{"id":2441731,"date":"2019-03-14T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=301471"},"modified":"2019-03-14T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T22:00:00","slug":"chromeo-returns-to-aspen-to-headline-spring-break-core-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/chromeo-returns-to-aspen-to-headline-spring-break-core-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Chromeo returns to Aspen to headline spring break Core Party"},"content":{"rendered":"
Chromeo playing Buttermilk Ski Area during X Games in 2015.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chromeo<\/a> brilliantly pastiches the throwback sounds of disco, funk and cheesy rock, with a heavy dose of Hall and Oates soul presented with hip-hop bravado. Over the band\u2019s first four albums and its rise to stardom, the formula was irresistibly fun, reliably funny and undeniably over-the-top as it played with the tropes of pop music in songs about sex and love and the like.<\/p>\n

But along the way to its Grammy-nominated fifth album \u2014 \u201cHead Over Heels,\u201d released last year \u2014 Chromeo found its own voice and its own sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, Chromeo is self-generating,\u201d guitarist and lead vocalist Dave1 said in an interview before one of the band\u2019s two New Year\u2019s Eve sets in Aspen, while the duo was working on what would become \u201cHead Over Heels.\u201d \u201cWe can do a song that sounds like Chromeo. We don\u2019t have to sound like Hall and Oates anymore. And I think now is the time to make the quintessential Chromeo songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

That new sound involves mostly live instrumentation \u2013 less from the DJ console than ever \u2013 with Dave1 and P-Thugg crafting sing-along choruses, some arch humor and an un-ironic embrace of disco dancing on new songs like \u201cJuice,\u201d \u201cOne Track Mind,\u201d the French Montana\/Stefflon Don collaboration \u201cDon\u2019t Sleep\u201d and the DRAM collaboration \u201cMust\u2019ve Been.\u201d The Montreal-bred, New York-based duo and self-proclaimed \u201cfunk lordz\u201d spent four years making the record and finding their own voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re our own reference now, and it\u2019s time to make them bigger and more ambitious than they\u2019ve ever been but also sweeter,\u201d Dave1 explained.<\/p>\n

The duo has become an Aspen staple in recent years, including a memorable X Games performance at Buttermilk<\/a> in 2015, followed by two straight New Year\u2019s Eve shows and frequent stops for concerts and DJ sets at Belly Up Aspen (where the band returned on Thursday night).<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll headline the Aspen Skiing Co.\u2019s free Core Party downtown on Friday night, the centerpiece of local spring break events running through March 24. Chromeo is in the middle of the third leg of a world tour in support of \u201cHead Over Heels,\u201d which will bring the duo back to Colorado with a full band to headline Red Rocks\u2019 \u201cFunk on the Rocks\u201d in May.<\/p>\n

Another local funk favorite, Robert Randolph and the Family Band \u2013 making their second trip to Aspen this winter, following a late December set at the Wheeler Opera House \u2013 will play the Core Party stage on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Formed in 2002, Chromeo\u2019s signature mix of musical parody and good-time dance music, it turns out, has its roots in a decidedly brainy approach. Up until the band\u2019s 2014 album \u201cWhite Women\u201d and the breakout success of tracks like \u201cJealous (I Ain\u2019t With It),\u201d \u201cSexy Socialite\u201d and \u201cFancy Footwork,\u201d Dave1 was working toward a Ph.D in French literature at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

Immersed in semiotics and literary theory, he broke down and deconstructed the pop music that he loved and built Chromeo from the sparkling shards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that our canon would be this funk music from the late \u201970s into the \u201980s, and we studied what was used to do it, what the tropes were, and we wanted to subvert it,\u201d he explained, \u201cto make it sound like they were done by two goofy kids from Canada, which we were.\u201d<\/p>\n

He and P-Thugg mined poppiest of pop music from the late disco and early \u201cyacht rock\u201d era and tossed in touches of classic rock and hip-hop excess to make something new and distinctly Chromeo\u2019s that is sometimes aggressively tongue-in-cheek and sometimes baldly sincere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always felt like \u201980s funk music was a really cool sign system, and I knew that all of the signs in there are things you\u2019d get a kick out of seeing again,\u201d Dave1 explained. \u201cThat\u2019s why we went that route, but then we re-contextualized it, and we blended it with other specific signifiers \u2014 whether it be a neurotic Woody Allen-esque persona singing the lyrics and classic rock artwork, or a tough-guy, hip-hop sensibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Longtime Woody Creeker John Oates and the genre-bending work he did with Daryl Hall, was a model for Dave1 and P-Thugg.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they were doing was like a hybrid appropriation of black soul music,\u201d Dave 1 said of Hall and Oates. \u201cThey blended it with their distinct voice and their Philadelphia local tradition, and with other influences like prog and folk. So it turned into this delicious pop music. That, in many ways, inspired us, because we saw that we could stay true to the city we come from \u2014 Montreal \u2014 and we could blend other influences as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chromeo playing Buttermilk Ski Area during X Games in 2015.Courtesy photo Chromeo brilliantly pastiches the throwback sounds of disco, funk and cheesy rock, with a heavy dose of Hall and Oates soul presented with hip-hop bravado. Over the band\u2019s first four albums and its rise to stardom, the formula was irresistibly fun, reliably funny and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2441731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 09:34:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}