t do stuff, so we were like, “Let’s have Mikey come on,” because we really like his DJing stuff and electronic music.

Can you guys take us through your writing process?

M: It starts when I just fool around with loops and come up with the basis for a song. I send it to TD, and if TD likes it, we’ll work on it together in a practice space. After we get something that we think is a song, we bring in Mark or Mikey and ask him what he can put on top of it. Until this past year -we’ve been together for over 6 years -  I’ve been doing all the production. It’s gets tiresome and frustrating, so I’ve been asking for help and Mark and Mikey have been doing some production for us: helping with the beats aspect. As far as lyrics go, TD and I tend to write things separately and mash them together. Or I write a verse first and he asks me what its generally about. Usually it’s something completely random; I try to stay away from personal life, politics, or anything like that. I like to pick the craziest things possible to rhyme together. It usually ends up being about rapping, or dancing, something like that. We tend to write the verses separately and the choruses together. By the time it gets to the stage everybody has added something to it, which is good because everyone has a very interesting perspective on music and dance music. It’s great to have those extra perspectives, rather than just the two of us.

How would you say that those perspectives differ?

TD: Well, because we’re all different ages, there’s a wide swath of musical interests amongst the four of us. Think of it as a Venn diagram. There are definitely some things right there in the middle for all four of us, but there are definitely big parts of the circles that do not match. Just because you’re not into a certain type of music, doesn’t mean that someone bringing an idea from that perspective isn’t going to be welcome. I think that is a big key to why this works. For example, Mark E. Moon is doing a series of remixes highlighting artists like Blues Traveler and Alanis Morissette. I, myself, would have never thought of that or been able to achieve it.

MM: In my defenses, I don’t particularly like those artists, so that’s part of the challenge. I’ll try to bring in samples of stuff that I don’t like, and make it something I like. I feel like hatred is just as strong an emotion as love.

TD: Whoa. Are you into Depeche Mode now? (laughs)

MM: I just mean it’s better to get a strong reaction either way. And I feel the same way about our show. People are either really into us, or hate us.

So, are there any songs in the Big Digits catalogue that really stand out to you as favorites?

TD: I’m always really excited to play “Making Progress” because it’s kind of a ballad about trying in the face of adversity. Boston is a great town in a lot of ways, but as a musician it can be very tough, especially in terms of longevity. It’s such a transitory population. Also, bands break up. It’s expensive to live here, and it’s tough to be in a band. “Making Progress” is just about diligence and change. Incremental change…. You’ll see when we play it.

M: I like that song a lot too. I think I sort of hit my creative production peak at that point. There’s a lot going on beat-wise and sound-wise in that song. Somehow, I just hit the jackpot. It doesn’t happen every song, but that song… I’m just really, really proud of it.

Mi: I really like “Longwood”. (murmurs of agreement) … it’s soft, but everything really comes together really well. Because I’m the youngest one, it doesn’t really… apply to me at all – it’s just a song … but I still love it.

M: That’s produced by somebody else. That’s not an in-house production. A friend of mine from Philly named Michael Robinson made that. And that’s the only track that none of us have had a hand in beat-wise at all. He sent us a track, it was perfect as is, and we just started writing from there.

We talked about the collaborative nature of your writing process and live performances… what about in the studio?

M: Well, we’ve never been in a studio. We record it with Mikey in his home studio, which is basically just a jerry-rigged bathroom-

Mi: Bathroom closet.

M: It’s a wonderful set up–

Mi: A little hot…

M: It was a little hot, yeah. But mostly we – and I know this term is floated around a lot, but we subscribe to it, even it is overused – but we literally do everything ourselves. Record, mix, master, all that stuff, without a studio, on laptops, in someone’s house, in someone’s bathroom closet. There’s no studio, there’s no fancy mixing board. We don’t have an office. We don’t have any press people working for us. We don’t have a manager. We book all our own shows. We book all our own tours. It’s incredibly draining to do everything ourselves. TD and I are the core of it, so we’re always doing something. So, yeah it doesn’t really change. I’d say the one difference is that when you’re on stage you can feed off the energy of the audience. If it’s a good show, it brings our lyrical performance to the next level. When you’re in a booth or in a practice space, it’s a little more difficult to get yourself psyched up, to get that same energy that a live performance brings out. But I think we get pretty darn close.

