Adventure Club On New Album, NFTs and the Future of Melodic Dubstep

Starting as a hardcore pop-punk band before evolving into a powerhouse dubstep production duo, Adventure Club have cemented themselves as bass music legends over the course of the last decade.

However, despite touring the world and putting out dozens of singles in that time, they’ve only released one studio album, Red // Blue, back in 2016. But that’s all about to change.

After dropping a slew of singles this year, including the euphoric “Broken Love” (with Cammie Robinson) and the uplifting “Anywhere” (with ARMNHMR and HALIENE), Adventure Club are on the verge of releasing a new album called Love // Chaos.

Now back on tour and with Love // Chaos complete, Christian Srigley and Leighton James of Adventure Club caught up with EDM.com at Electric Zoo’s Cancún edition to learn more about their massive sophomore album and the duo’s direction moving forward.

EDM.com: You guys played Electric Zoo in New York pretty recently. How is the vibe different? Is coming to Cancún different than touring in the U.S., or is it like just another show?

Leighton: There’s just electricity in the crowd that’s different from festivals and club shows in America. You get the locals and you also get the tourists who are just hungry for that festival scene. Today, because of the rain situation we weren’t able to play outside, but playing inside was cool. It was kind of like a silver lining. It was intimate.

Christian: For us Canadian boys, temperature control goes a long way (laughs).

EDM.com: Let’s talk about the album. You guys have been releasing lot of singles. Is there anything else we can expect before it drops? And when is it coming out?

Leighton: So we just released a single with Codeko and Sarrah de Warren called “Never Surrender,” and we have one more single coming out. It’s called “Come Clean“ and it’s with Prince Fox, who’s coming out of retirement, and Justin Jesso. That coincides with the album launch day. A lot of our fans were like, “Yo, you guys are releasing so many singles, there’s going to be no unreleased music left for the album.”

Christian: That’s not true at all.

Leighton: Yeah, the album is 25 songs long. You know, with the pandemic we just had so much time for music, so I think there’s going to be like 12 unreleased songs on it still.

EDM.com: Is there going to be an NFT drop with the album?

Leighton: In the near future, no. I mean we’ve done a fair amount of NFT drops. I think we kinda want to keep this one a traditional rollout.

EDM.com: You guys were pretty early to the party with the NFT craze when you did the “Genesis” drop and Overpriced., your luxury designer NFT venture. How do you guys feel about it? When do you think it’s going to hit the mass market and when is the next drop?

Leighton: In relation to Overpriced., I can announce this now. We have a partnership with Crypto.com and we’ll be releasing our next season with them in the near future.

As far as Adventure Club NFTs go, I think we’ll be on the same route there. It just takes a lot of planning for stuff like that. We don’t want to put out an NFT for the sake of putting out an NFT—we want to provide value to any community that we get into.

EDM.com: Why are NFTs important for people who still don’t get it? And if you are a fan of Adventure Club, why should people care? 

Leighton: It just proves the prominence of records. If you want to own an Adventure Club song, I know Royal, 3LAU’s company, is doing something to that extent. We could put out a song and people could invest in the track itself and help the song grow. It’s important to give the power back to musicians as opposed to having a middleman kind of control everything.

Christian: That’s the way crypto and NFTs are going to change things. It’s just cutting out unnecessary processes.

EDM.com: When can we expect the next drop for ‘Overpriced?’

Leighton: Next year probably. Maybe earlier.

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EDM.com: I don’t know how fresh this is, but on Instagram, you have a link to Thank You for the Music, a nonprofit. Why is that important to you and why are you supporting it?

Leighton: The initiative started about three years ago, on part of the board at the Montreal hospital. There is a program there that directly supports healing and mental health through music, and that initiative was started to support that program.

EDM.com: Why is that important to you personally?

Leighton: There was a period in my life where I felt kind of lost. I had a great support system—I had Christian and our whole team around us—but at the same time I felt like Adventure Club as a whole was the driving force behind how I was able to recover through these things. And I just want to be able to pay forward to the community.

Christian: Yeah, keep energy where you got energy, and just keep that ball rolling.

EDM.com: It’s a beautiful thing. Speaking of Montreal, where does someone go out for a good time and good bass music?

Christian: I’ll always give a shoutout to New City Gas, because I think as far as venues we’ve played, they’ve got one of the best sound and production systems out there. So from our perspective that’s a huge plus—everything sounds and looks better. And when you’re playing multiple shows a week that goes a long way for us. So stepping into the scene at New City Gas, you’re going to get the best of the best as far as sounds and visuals go, and that goes a long way.

Leighton: For me, besides New City Gas, I want to give a shoutout to probably one of my favorite clubs in the city, École Privée. They got a great sound system—it’s a smaller venue, very intimate. And once you’re done with that you hit the La Banquise to get some bomb poutine. And that’s Montreal.

EDM.com: What are your thoughts on Beach Club? I love Beach Club.

Christian: We haven’t actually played at Beach Club before.

Leighton: Yeah, but as a promotion company and a venue it’s great. They always book the best artists. We love the team there.

EDM.com: And they put on for the city. When I was in Europe, a couple of people, like the techno heads, knew Stereo, and then everyone else knew Beach Club.

Leighton: Yeah I think Showcase and everyone involved in Beach Club and that whole promotion company really helped the bass scene in Montreal grow into what it is today.

EDM.com: I saw you guys back in 2013 when dubstep was really just starting to segment into its own sub-genres, but I feel like the melodic variety reigned supreme. Which bass sub-genre do you think is going to take the stage in 2022? Are there any up-and-coming artists that you guys are mentoring, watching, or working with, who you want to give a shoutout to?

Christian: I definitely feel the pop-punk influence coming strong into EDM, but I don’t think this is all we’re going to see. I think it’s going to keep growing. We came from a pop-punk background going into Adventure Club, we’ve done a lot of playing and toying with merging the two a little bit more.

And I do think you’ll see us going back to our roots a little bit cause it’s about time, it’s growing and we want to kind of throw our hat in the ring and keep that momentum going for the pop-punk scene. It’s a scene that we absolutely love, and if we can help push the envelope there we’re definitely excited about that.

EDM.com: Do you agree, Leighton? Anything else to add?

Leighton: Hell yeah, we grew up on pop-punk. We technically started as a metalcore band and we graduated to pop-punk, and then eventually we did Adventure Club. Now, I feel like it’s coming full circle.

When we started Adventure Club we kind of lived vicariously as a pop-punk band. We used to drop a lot of metal and pop-punk songs in our shows, and now thankfully we’re getting to collaborate with bands like Dance Gavin Dance and people like that.

Christian: Yeah, they were our absolute idols growing up. If you told us ten years ago that we were going to be collabing with Dance Gavin Dance, first of all, we wouldn’t believe you, but like we would just lose our shit. I still to this day can’t really come to terms with it. There are so many collabs we’ve done that are coming in the future, that are just mind-blowing for our childhood versions of ourselves, and it’s fucking awesome.

EDM.com: Is there anything else you think people need to know? Do you have any American tour dates coming up, or do you want to tell us anything else about the album?

Leighton: The album is coming out—it’s been delayed due to various reasons but it is coming out this year. We will be touring it in early 2022, and we hope to see everyone out there. Every single set that we play from now on, you’re going to hear a lot of old Adventure Club. We’re going to play a lot of throwback sets. I really like playing that old stuff. 

FOLLOW ADVENTURE CLUB:

Facebook: facebook.com/AdventureClub
Twitter: twitter.com/AdventureDub
Instagram: instagram.com/adventureclub
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