The Glitch Mob are a California based electronic outfit merging hip hop and electro that create bass heavy tracks popular with the Burning Man scene. Formed roughly two years ago, the group are noted for “slaying crowds” with their high energy live performances. xlr8r has an interesting piece exploring how the group has appropriated the stage presence of a live band while still manning a Macbook:

“When you have a laptop up there, it can create this wall between the performer and the audience, because you don’t really know what the hell the person is doing up there,” Boreta, the lone member of the group who resides in San Francisco, adds. “We’re trying to approach what we do not from necessarily the traditional DJ angle, but more of a live band angle.”

Not that any one of them is penning set lists on sheets of notebook paper before each show (in fact, the group only knows the first and last songs of each set and freestyles the rest), but the spirit of a traditional four-piece band jamming off one another is definitely a large part of a Glitch Mob show. Rather than falling into the trap of staying pinned behind a laptop screen, the four members opt instead to step away from the computers at intervals, add MIDI controllers, cut and paste tracks on the fly– which can result in anything from an extended acapella to a full-on synth assault– and constantly interact with one another and the audience. It’s a sight that’s rare in electronic music these days, when an artist could as easily be editing his MySpace profile as pressing buttons in Ableton, and a refreshing change to club-going audiences. Head to a Glitch Mob show and one will inevitably find the room packed wall-to-wall with everyone from decked-out ladies swaying and crooning near the stage to geeked-out guys in glasses, analyzing the aural surroundings in the back. The point, however, is that across the board, the audience is captivated by what is happening onstage. “The fact that we’re having fun up there and that we come up with stuff on the fly we’d never initially planned, people see that,” says Kratz. “It becomes like watching a band throw it together and jam live, which is novel for the whole laptop situation.”

The Glitch Mob: Slaying the Laptop Game