The term DIY is tossed around a lot in the Boston indie scene. Is the hip hop scene similar in that respect?

TD: Well, we don’t generally play a lot of hip hop shows. And that’s something I don’t like about this town, that there is a big schism between independent hip hop music and independent rock music. There’s basically independent hip hop music and independent every other kind of music. It stinks because I spent a lot of time on the West Coast – I was in Seattle – and there’s a really great integration of the hip hop scene there with the rest of the music in the town. I’m not exactly sure why it hasn’t happened here, but there just isn’t a ton of integration.

M: During the shows we try to bend… We both love hip hop and we both have hip hop backgrounds. It’s not our choice to not play those shows. What I don’t like about hip hop shows is that, for some reason, they’re more expensive for people to attend and it doesn’t really make sense to me. We play a lot of basements and parties and art galleries.  We try and just play our weird hip hop everywhere and charge as little money as possible, because we want people to see it. A typical Boston hip hop show has about seven acts on it and it costs like $40-

Mi: And they each play 15 minutes.

M: Right. So, it’s just not appealing to us.

MM: We’d love to play those shows, if it was part of a structure that we dug. I just don’t think it’s going to happen. We have played a few, and some of them have gone well. It just sucks. Hip hop shows all cost like $25. And I’m not paying $25 to see… anybody.

M: Yeah, and the rap shows are not at better venues really. There’s ones that are at the Middle East Downstairs that are $25, $30.

MM: Harpers has a lot of hip hop and the price for a hip hop show is double whatever they’re charging for any other show.

You mentioned you were playing in galleries and houses. What’s the weirdest place you ever played?

TD: It would have to be on a bus.

A parked one, or?

TD: A parked one, yes. There used to be – it’s now long gone – but there used to be, in the Bay Area, this bus. It was originally a mobile home; it was then converted into a police headquarters, but then they ran out of funding for it. This guy bought it from them and turned into this venue that would like drive around and have shows in parking lots. Sometimes they’d be on the Berkeley border, and the Oakland PD would show up, and they’d just drive over to Berkeley, where the cops didn’t have jurisdiction anymore. We played there once out in the Bay Area, and once when it went on this national tour of the country – which led to its demise, unfortunately. That’s got to be the weirdest place.

M: We played an alternative prom in Olympia, Washington. We played a dotcom merger party. We’ve played on a roof of a hotel. Weddings.

MM: Many joyous occasions.

M: We’ve recently been asked to play in a mall. At a…

All: At a Hot Topic store.

Mi: In New Hampshire.

M: We kind of want to play it just because it will add to our crazy shows list. It will be a great story. We’ve played a shed in a kid’s backyard. We played an indoor skate park in Buffalo, NY. You ask to play anywhere, and we’ll pretty much do it.

TD: If it sounds interesting.

M: We played an arcade in Portland. That was a bad show.

TD: It was a make up show. We were on tour, and we had two shows scheduled in Portland, right before we were supposed to play. We were scrambling to find a place to have a show, and this guy was like, “Yeah, we’ll put you on here.” It was terrible. One person came to see us. We got paid in tokens.

Any crazy tales from the tour bus for you guys?

M: We almost got arrested coming back from opening for M.I.A. in Worcester. We were coming back on the MassPike and I was going the speed limit. I got pulled over by a state trooper for a broken taillight. There’s three of us and one of TD’s roommates. I drank that night, but I was definitely the one that drank the least of our crew. I wasn’t swerving or doing anything dangerous, but our car just smelled like alcohol. I was wearing an Oakland Raiders jacket, because I like NWA; it’s sort of an homage to them. The state trooper started picking on me. He was like, “What? Do you like the Raidahhhs?” I told him we were all Patriots fans, so he was like, “Why are you wearing a Raider’s jacket then?” I told him I was in a rap group and that some of my rap idols used to wear Raiders jackets, including Chuck D. And he’s like, “Oh yeah, Chuck D.” – this is a whiter-than-white, buzzcut, 35 year old, state trooper. He’s like, “Chuck D. Public Enemy. What’s your favorite Public Enemy song?” He was asking all these questions, and I was nervous because I wanted to make sure I answered in a way that he wanted, so he let me go.

