Whereas making their new album, the gents of Zeds Dead put a whiteboard within the studio to jot concepts on whereas they labored, a go-to transfer for anybody in a artistic swirl. What was distinctive about their notes nonetheless, is that they finally wrote only one: “F–okay s–t up.”
“That was the one factor on the board,” says the duo’s Dylan Mamid.
Nonetheless concise, the instruction contained the undertaking’s foundational strategy — “to sound like, type of not clear,” says different half Zachary Rapp-Rovan, “simply very glitchy and messed with, however cohesive, however type of chaotic.”
You’re forgiven if these pointers sound complicated to you. However with the Zeds Useless skillset, honed over a 16-year profession that comprises a debut LP, a number of mixtapes, a whole lot of singles and remixes and numerous reveals, the duo made its wonderful second album, Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness. Launched in March, the 14-track undertaking does sound concurrently disorderly and managed, without delay bursting on the seams and laced with moments of contemplative chill.
Assembly with Billboard at a studio in L.A., Mamid and Rapp-Rovan are each relaxed and considerate as they take a break from prepping a reside present to speak about life, music and the evolution of a dubstep style that they’re pretty positive they don’t truly exist inside.
“We’re by no means actually going for a style,” says Rapp-Rovan. “Dubstep and all these bass genres are simply type of issues we dabble in. We have now our followers, extra so than being a genre-affiliated artist.”
Roughly 40,000 of those followers are trekking to Purple Rocks this week for Useless Rocks, Zeds Useless’s standing engagement on the Colorado amphitheater that’s occurred each summer time since 2014. (Though the 2020 occasion was cancelled because of the pandemic.) Right now (July 3) is the second of Useless Rocks 2025’s two-night run, with the duo headlining every night after a supporting lineup that includes 10 bass and bass-adjacent artists. (Zeds Useless may also play three reveals in Denver on July 4 — two units at Mission Ballroom and a previous “Yard Jamboree” at Civic Middle Park the place followers can take pleasure in music and a sizzling canine consuming contest.)
Every Useless Rocks is unquestionably particular, however this 12 months is very so provided that it’s the primary time since 2016 that the duo — who’s constructed a sprawling fanbase with its arduous, experimental and sometimes heady bass music — has come to Useless Rocks with a brand new album to play. If a few of it does sound acquainted, nonetheless, you aren’t dropping your thoughts.
“Quite a lot of the issues that ended up on the album began with our different items of music,” says Rapp-Rovan. “It virtually turned remixing one thing of ours many times, till there can be completely different items from these previous songs that ended up within the new ones.” In a course of one may certainly fairly name “f–king s–t up” the pair remixed this older materials “till it was fairly removed from the unique thought.”
This course of began two years in the past, when the 2 “cleared the runway,” as Mamid places it, of their different initiatives so they might deal with an LP. Usually producing whereas on the street, the pair recorded in studios from Boise to San Francisco to Toronto to Los Angeles, then in early 2024 rented a piece/reside house in Joshua Tree, Calif. This distant desert location proves in style amongst musicians — Mamid says “isolation was the primary draw.”
Alongside the best way, they landed on an idea each past and complimentary to cohesive chaos. Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness isn’t only a vibey mouthful of a title, however the title for the cosmic TV/radio station the album is supposed to perform as. As such, the undertaking weaves in bits of cultural ephemera acquainted to most ’80s and ’90s infants (each of the fellows made their debut on Earth in ’88), together with dialogue from Scarface (“what a bunch of f–kin a–holes” Al Pacino’s Tony Montana declares on “Unhealthy Man”), a classic information report on the Huge Bang and The NeverEnding Story, the 1984 youngsters fantasy movie that bent the brains of a era. (“Why is it so darkish?” the film’s hero Bastian asks within the first phrases heard on the album. “To start with,” The Childlike Empress responds, “it’s all the time darkish.”)
