Justin Boreta has always been one to explore — from pre-Internet computer networks to the hills and bluffs that surround his Goleta childhood home to the creative trails blazed in musical territory seldom trodden in the world of electronic music. “I was always a creative kid growing up,” said Boreta via Internet phone call. “I had a computer at a very young age. My grandfather had bought me an Apple IIe, and I would constantly tinker around or play with it until I thought I figured it out.”
Boreta is one-third of The Glitch Mob, a group formed in 2006 from a deejay collective and born of the Los Angeles electronic music scene. Though the group has found success in West Coast states and around the world, their turn at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, May 30, will be the first time The Glitch Mob has performed in Boreta’s hometown. The date is one stop on a tour that will take them from Vancouver to Reno to Romania to Chicago (though not in that order).
International shows and custom sounds weren’t always in the cards for The Glitch Mob. In 2010, after the departure of founding member Kraddy (given name Matthew Kratz) due to creative differences, the remaining members made a stylistic musical shift away from their previous drum-and-bass deejaying roots, a transformation capped by their debut album, Drink the Sea, which split their still-burgeoning fan base. “When we played Coachella in 2010, no one had heard our record yet,” Boreta explained. “Not even our manager or agent. … So when we played Coachella, we didn’t play a lot of our old stuff. We only played new stuff. Everybody was like, “'What the fuck is this?'”