It seems that Chicago is bursting at the seams with awesome new bands. Add to that list The Glide, whose new album “A Future for the Dead” is a celebration of everything sweaty, synthy, and rockin’. The band is made up of singer/guitarist Darius Lafkas, keyboardist/programmer Jason Little, lead guitarist Hector Segura, bassist Nick Lazas and percussionist Trevor Warren. Their core shaking bass, persistent beat and off kilter guitar solos are perfect for the Halloween season. Very Fun, but just dangerous enough to be exciting. I spoke with them about the origins of their band, their inspiration and their wildest moments touring so far.
Where does the name “The Glide” come from?
Darius noticed a function on a synth/keyboard called “glide” which controls the “slide” between two notes, like sliding on a guitar, or portamento. Later on I found this to be ironic since we became a really electronic oriented band.
How did all of you guys get together to form the band?
Most of us were friends in high school and played in different bands together.
You guys have a very dark dance rock sound, beyond obvious comparisons to The Moving Units and Muse what are some of your influences? and some we might not expect?
We actually never heard of The Moving Units until you mentioned it, they’re pretty groovy though. Most of our relevant influences would range from old schoolers like New Order, Dépêche Mode and The Cure and more recently The Faint, Presets, Muse and Nine Inch Nails. Some of our favorite artists who may have not influenced the music directly would be Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Phil Collins and Tears for Fears.
The Chicago music scene seems to be exploding with great new bands, how does it feel to be living in such a talented city?
It’s great being in a city where the local scene actually means something to concert goers. We started off playing shows to 10-20 people and now play shows to 200-300 people and it’s amazing. That’s only possible because you can fit 3-4 awesome bands on a bill
In regard to your songwriting process, do you have really specific ideas about a song and its production or do you leave some room for improvisation?
Darius writes 90% of the music on his own at home. He’s really gifted at finding great sounds and working out parts until they feel right. The rest of the band comes to writing sessions, different members at different times, and we discuss parts and composition and work out the concept/lyrics. We record everything ourselves so most of what you hear on the album was intended, we don’t really rely on “happy surprises” that pop up when recording in a limited amount of time.
Despite your aggressive sound, you still have a few songs that are more or less love songs. Would you describe yourselves as romantics?
Absolutely. We’re all really big softies on the inside, we just need an outlet to make observations about the things that bother us in this cruel world.
What’s the wildest moment you’ve experienced at a show so far?
We were playing a show to about 200 people and in a really rocking part of a song the circuit blew, we assumed because we rocked too hard. The audience chanted “bring it back!” over and over until the power came back and we picked up from exactly where the power blew. It was a pretty awesome feeling to have people chanting for us.
What’s the weirdest moment at a show you’ve experienced so far?
My PC malfunctioned at our record release show and a mutual friend of ours who happens to be a PC tech and happened to be in the front row hopped up on stage and fixed the computer, only sacrificing 10 minutes of our set. If he wasn’t there, we wouldn’t of had a show.