On this means, the album collapses the space-time continuum, functioning in the identical means as one’s personal mind by serving up seemingly random and disparate reminiscences without delay. The late Duke Ellington is heard in a 1965 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company on “A Million Goals,” a pattern that “we virtually needed to minimize,” says Rapp-Rovan. “That may have sucked, as a result of we actually felt like that was an essential piece of the album.” The dialogue was fortuitously cleared on the final minute after the tune discovered its technique to Ellington’s grandson, who appreciated it.
In the meantime, George and Ira Gershwin are credited on “One in every of These Mornings,” which encompasses a pattern of Ella Fitzgerald singing “Summertime” from 1959’s Porgy & Bess. All of those ins and outs reside inside productions that stability bass wobble with kaleidoscopic synths with deep emotion and massive concepts. The album’s cowl, an image of rainbow that Rapp-Rovan took in the midst of the evening whereas on a 2017 mid-summer journey to Iceland, successfully summarizes the vibe in whole.
On its floor, the album is a contribution to the bass/dubstep scene through which Zeds Useless has lengthy existed. Nonetheless, the fact of the place they reside within the spectrum of digital music is arguably extra nuanced. When the duo broke by means of in 2009, American and North American fashion dubstep was starting its second of ubiquity, as artists like Skrillex and Excison delivered sharp, heavy iterations of the U.Ok.-born sound and numerous DJs turned a drop jockeys attempting to out-pummel the final.
“With dubstep, one of many issues that occurred was that any individual would include a brand new sound that was even tougher,” says Rapp-Rovan.
“There was a number of one-upping, for positive,” says Mamid.
“Then immediately, you’d discover that folks wished that,” says Rapp-Rovan. “Extra artists can be like, ‘Oh, that is what individuals need, so I’m going to make that,’ after which the music turns into homogeneous… And generally you will get hooked on the moment gratification in dance music — while you’re enjoying different individuals’s information, particularly — and it’s like, ‘I can all the time play this one and individuals are gonna go loopy.”
“There have undoubtedly been a number of occasions after we’d be enjoying after any individual who was doing stuff that was actually, actually arduous,” he continues. “And we’d be like, ‘I don’t wish to attempt to one-up this man,’ so we might simply type of convey it again down for some time and endure… But when we took it down for some time, it will make songs that aren’t as loopy extra impactful.”
No matter they’re doing works. Over 15 years, the duo has been a kind of ubiquitous presence on the North American circuit and Useless Rocks has bought out yearly for a decade. Between 2021 and 2024, it grossed $4.7 million and bought 76,300 tickets, in response to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore. The 2 agree that touring so extensively over time and “attempting actually arduous and placing a number of effort into our reveals,” says Rapp-Rovan, has created a diehard fanbase, amongst which it’s widespread for individuals to have seen dozens of reveals over time.
“We’ve managed to construct this extremely loyal fanbase that cares what we do,” says Mamid. “They’ll comply with us to reveals, particularly in North America. That’s been actually nice for us, and it’s allowed us to exist outdoors of the tendencies of the second.”
As such, at the least in the interim, they don’t see a cause to tour outdoors North America. “We kind of select to not,” says Rapp-Rovan. “We persistently get a number of gives in North America and we don’t wish to be flying throughout.”
“We’ve been doing this for 15 years, and we hit it fairly arduous earlier in our profession, and we’re getting older,” says Mamid, who additionally has different enterprise to are likely to as he lately purchased a home and bought engaged. And even eschewing lengthy haul flights, the 2 have been loads busy. Their 2025 reveals thusfar have included Coachella, Electrical Forest and lots of standalone units, with reveals at Components, North Coast, Austin Metropolis Limits and Hulaween on the calendar by means of November — and much more f–king s–t as much as do in preparation.
“I really feel like that’s one of many causes that our album took so lengthy, as a result of there’s a lot power put into the reveals,” says Rapp-Rovan. “Every of these Purple Rocks occasions over time, that’s like an album’s price of labor.”