On The Verge

D.V.S*

Brooklyn, N.Y.
Guitar-based Livetronica
www.dvsmusic.com

One-man band D.V.S*’s mastermind Derek VanScoten displayed a budding passion for live music before he even owned an instrument. “We were waiting for our moms to buy us our instruments, and we didn’t have jobs, so we put tapes in and lip-synched and air-guitared along with it until we finally had our own instruments,” VanScoten laughs about his first band. Creating music capable of transcending the rock/electronica gap, VanScoten describes his sound as being “guitar-based live electronica.” “I’ve made up all kinds of fancy names for my genre, but in layman’s terms, that’s what I would call it.” With the recent release of his ambitious double album, Coming Up for Air, VanScoten admits that the difference between the energetic Volume 1: Dusk and the mellower Volume 2: Dawn is that “[I] fully digested my influences. In my earlier material, I was chomping at someone else’s style and trying it on and seeing how it works. It doesn’t matter if it’s 150 beats per minute and totally rocking or it’s 80 beats in a minute and very subdued— it still sounds like me.”