The sky’s the limit with electronic music. With no walls to fit between, no box to confine yourself in and no rules to adhere to, you can do whatever you want. Throw down a techno beat and add in some type of world-beat rhythms? Sure. Add in a touch of Celtic music and perhaps saxophone? Why not? Put a live fiddle over a bed of drums and bass? Yes.
That’s the world T.J. Highland and Dennon Jones are living in – Highland is an Albuquerque-based electronic music producer, and Jones is a Durango-based fiddle player, best known for work in local bluegrass and Celtic bands. Together, they are Forest Thump, the region’s newest electronic music duo playing what Jones describes as “violin-infused electronic music,” playing a handful of local live shows while also releasing singles on all the local streaming services monthly.
The two met as students at Fort Lewis College and bonded over a mutual love of electronic music, something the two have dug since they were teenagers. It was that mutual love of the genre that led them to producing their own.
“I picked up deejaying and I’ve done that at house parties, and I’ve started doing it semiprofessionally, and then I just decided I wanted to learn how to make this music,” Highland said.
“I love classical music,” added Jones, who is also a classically trained musician and teacher. “Conducting orchestras is such an amazing, fun thing, but my desire to play concertos is not as high as my desire to play fiddle tunes or write electronic music.”
So far the duo has released three singles ready for the dance floor, yet with some subtle world and psychedelic flair. Their latest cut features saxophone work by local player Sam Kelly, whose playing fits in nicely alongside Highland’s beats and Jones’ electric violin. But aside from studio releases, this is a live duo ripe for club performances where their songs can take on a whole new audio-textures via extended improvisation.
“We write melodies for the music, so there’s points within the tune where I’m not playing over. We get our tracks mixed and mastered and released with the violin but then when we play them live we have a version of the track without the violin over it, so it gives me room to play around,” Jones said. “I’m never going to play it exactly as it is on the track because that’s not as fun. It’s different every time; we get to improvise and then we have plenty of tunes we haven’t released that we play live that we play over and improvise, and they’re changing. It’s pretty fun to challenge ourselves to find covers to play over, different electronic songs you didn’t think electric violin would fit with. Then we slather some effects on it and let me go to town on this tune and I can improvise over a bunch of sweet stuff.”
Call it all a musical work in progress. With a DIY mindset, along with influences from whatever the duo may be listening to outside the music they make, they are looking to push the boundaries of electronic dance music.
“We were talking about bringing in all other stringed instruments I could play, maybe getting some of that in, doing more live stuff with T.J. and some more live sampling, some call and response things, so our set is going to continue to evolve as we keep experimenting,” said Jones, who will also keep his day jobs of teaching music and playing fiddle in bluegrass and Celtic bands. “It’s not like I’m over bluegrass, and I love Celtic music still, too. But it’s just really exciting to do something like this and toss a little Celtic flair into electronic music. That hasn’t been done very much, so let’s find some more unique ways to make something fresh.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
