In-Depth Interview With Rabbit In The Moon

Rabbit in the Moon chats about their return to the stage, history in the scene, and more!

During EDC Orlando this year, I had the chance to sit down with the one and only Rabbit in the Moon! This duo comprised of David on the decks and Bunny creating an immersive experience for the audience and is definitely not an act to miss. In the nineties, this duo was a force to be reckoned with their unique style of music and entertainment. However due to a lack of progression in production, they disbanded, but in 2016 at Ultra they came back into the limelight. Check out what they had to say below.

Rabbit In The Moon returned after a break with a live performance at Ultra Miami this year. How does it feel to be in the limelight again with a new audience base?

Bunny: Since the beginning, that’s what’s really gotten me off playing to new people. We love our fans, but playing to complete strangers, it’s like saying hello and touching people in a way that they aren’t expecting. It’s that surprise, is like having a child experiencing Christmas morning. That feeling of magic. It’s like having a virgin experiencing it for the first time.

David: We started with EDC and Ultra. We played the first one of both parties.

B: We headlined EDC LA in 1997 and then ’99 was the first Ultra and we headlined both.

D: So you know the cool thing is to see what those have grown into and the kind of audience now that’s like, it’s really interesting because now there’s better production, tighter everything you know. It’s like, it’s what we wanted 20 years ago to have it. We know you two originally split due to a lack of progression in the music you were producing, what brought you back together this year?

Photo Courtesy of Ai Visuals

We know you two originally split due to a lack of progression in the music you were producing, what brought you back together this year?

B: Actually what happened was I was working on a documentary for Insomniac on Nocturnal since it was the 20th anniversary. People were like ‘are you going to do a thing for RITM?’ We have been talking for a while, like probably a year, and I was like this would be bull shit because we’re a team. It would have been bull shit for me to do an interview for a documentary and include him or at least give him the chance to see if he wanted to do it. I talked to him and he was like ‘hell yeah’ and we hung out at the interview and it was like nothing had ever happened.

I’ve always had a lot of love for this guy and I think he cares about me too and it was time to do it again. When I talked to him about it, he was like I don’t want to do this unless we are gonna move forward. We are not gonna go and do the best of bullshit like a lot of comeback people. We wanted to make all new music and put on something that can take us to a new place, not just being an old band, like doing the best of. Does that sound about right?

D: Yeah, essentially

Coming from the Florida electronic music scene, where do you feel that Rabbit in the Moon fits in the scene?

D: Well I mean now everyone calls us godfathers of the scene because you know we’re one of the few acts that started in Florida and became gigantic. There are very few artists from Florida that can say that. They haven’t lasted this long. I mean we will always have Florida roots, that’s like our home. Coming here and playing for this audience even though there’s a lot of new kids, it still felt like a Florida show. Compared to going and playing in South Korea or something like that.

What has been the craziest story you guys can tell about a show you played in the past?

D: what do you mean by the craziest?

Yeah, what’s the craziest thing that happened to you during a show?

B: Well injuries are pretty crazy you know.

D: Honestly, I love how Pasquale calls everyone headliners. It took away from stacking a flyer with a so-called hot person of the moment and he focused on the audience and that’s what we’ve done our whole career. It’s like the audience is the show as much as the show is the show. So I mean that’s really how our crowd is. I mean the stuff that we hear from the audience is what the coolest thing is. Like kids that go ‘I cried’ or girls that say they had an orgasm or anything completely bizarre that someone in the crowd tells us they experienced. Because people come and say ‘I don’t do drugs at all, but I felt so enlightened’ and that’s more than us going ‘oh yeah a light fell on our head’.

Honestly, I was blown away by your music today, it was amazing. I had such great feels to your music. Especially your performances, with the interactions with the audience. I’ve never really seen someone interact so much with the audience as you did tonight.

Bunny, being the creative director for Insomniac and part of Rabbit in the Moon, is it hard to juggle the two and be the creative mind for both?

B: I’m the director of imagination. I mean we both do creative stuff for the band, but it’s definitely a time suck trying to do both things. I’m excited now that we’ve kind of gotten through our festival season and I can focus back with Dave on music and new concepts for shows. We are playing countdown which I’m super excited about because we can push the envelope of what we’ve been doing and go even farther.

