After exploding onto the dubstep scene in recent months, with tracks “Crave You” and “We Don’t Eat” generating hundreds of thousands of YouTube views, Montreal natives Leighton James and Christian Srigley are taking full advantage of their new found star status.
Last Saturday night, the charismatic duo played to a packed crowd at the Turret, in an event organized by Laurier’s Late Night Society. The originally scheduled show, set for the previous Thursday, was cancelled due to traffic issues.
It is undeniable that the two parts of Adventure Club play very different roles in the group dynamic. James, though relatively reserved off-stage, was the life of the party, pouring shots from bottles into the mouths of fans dancing front row and maintaining the high energy level Adventure Clubs’ shows are becoming known for.
Srigley spent more time behind the scenes, delivering the sound that has made Adventure Club a recognized name so quickly.
In an interview with The Cord prior to the Turret show, Adventure Club explained how they started making music together — when screaming fans and busy tour-schedules were still a pipe dream.
“We were in high school and a friend of a friend hooked us up to be in a band together,” said James. “We started a hardcore pop-punk band. It was like Marianas Trench meets Simple Plan, with a lot of Fall Out Boy. It was the cheesiest shit ever.”
With some trepidation, the two revealed the name of this early band. “We don’t want people going and looking it up! You can find that shit on Myspace. We were called Angels Catching Bullets, I even got a tattoo. An Angels Catching Bullets tattoo,” said Srigley, revealing a tattoo of the letters “ACB” scrawled on his lower torso. “If I take out the ‘b,’ it can be an Adventure Club tattoo.”
Adventure Club was officially formed in December 2010, with the group posting their first track to music sharing site Sound Cloud in January 2011.
As for the name Adventure Club, Leighton explained, “To be honest, I said Adventure Club as a joke and Christian was like ’Yeah! That’s fucking sick!’ It’s cool because most dub artists’ names are derivative of the griminess of dubstep, so we thought we’d make it super playful.”
Adventure Club has since made a name for themselves on the scene, with their ambient hooks and samples featuring moody and euphoric female vocals, such as an unreleased re-work of Metric’s “Collect Call” played Saturday night.
“We still dick around at home and play Call of Duty,” said James. “We get together to write and end up watching movies, or like eight consecutive episodes of Suits. The first thing we’re going to do with the first big payout we get is buy some ridiculously nice suits.”
When they do get down to business, Adventure Club has their process down to a science. “We definitely focus on powerful female vocals. You don’t need too much of a hook when it comes to dubstep because you move your vocals a lot so you don’t need a whole verse. If we hear a powerful female vocal hook in a completely different setting and we can imagine it in dubstep or electronic, we work from there,” explained Srigley, continuing, “We usually hit a big wall when we try to get a drop done. We love our intros, so we work on them and when it comes time to drop it, we just get really pissed. That’s when Suits comes on.”
Since the birth of Adventure Club, the duo has been travelling Canada, playing shows and securing a fan following.
Of these early shows, James explained, “Sometimes we’ll just get a bunch of teeny bopper girls, or super sweaty ‘J-Shore’ guys fist pumping. We’ve played shows promoters have booked us where the average age is thirty and no one’s really getting it.”
“Our biggest following is in the States right now,” James explained, “but we can’t get there because of our visa situations.”
Dubstep, a relatively new genre by musical standards, is one that has yet to become over-saturated, allowing a window of opportunity for groups with promise to break into the dubstep elite, which Srigley and James believe to include Flux Pavilion, Skrilex, Dillon Francis, Nero and Knife Party.
“They’re big for a reason,” Srigley said. “In dubstep there are like five big guys and then a pool of everyone else. We’re just trying to break into that.”
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