In conversation with thatDROP, Gilligan Moss reflected the openness of their music. From mentors and poetry teachers to tour stories, production approaches, and creative philosophy, one of the heads of the two, Ben, alluded to how their work is a living dialogue—between present and future, artist and listener, heart and body.
In light of their latest release on Foreign Family Collective and the fact we keep running back to their sentimental house music, we reached out to hear the Chicago born duo’s story starting with, “how is your day going?” as they get settled back into the studio following their jet-setting headlining tour.
Ben: I am working on a mix for KCRW. Do you know them?
thatDROP: I don’t yet, but that’s good to hear.
Ben: To me, it’s like one of the only good radio stations in the country. They play a huge variety of stuff, and then they have a couple of their DJs that play cool electronic music. And we have this guy, Jason Bentley, who programs a good chunk of the channel, but he’ll occasionally do guest mixes, so we’re putting together an hour-long mix for him right now.
thatDROP: Very nice. Yeah, I was gonna ask about when your next mix is coming out. I don’t see too many on SoundCloud, but we’ll have to find that on the radio.
Ben: Yeah, we’ve done like five or ten over the last couple of years, but usually it’s exclusive to Apple Music or Spotify, or it just lives on a radio show thing. So I gotta do a better job of reposting them on our SoundCloud for sure.
thatDROP: Nice. Well, I have loved Foreign Family Collective since Odesza’s set at Hulaween in 2016. I love the niche sound they have developed over the years. How would you describe the Foreign Family Collective from your vantage point?
Ben: Well, they have a pretty broad spectrum, you know, I think taste and sensibility across the label. Odesza is very widescreen cinematic, sort of like epic electronic music, and, you know, a bunch of the artists across the board play different kinds of tunes. But yeah, we got plugged in with them probably five years ago, and working with them has been amazing.
The guys in Odesza are good and dear friends and kind of mentors.
They help give good feedback on music, and we’re hanging when we’re in the same place, which is nice. And overall, the label is really great. Everybody that works there is kind and creative first, which is important.
thatDROP: Sweet. So any feedback from Odesza on your recent productions that changed the outcome, or was there something they particularly liked?
Ben: You know, I think that one thing that we really respect about one another’s music is that we try to foundationally build sturdy songs and find what makes you unique and lean into it rather than trying to sound modern or kind of do fancy production stuff of this specific time.
I’ve worked with Harrison more recently, and he always just encourages me to lean into the emotional impact of our music and really pursue stuff that feels kind of pure of intent.
thatDROP: For sure. I can hear that a lot in your music, especially in your album Speaking Across Time. It seemed very connected with your emotions and felt passionate, I guess. Would you wanna talk about the direction you wanted to take that album? I really liked ‘You Are The Greatest’. I think it’s important to hear that sometimes.
Ben: That was our last full-length album, and yeah, it touched on a lot of different themes for me personally.
I think the album title (Speaking Across Time) draws from a quote by one of my poetry teachers from college, who talks about speaking across time as the reason that he writes poetry and creates art, with the idea that you’re talking to somebody in the future.
The idea you’re in communication with people at different points of their life and different points of time and that the music that we make hopefully outlives us and has power for somebody else. I think that’s nice.
thatDROP: What is the poetry teacher’s name?!
Ben: Dave Mason. He lives in Australia now. He has a really influential in my education. And he always told me that music was more meaningful and impactful than poetry because you know, its something that your body feels and moves to. He’s a great great mentor for sure.
thatDROP: Love it. OK, so who did the vocal samples for ‘You Are The Greatest’?
Ben: You know, I can’t remember their name, but it’s a little clip of a sample that I found on this track repository called Tracklib. We obviously love sampling and bringing in old-sounding records, textures, and voices into the music, so that played a role in the title of this album and then the music. For that song, we were trying to evoke a couple different eras. The drums and emotion feel very kind of French in a way to my ear. And I think the refrain of, you know, again and again, “you are the greatest,” is a really nice kind of mantra to end the album on.
But across the whole record, you know, I sing a couple of the songs, and a few are samples from Tracklib, with a couple of things from Splice in there.
thatDROP: Cool. Let’s see. Is there any production techniques that you recently experimented with or sound design that you are particularly following, especially with these recent releases?
Ben: I tend to gravitate towards a lot of the same tools, a lot of the native Ableton plug-ins and instruments. I think on this new batch of tunes that I sent you here, there are a couple of synths in the Arturia world that I was playing with. There’s one called Synthi. I was using Omnisphere quite a bit.
I think the guiding wisdom of this collection of songs is really that I was more focused on the song format and my relationship to creativity. The EP is called À la Mode (in the style of).
When I’m writing, some songs come very quickly and some I belabor over a long period of time. And this group of songs are six songs that, over the course of the last year or so, just popped out and happened really quickly in an hour or two. And rather than pursuing a production technique, I was pursuing more of a creative technique and creative brain space on this batch.
thatDROP: Awesome, thanks for sharing. And how was the tour?!
Ben: Man, the tour was super fun. We played eight or nine shows, and it was our first time doing fly-in dates. And so that was kind of unique, just being on so many airplanes and travel logistics. I was not born to be a travel logistics guy.