For any performers that want to be part of this amazing show, what do you recommend for them to do?

Both: Email us!

Photo Courtesy of Michael Beas

Having been in the business since the early nineties, how do you keep your shows fresh and continually push your act forward?

B: When we decided to do this thing again, the pressing thing was music. That we had new music that was fucking awesome.

D: It is an evolution because of the music mostly. I mean now we have money that we can put into better technologies. You know the light suit?

Yes.

D: That used to be Christmas lights when we started out.

Really?

D: Yes, no lie.

B: In ’93 it was Christmas lights.

D: It was like, oh let’s do this cool suit with Christmas lights, and throw out rainbow glasses. It was weird little ideas and as shows got bigger we ended up having more of a budget. We were like, oh let’s get LED lights and the rest. But I don’t know, it’s not so contrived when you thing people sit around and do a tour. It’s not really like that. Each show is kinda special in its own way. Yeah, I saw the reel from Ultra and that looked like a lot of fun. I know Michelle, she danced for you up there. She’s one of my friends and I just saw the reel and I wish I was there. Yeah as we progress with new music, we figure out new ways to perform it.

B: There are no new show ideas without new music. It’s like scoring a movie you know like the concepts and they work together to make something special.

https://soundcloud.com/rabbitinthemoon/pheet

Is there anything you miss about the earlier rave scene that isn’t around or as prominent today?

B: I’d like to get us back to the success we had in the mid-’90s. The money is different now than it was then.

D: We made good money even back then playing big shows, so I’m not gonna say the money. The only thing I would say now, back then there was a sense of music being futuristic, but now there’s a lot of pop and hip hop. And all of that said, to me has some coolness but it kinda doesn’t feel as futuristic as some of the old music used to feel. Because back then it was another type of vibe, but on that note, you know that we that evolving is our strength so we’re still gonna stay true ourselves. I don’t think we’re gonna work with a hip-hop artist any time soon, or have somebody go “3,2,1, JUMP” in our songs never. But there are elements where the energy here is really interesting and so we gravitate towards the things we like about it and morph it into what we want to. I think there’s room for a lot more experimentation in the scene and I hope there are more acts that take upon that.

B: I actually watched NERO last night, and I was very impressed that they were doing something that a darker side and weren’t just doing straight dubstep or like anything in particular. It felt really cool and the crowd stayed and enjoyed it, they were a little like ‘whoa,’ but they stayed. Artists are taking chances and not just going and playing the same songs. I think that’s what really inspires me to be like yeah.

D: The only thing I would say on this too is, I think there was a stronger diversity with the headlining acts so the original Ultra is you know each artist was really it’s own music, and it’s own vision. Where definitely a lot of the parties now you definitely feel a commonality, almost like you see all the DJs become a little bit cheesy after awhile.

Photo Courtesy of Michael Beas

Drawing from multiple genres to create a signature sound for RITM, which do you feel contributes the most?

D: There are bands that get popular for their beats, you know Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, I mean to David Guetta now, there’s a certain rhythm to his music. We definitely have a wider variety to that but even now we’re kinda focusing our attention towards something that still has a flow about it but I like the idea that we have some different types of drops and it’s not the same drop ever song. I kinda want the audience to be like ‘whoa this is cool’.

B: I mean the show, it’s a ride. It’s supposed to be a roller coaster. Like we start off really techno then we go breaks and electro, and I mean old school electro, not electro house. Old school electro then being able to get a little more progressive and getting into almost psytrance. And it’s like your not doing the same thing.

What can fans expect from RITM in the rest of 2016 and beyond?

D: Well 2016 and early 2017 we are going to release a lot of music online. We are gonna have some videos come out. We are really pushing on getting all the new music we’ve been doing out for consumption. That’s really the goal right now.

B: We wrote a lot of shit for Ultra and that’s what we’ve been performing and it’s getting a lot of people like ‘where the fuck is it?’ and actually Insomniac Records is going to put out some. We’re gonna release some stuff on our own, just give it away. We want people to experience it, not just hold it.

I was beyond ecstatic to see you guys on the bill for EDC Orlando this year because I would finally be able to catch one of the shows. Thanks for chatting!

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Featured Photo Courtesy of Rukes.com