For New Mexico natives Scott Giaquinta and Jason Blum, the idea of creating their own electronic music all started from a simple idea.
The two first met at the University of New Mexico nearly a decade ago, through mutual college friends. From there, the two became a team, promoting raves and later helping organize some of the first dance music events in New Mexico. Soon after, the pair quickly realized their infatuation with music was not satisfied through organizing local raves and parties — instead they found their true passion through making their own electronic music.
With the simple idea of forming a group, both Blum and Giaquinta began creating their own original material on their keyboards. From there, the duo decided to pool their resources, buying a melange of studio equipment and calling themselves Deepsky. As time passed, the two began to play in small venues and gradually gathered an underground legion of techno-driven fans.
Deepsky’s first commercial release was a three-track EP titled “In My Mind.” In 1997, after parting ways with Rampant Records, the duo released their second album, called “Stargazer,” under a new record label. Two years after the release of “Stargazer,” Deepsky produced a follow-up album titled “Cosmic Dancer.” On Feb. 5, 2002, Deepsky released their first full-length album of original studio tracks, “In Silico.”
According to Blum, on their latest album the group decided to experiment with new sounds and even changed the way their songs were written and produced.
“Most of the songs on the album were written and developed in the computer,” Blum said, explaining the meaning of album’s title.
The phrase “in Silico” means the majority of the music was written with the aid of computers.
“Now, computers have become so fast and powerful that we don’t really need to buy a lot of equipment.” Blum said. “On this album, the sound is a lot cleaner and smoother than in the past albums.”
Blum said the two chose to create their music digitally not only because of the better sound quality, but also because recording songs digitally greatly reduced the amount of time spent creating and mixing songs.
“For us, there is no exact formula how we write songs,” Blum said. “It took about four months to create the album, which is about average. But writing the songs was a lot faster digitally. With digital technology, we were able to record, cut, paste or move any part of the song around all in real time. Digitally, it makes everything easier and it literally cuts hours into minutes.”
Although the duo has obtained substantial success internationally, Blum said thinks they have yet to reach a mainstream status in America.
“I don’t believe our kind of music has hit its stride in America yet, and I don’t know if it ever will,” Blum said. “But the underground scene has always been there, with its good, hard-core grassroots and I think electronic music is at a nice level right now.”
With the release of their latest album, Deepsky began to tour again during February and will end its nationwide tour in April. Deepsky will make a stop in Memphis on Saturday, March 2 to perform at Headliners.