We were traveling with the co-headliner, a good friend of ours named Theo, who makes music as Bad Tuner, and we got to know him really well on the trip.
And every night, we would flip-flop who was headlining. To me, the coolest part of the whole tour is that, where it was possible, we set the DJ gear on the floor to have people circle us, so that we were deprioritizing the DJ and really trying to make the environment really fun and encourage people to dance and listen to music rather than, like, witness us DJing.
So it felt very connective with the crowds, and it was a lot of fun to turn around and be surrounded by people. It’s only the second year we’ve really been headlining, so for me it’s still a very, very unique experience to have people know our songs and be singing our lyrics.
thatDROP: I bet. So was there any fangirl or boy moments?
Ben: We had a couple. A group of people invited us out to an after-party in a garage in a small town in Washington. That was kind of a funny little side adventure. For me, the fun stuff with fans is that I try to grab a beer with or talk to people after the shows to sort of see what connected with people, and just meeting new people is really fun for me.
thatDROP: Sweet. Any shout-outs to anyone from that after-party?
Ben: I’ll just shout out to Bellingham. Everybody that showed up for that show was so fun.
thatDROP: So you are from Chicago. Where are you exactly right now?
Ben: Evan and I grew up together in Chicago, and we both now live in New York. It’s interesting because we grew up together in Chicago, and so I think of us as a Chicago group even though we’re located in New York. I guess at this point, I’ve probably lived in New York for as long as we’ve lived in Chicago.
thatDROP: So a lot going on. Do you have any residencies in New York or any favorite spots that you’re playing?
Ben: No residencies lined up right now. We have a private gig this weekend in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for a ski company. I’m just getting set up for that right now. We’re actually playing two sets. We’re doing a live thing and then a little kind of happy hour DJ thing. Then we’re looking to hopefully put together a little bit of a Europe tour in the spring. That would be fun. We haven’t been there in quite a long time.
thatDROP: Great, OK, my big question of the day. How would you describe your contribution to the dance music scene? To my friends, I’ve been calling your music happy music. Tracks like ‘Vibe Check’ are definitely more melodic and peaceful house music. I am trying to figure out the best way to describe it. How would you?
Ben: I appreciate that. And I do think it’s really hard to place yourself in a wider community and genre. I find that there is so much electronic music that feels very serious to me. And I think that, you know, in a way, yeah.
While it’s interesting to us to try to bring in old textures and moods that are more bright, uplifting, and sentimental.
I guess if I thought we contributed anything, it’s offering a different energy. There’s a lot of very masculine and hard electronic music to go around, and I think we try to make stuff that’s a little bit more gentle and thoughtful.
thatDROP: Yeah. Nice. What are three words you’d use to describe your project?
Ben: We have a really weird visualization, but I always imagine the Ewok forest party in Star Wars. That’s sort of like the weird image that I always try to conjure when I’m writing.
thatDROP: Haha, okay. Let’s bring it back to day one. Where did the name Gilligan Moss come from, and how did this project begin?
Ben: Evan began the project in 2015. He was working, I think, in Philly at the time and made a couple songs. Then we got involved probably six months or a year after he started the project. He had named it. It’s his middle name and his brother’s middle name. Sometimes we tell people it’s our karate teacher name.
thatDROP: Very good. So how did the first shows go?
Ben: Well, we did our first shows around Chicago, and then the first, like, “big show” we did was at a festival in Detroit called Movement, and that was pretty wild. That was, like, you know, our first festival gig, and we got to play on one of the main stages with really big names. That was pretty exciting. But before that, it was just house parties and a few little bars and clubs that gave us a shot.
thatDROP: What’s an underground artist you would like to shine light on?
Ben: Private Browsing. He has an awesome EP called Everyone in McKinney is Dead. It’s such an interesting record with cool textures and emotions.
thatDROP: Good word. So I’ve been waiting to talk a little about Upstate Miracle! It has a folk or country vibe to it. Are you gonna explore some country electronics ever?
Ben: I would, yeah. It was funny how that one came together. I originally had the instrumental slated to work with Sofia Ortiz on it, but that didn’t materialize.
So as is sort of the case when I get stuck on a vocal, I just flick through a bunch of different samples, and something about the country vocal really stuck with me. I don’t hear a lot of electronic country music, especially in that style. I always think it’s way cooler to make an interesting creative choice like that rather than grab a chase at a pop song or a bigger-feeling record.
In general, I love mixing guitar and kind of older genres of music into what I’m making. So, you know, if that ends up being more country music, that would be cool. I’m not entirely sure.
thatDROP: Yeah. Have you thought of remixing a country song during one of your sets?
Ben: From one of the sets, I took the vocals out of that [‘Upstate Miracle’], and I put the vocals from Beyoncé‘s Texas Hold’em on top, which was kind of a funny crowd-pleasing moment.
thatDROP: Very nice. And what’s the future look like for Gilligan Moss? Any directions you wanna take?
Ben: You know, I think right now we’re pretty focused on these next releases with Foreign Family, but we’re also thinking about our live show and how to make that more immersive and interactive. We love playing in spaces where we can kind of shape the vibe and get the audience involved. I think also just exploring new textures and sounds, maybe even some collaborations with different artists outside the electronic world, so yeah, the future feels really exciting.