TD: And try to think of a Public Enemy song that isn’t about killing the police.

M: It was really hard thing to do. Then he went back to his car for a while, and he came back and was like, “Alright, I only have one more question for you.” and then he told this really lame Public Enemy joke: What’s one question Flavor Flav can always answer? — What time is it? Then he told us to get on our way.

TD: I can say that we’ve had some harrowing experiences while on tour. Once, we drove 36 hours straight, from Chicago to Seattle. But the last time we were on tour, we were driving through Montana, and we couldn’t find a hotel to stay in. Everything was booked, so we had to keep going. When I get tired, I start to freak out a little bit when I’m driving at night. I swear to god a giant, white owl swooped directly in front of our car. I looked into the owl’s eyes. [Everyone else starts laughing]. I saw its animal spirit. I slammed on the brakes and it swooped away into the night.

M: And I saw none of this.

TD: You were asleep.

M: I had my head down, I wasn’t asleep. I think that’s a sign that an owl is his animal spirit.

TD: We eventually found a place to sleep and we had to ring a bell to wake up someone who was sleeping to let us in.

M: That night was straight out of a horror movie. Exits were 35 miles apart. Every exit would have a sign that said there was a hotel, and then we’d take the exit and turn onto a dirt road. Things didn’t feel right, so we would just get back on the highway. Somehow, we found the place we ended up staying at. It was a surprisingly decent place, with a very hospitable woman who ran the joint.

Do you have any favorite cities to play in besides Boston?

TD: Los Angeles.

M: The scene there right now is a lot of young kids, trying a lot of different things.

TD: Toronto, also.

M: We’ve had a lot of good experiences in Buffalo. There’s a vibrant scene in Buffalo that America doesn’t know about.

TD: Seattle. I still have some friends there that do music, and they help us out. It’s always a fun time when we go there.

So, getting back to Boston, what do you love about being a hip hop act in Boston, and what have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a group here?

TD: For what we do, the best part and the most challenging thing is that we’re kind of the only people doing what we do. It’s great because there are other people around the country that do similar things as we do, and when they come to town, it’s got to be us. The other edge of that sword is that people are like, “What are you weirdoes doing?”. Because we’re not hip hop enough to be really accepted by that scene, and we’re not electronic enough to be completely accepted by that scene. We’re in this weird middle place. It’s good because it makes us unique. Because if you’re the only person doing something -no matter how weird or fucked up it is- you’re probably on the right track. It is hard at times to find bills that we could be on and acts we could play with when we’re doing our own shows. It’s tough to find similar bands. And if you are a similar band and you’re reading this, send us an email.

How about favorite venues?

M: I have to go with the Middle East, Downstairs preferably. Upstairs is cool too. No disrespect to other venues, but I think that they have the best staff and the best sound engineers.

TD: I work at ZuZu, so we get a little bit of preferential treatment, I think. But we also always have consistently good performances there. I really like the shape of the room. It’s a nice narrow room; if people are not paying attention and getting drinks, you don’t even see it because it’s blocked off by that side wall. I used to be a punk rock aerobics instructor and we have our classes Saturday at noon in the Middle East Downstairs. It was gross.

Are there any Boston bands that you are following or you really enjoy?

M: Boston is sort of going through a Psych revolution right now. All the acts from the Whitehaus Collective.  Our very good friend Dan Shea organized the PsychFest at Church. It was a three day festival of all local bands. Boston has a lot of great music, and it goes through phases of what is in. We’re also friends with a lot of DJs around town.

So, what’s next for Big Digits?

TD: In my brain, we’re going to release an EP, then we’re going to release a remix EP, which will be remixes of the songs on the EP. I think t-shirts are in the works. There’s going to be a Mark E. Moon mixtape. Playing more shows. Doing our thing.

Mi: Gathering the legions.

Big Digits open for Dan Deacon at Mass Art’s Pozen Center on 11/8