Vista Kid Cruiser is playing at the Bishop for the first time tonight. Fellow electronic musicians The Cardiff Giant and Lunamati are are also set to perform. Nick Rivera will open the show with a DJ set.
Tyler Volkmar, whose nickname is Tyler Volk, said a lot of musicians in history have taken on personas for performances. He cited groups such as Animal Collective, who have members with names from Panda Bear to Geologist, and talked about the frequent name changes of David Bowie and Bob Dylan.
Fowler, who goes by Vista Kid in the group, said the names don’t change for any serious purpose.
The members of the group have changed largely since their beginning. Fowler said he started Vista Kid Cruiser as a solo project around 2011, but eventually decided he wanted to start collaborating with people. Volkmar started working with him in June 2014, and Brown joined just months ago in December.
Fowler said he wanted to expand the project because he thought there were more creative possibilities that would be more attainable with other people.
“It’s really easy, at least for me, for ideas to get stale and I don’t know what to do with them,” he said, “Being able to bounce them off someone else really helps.”
Fowler said having three people instead of one improves the group’s live performances. Volkmar added that having multiple people in the live show brings up the energy level and makes it similar to seeing a rock band play.
“I think it’s the ability to be able to really work in both contexts,” he said, “We started playing during rock shows, and we’d be the only electronic group out of the whole night, for the most part. We found that that worked and even if it was a bit of a novelty, either way people would ?appreciate it.”
Volkmar said the group just started playing with other electronic musicians this semester. It’s fun, he said, but a different experience than the rock shows they’ve played.
In October 2014, Volkmar and Fowler released the album “Ali M and the NightClub” under the Vista Kid Cruiser name. The album’s description of traveling “through to the World of Vegetation” on the group’s Bandcamp profile hints at a concept behind the album, but Fowler said it’s a very loose one.
He also said Vista Kid Cruiser’s musical style changed as they made the album. While the first songs made were very ambient, the songs made toward the end had more of a dance sound, Volkmar said.
“We’re all constantly finding new music and new stuff that we want to try to ?emulate,” Brown said.
Currently, the group is working on what Fowler calls a “double EP,” two sets of about six songs that they plan to release together. The release should be ready in the spring. Fowler said each set is a good example of the two main ways they go about ?songwriting.
Vista Kid Cruiser’s songs “Heart” and “Soul,” released on their SoundCloud over the past couple of months, will serve as the focus for one of the sets. Fowler said these two songs were built up around some samples and loops they wanted to use. The other songs in this set will be remixes of the Vista Kid Cruiser songs made by musicians they reached out to.
The other set on the double EP will be centered on a song the group has yet to release called “Goodbye Sample City.” In contrast to how “Heart” and “Soul” were made, Fowler said this song started more with original sounds.
