A brief chat with Ambit

Yellow Scene: When did the band form, and what was the mission?

Eli Mishkin: We got together less than a year ago. We’d been kind of noodling with the idea of human electronic music. We went and saw a really great show at the last UMS by Mancub. They put on a killer set of super-dancey, deep-bass music. It reminded us how much fun it is to dance and play music that makes people dance. That was the starting point. We got together in a garage and started to cobble together the band. I was in a band called Hot IQs before this. It no longer exists. We “retired” in 2009. It’s been a while since I played music. It felt right to do it again.

YS: Describe the sound…

EM: We like to call it garage house, so it’s a blend of very stripped down garage rock meets 1980s-influenced house music. Like British house music. So very straight-forward, very simple, but we approach it a little bit differently than just purely electronic. Our instrumentation, beats and vocals are driven by humans.

YS: Have you played UMS before?

EM: Yeah. Hot IQs played it a bunch, and I’ve also played it solo and then with a cover band. Two years ago we did a Pavement cover band. So I think I’ve played it five or six times now. It’s amazing. It’s impressive to see most of South Broadway just filled with bands. It’s one of Denver’s best events.

YS: What do you think of the current state of the Denver scene?

EM: Thriving. It’s very impressive, the depth and range of music happening here. There’s no definitive Denver sound, and I think that’s a really good thing. It’s nice to have every genre and very level represented here.

YS: What can we expect from the set?

EM: We just released an EP and we’re planning on rolling releases throughout the year – every couple of months releasing a batch of songs. We had a few of our songs in the documentary Rolling Papers which debuted at SXSW and then got picked up nationally. That’s cool, and we hope to do more movie/music collaboration, and play out a lot more this summer and into the fall.