LeDisko and Pegnato, who have been working on original tracks after playing with 12th Planet and the Crystal Method in Hawaii, took a few minutes to talk with the Guardian about video games, storm chasing and what to expect from their dance tent set at this year’s festival.
Guardian: You guys have a lot of other DJs who live around you, don’t you? Daniel LeDisko: Yeah, 12th Planet lives in the building over from me, and Dave Nata from Natastrom lived in my building.
Jon Pegnato: Skrillex was living downtown, but I don’t know what he’s doing now. I think he’s just on tour indefi- nitely.
DL: But yeah, there’s a lot of guys who live downtown, and we all just hang out all the time together.
JP: We just basically go over and eat at the other people’s houses. We have a lot of potlucks.
DL: I think we all spent Christmas Eve with each other, like Rusko and 12th. A bunch of us did.
G: Do you know Shiny Toy Guns, the band from Hollywood?
DL: I’m actually really good friends with [Jeremy Dawson, bass/keyboards for Shiny Toy Guns].
G: So their song “Girls LeDisko” — are those your fan-girls, Daniel?
DL: Yeah, Jeremy was the resident DJ at this club called LeDisko; Club 82 was what it was called back in the day before Shiny Toy Guns and all that stuff was big … And then that club night stopped and then they brought it back two years later and I was the resident at it. And the night was called “LeDisko,” so everybody just called me Daniel LeDisko.
G: I’ve actually interviewed Jeremy. He’s a really nice guy.
DL: Yeah, he’s very nice. Did he tell you about his obses- sion with tornados? I was playing a gig in Oklahoma City, which is where they’re from. I was on stage DJing and he tapped me on the back and I was like, “Whoa, what’re you doing here?” and he said he has a house there and he lives there, and I said, “oh, that’s cool” [laughs]. And so he said, “You’re coming with me, you’re coming to the afterparty with me when we’re finished here,” and I said “alright.” And so I walked outside and he has this van that’s a storm chasing van. It has metal grates on the windows, all kinds of crazy antennas off of it, it’s all paint- ed black. He told me that they like to be storm chasers, so whenever there’s tornados in the area they all load up in the car and go chase storms … It was really funny, too, because when I got in there and I sat down, he immediately hands me a Red Cross jacket and he says, “If we get pulled over, just put this on and let me do all the talking.”
G: So would you go storm chasing if you had the chance?
DL: No! Not at all! That’s some … that’s some crazy … that’s some crazy, uh …
JP: I can tell what he’s about to say is, “That’s some white people shit.”
DL: That’s some white people shit!
G: Jon, would you go?
JP: Would I go? Seeing that I’m white, hell yeah!
G: I’m going to hold you to that. If there’s ever a tornado in California, you better be out there!
DL: Oh dude, oh my god dude!
JP: Daniel’s dog just farted and it smells like ass!
DL: That’s just Nugget. I have a little French bulldog named Nugget and he’s in the studio with us today.
G: You guys just finished a remix of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” What was that experience like?
DL: We’ve never had to deal with a deadline like that before.
JP: They literally gave us the parts and said, “Can you have this by 5 pm tomorrow?”
DL: We were supposed to get the track on a Saturday, but it wasn’t ready and then they finally called us in on a Tuesday morning. We sat down and found out that the reason they couldn’t get it to us until that morning was because up until the night before she was still working on the song. And nothing goes online. They literally flew everything out from New York to LA for us to hear it, and then they gave us the stems for it and we had a little more than 24 hours to do it and turn it in and that’s not — I mean, normally you’re given a few weeks to do a remix.
G: Now that you’ve done Gaga, is there anyone else you have a burning desire to remix?
DL: I think we’re going to focus on original material. The roster of people we’ve worked with — everybody from Kylie Minogue to Weezer to Kings of Leon to people like Tiesto and stuff like that. We’ve worked with people who are pretty much the biggest acts in their genres, so we’re going to sit back and work on our own stuff now.
G: Coming from LA, do you think there’s a different energy in San Diego?
DL: Voyeur in San Diego is pretty much in our top three clubs in the world to play at. I mean, we play at everywhere and the vibe in that place is unlike any other place in the world.
G: What can we expect at Sun God?
JP: What’s that? Is that in San Diego?
DL: Yeah, that’s this Friday. That’s what this interview’s about. [All laugh]
JP: Something coherent. You can expect that. Play our best music, put our best show on. We’ve got a lot of new tracks from our buddies, stuff from Chris Blake, our own stuff.
G: How would you describe your music now?
DL: Upfront dance music. We’re not showy DJs. We’re not going to jump up in the air and act like we’re doing anything other than what DJs are doing, which is mixing two things together. No one’s up there with a guitar.
