Despite being around for a little over a year, Mansions On The Moon have already made some huge steps. Made up of The Pnuma Trio’s Lane Shaw and Ben Hazlegrove as well as lead vocalist/guitarist Ted Wendler, Mansions On The Moon specializes in electronic downtempo and ambient rock. Recently, Mansions On The Moon came out with an album of remixes that was produced by Benzi and Diplo, a project that has gotten them support from a wide range of artists outside the jam scene, including N*E*R*D and Chiddy Bang’s Xaphoon Jones. Lane Shaw and Ted Wendler sit down with Jambands.com to discuss the recording process, the art of the mixtape and experiences on their recent tour with rappers Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller.

Justin: To start off, how did you guys form Mansions On The Moon?

TW: Well Ben [Hazlegrove] and Lane were in a band called Pnuma Trio that was around long before I got involved with it, and I met Ben in Northern Michigan when we were kids, and then we met when we were all adults when I was still in college and I’d been writing songs and I showed them those songs, and he dug them and said that we should continue to write music, and eventually I moved in with him in Virginia Beach and we started just writing songs for the fun of it. He was still in his other band with Lane and we moved to Colorado which is where I met Lane, and then all three of us then started making music. We got a call from Shay Haley Asking us to come show him some music, and that happened and we all kind of vibed with Shay and ended up moving there and really focusing in on the music that we had all created as a serious project and as a band.

Justin: And Lane, what made you decide to go for a more downtempo ambient sound with Mansions On The Moon compared to the electronic dance music of Pnuma Trio?

LS: I mean we still have that type of sound in this group, for me there’s an interest in getting to test different boundaries and getting to do a lot more. For instance when Pnuma played all the time I would just like go hard on the drums, that was the thing to do every night, just go hard as you could energy wise and with Mansions there’s a lot more on the table…there’s folk songs, there’s singing, there’s volume control on stage, and that’s something that is a lot more of a challenge. It’s been great to have both and infuse everything, and just like I said, this is a whole other baby, it’s something I always wanted to do. I always wanted to be in a band that had albums and songs that people can relate to.

Justin: So I saw you guys were in the process of recording Lightyears which is due out later in the year. Can you tell me more about the recording process, how do you guys decide who writes what in the studio?

TW: It’s a process, there’s no real plan to it. It’s sort of based around stream of consciousness writing. These songs, especially the ones that are going to go on the Lightyears EP have been written and recorded over a span of two years, some even longer and recorded in so many different studios throughout their existence. Some of them, the vocals were recorded in a closet and then others were recorded in a multi-million dollar studio, so we kind of kept them and kept adding elements with different environments and different ideas in mind and different instrumentation and things we had access to so that kind of produced maybe some of the uniqueness that people can hear in our music because of the amount of time and effort and different places we’ve been to write these songs. As far as who writes what, it’s like I said, there’s no real intentional science behind it, we just go with the inspiration as it comes and we keep the ideas that we like.

Justin: Are all three of you guys in the studio at the same time mostly, or Ted, do you record vocals and have it layered over Lane and Ben’s music?

TW: I don’t think it’s like that, like I do the production as well and sometimes I’ll record vocals alone, sometimes Ben will be on the vocals with me as well. So just like I said, no one song is the same as the last and just because we do one song this way doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to do all the songs that same way. At the end of each process, if we’re all feeling it that’s what comes out.

Justin: Speaking of doing songs a different way, you guys recently came out with the mixtape Paradise Falls which was remixed by Benzi and Diplo. How did that come to be?

LS: About a year and a half ago we were on Virginia Beach and we didn’t have a full studio to work with to get the full Mansions sound out on, we were kind of working in our own basement in Virginia Beach and we came up with this idea to just kind of put ourselves on the map by letting people know what we were into, what music we listen to as far as bands like Washed Out, Junior Boys and Deadmau5, stuff like that. What we had as Mansions at the time as far as songwriting and stuff like that, putting Ted’s lyrics and Ben’s lyrics over songs and stuff we were listening to at the time. As far as Diplo and Benzi, Shay Haley helped out with that and that was awesome, it was a great experience for us. That was about a year and a half ago, I think, right Ted?

TW: That came out right when we got out of here I feel like, and now it’s a year and a half later and we’re getting to do another one with them. I’m stoked. This one is probably going to be a lot longer and have a lot more features on it but it’s been a fun process all around.

Justin: You’re talking about another mixtape that you’re coming out with, right?

TW: Yeah, we already started working on it.

Justin: Is the reason you guys decided to make your first full length album a remix album because you guys couldn’t get into the studio and you guys were working on a lot of stuff at home?

TW: I think that’s kind of the long and the short of it I guess. We had these songs and we had recorded them and we had the production we had made behind them and we really liked them, but we had a bigger vision for them. We wanted to release music and we wanted to get it out there and I forgot who came up with the idea originally for the mixtape but it was a creative way to take the songwriting that we had done and not maybe the production behind it, although some of them we kept the production behind them as well I guess. But it was just a creative way to work around that and now that we’re in L.A. we have access to a lot more instrumentation, a lot more tools at our disposal as far the production goes. We’re really excited about the E.P. in that regard. It’s a bold project and it’s very cool, at least I hope people think it’s cool, and it’s a creative way to get people to hear these songs.

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