JOE VORTECH: Hey. This is Joe Vortech, and we are Movement 2008 in Detroit, Michigan. I’m talking on behalf of Gearwire to Acid Circus out of LA, also on Droid Behavior.

VIDAL VARGAS: That’s our label.

JOE VORTECH: And why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you do and your performances, your DJing, and Droid Behavior itself.

VIDAL VARGAS: My name is Vidal. I’m part of Acid Circus. I perform as Acid Circus with my brother Vangelis who’s not here with us right now. Basically, we’re a two-live -- two-person live act, mostly techno, electro, house, acid, all electronic stuff. It’s mostly original music but in recent years or recent months, we’ve incorporated a digital DJ style of sorts. So, basically we’ve been producing under the name Acid Circus and we put our records on the label Droid and what’s up in Detroit. Of course, we’re involved with the Droid Behavior event production as well and all other aspects of Droid, but as far as our performance style goes, we’ve been really using Ableton a lot lately along with other programs like FL Studio, Reason, Logic, of course lots of plugins like Reaktor, Massive and what not, and we just use all what we have, all our resources to create kind of digital mix of mostly original music with a few samples and tracks from other people.

JOE VORTECH: So, what would you say with your rig, is it mostly a software-based rig?

VIDAL VARGAS: Yeah. It’s pretty much all software. Basically we perform on two laptops, one laptop each with MIDI controllers. We use an Audio 8 sound card. Once in a while, we’re bringing in some hardware. My brother will use a Virus to trigger sounds from there and what not, and basically we hook up to a DJ mixer and kind of perform almost like a DJ-style versus where I play music on my laptop and my brother will kind of battle it out on the DJ mixer with sounds from his laptop and vice versa.

So, we usually use all four channels on a DJ mixer to bring in, you know, different sounds on every single channel. We’re definitely using all the EQs, all the crossfaders and what not.

JOE VORTECH: That’s awesome. What would you say are some of the, you know, the strengths but also some of the kind of, you know, things you want to improve with the software and how you have it kind of -- how you use the system. What would you’d like to see improved in software you use or gear you use that would make your live set, that could help, you know, strengthen the live set and all that kind of stuff?

VIDAL VARGAS: Well, one thing right now that we do with our live set which is I guess a little bit unique to other people who do two laptop kind of live Pas, we’re not actually MIDI syncing our laptops. We do it all by freehand, so --

JOE VORTECH: [INDISCERNIBLE]

VIDAL VARGAS: Yeah.

JOE VORTECH: It’s really impressive.

VIDAL VARGAS: Yeah. We do it kind of like the way a DJ does it on two turntables, so with that, you know, we’re obviously not MIDI syncing which can leave some room for error but at the same time, I haven’t been very impressed with some of the MIDI syncs because sometimes MIDI syncing hardware to software isn’t very effective. I’m still yet to see anything that will sync up, you know, some things like the 909 to an Ableton set and make it actually sound clean the whole time, so that would be kind of cool to see also. I think about MIDI syncing as when we play live, we actually are switching between programs quite often, depending on what song we play. If you’re doing - If you have something MIDI synced, the second you close a program it’s going to affect the other computer and that’s not going to happen. That won’t work live, so I guess that would be kind of cool if there is some way to sync up everything live and stuff -- programs opening and closing without affecting the other computer. Yeah.

JOE VORTECH: Awesome. Awesome. And what are -- What would you say is, you know, the program you’d call I guess the basis for your live set? The program that’s in a sense kind of a sequencer of your live sets?

VIDAL VARGAS: We definitely work a lot with Ableton and FL Studio, FL and especially Reason we use a lot to play our original music, so I don't know. We’ll play songs on FL or Reason for like 80% of our set, either we’ll go back to back from one track to the other track on laptops or I’ll be playing all original music on those programs while my brother will be playing stuff on Ableton. He’ll be bringing in original loops as well as other people’s music and loops and cut up some samples on the other channels. So, we basically go back and forth between those two programs a lot, and that’s I guess those are the main programs for our live sets.

JOE VORTECH: And you run multiple programs at the same time...

VIDAL VARGAS: Oh. Totally. Totally.

JOE VORTECH: ...on each laptop. So, what kind of laptops do you use?

VIDAL VARGAS: Right now we’re just using Compaqs but we’re looking to move on to something maybe a Mac. I mean I’ve seen what [PH] Drumcell uses. He uses a Mac and I like the results he has so we’re going to get to that eventually.

JOE VORTECH: You mean -- Typically what you say you aim to have a pretty strong and stable PC for your...?

VIDAL VARGAS: Well yeah. I mean obviously when we’re running a lot of programs and a lot of effects, you got to have something that can handle it, so...

JOE VORTECH: Yeah. Of course.

VIDAL VARGAS: ...you hope they have enough memory and all that stuff.

JOE VORTECH: All right. So you’re playing here in Detroit and all around the festival?

VIDAL VARGAS: Yeah. We played at a party last night called Friendly Immigration. It was at The Works. My brother and I did a live set there. It was pretty cool. A lot of experimental artists with a few techno artists in the back room so we’re one of those techno artists.

JOE VORTECH: Oh good. And are you guys going to be performing around the United States this summer?

VIDAL VARGAS: Yes. We’re touring a lot in the Midwest, doing .many tours in Chicago, Milwaulkee, Minneapolis, hopefully Detroit, and we’re also playing in San Francisco and Seattle like almost every month from now till October. Yeah.

JOE VORTECH: That’s fantastic. Now what do you guys see for the future? Do you have a lot of releases? A decent amount?

VIDAL VARGAS: Well, the last release we had which we’re still kind of, you know, still working with has been charted and licensed to quite a few CDs and DJ’s charts and what not, so we definitely have a lot of releases that we’re working on to hopefully get on Droid label and a few other labels as well to do remixes. We’re definitely working on more tours. We played at Mexico recently so we’re working with promoters over there to get more tours set up over there, and eventually we’re going to try to do some European tours because, you know, that’s where the biggest market is so we need the biggest exposure there.

JOE VORTECH: Well, thank you so much for your time, sir.

VIDAL VARGAS: Of course. Thank you so much.

JOE VORTECH: It was a pleasure talking with. It sounds really interesting.

VIDAL VARGAS: Thanks for having me.

JOE VORTECH: Hey! Thanks for talking with us. It sounds really interesting what you guys do.

VIDAL VARGAS: Thank you.

JOE VORTECH: That’s fantastic, and this was Vidal...

VIDAL VARGAS: From Acid Circus.

JOE VORTECH: ...from Acid Circus and Droid Behavior, and I’m Joe Vortech with Gearwire.Com and this is Movement 2008. Thanks so much guys.

VIDAL VARGAS: Peace.