The creative energy from the String Cheese Incidents drummers Michael Travis and Jason Hann has truly taken flight in the duos band EOTO.This completely improvisational project combines organic instrumentation with electronic beats and bass.These musical trailblazers explore the melding of several genres from the inside of a 14-foot plexiglass lotus flower, which adds a visual dimension to their shows experience.EOTOs performance at Higher Ground kicked off Feb. 1 with a high-energy show that explored everything from thudding dubstep to a tribal bongo solo.The Cynic caught up with member Michael Travis before the show to talk about the meaning behind the name EOTO, how their sound has evolved and what goes into their complex live shows.Vermont Cynic (VC): What does EOTO mean?Michael Travis (MT): It means end of time observatory, which was a concept that I came up with on a mountaintop in southern Colorado.I have a fairly elaborate spiritual life that may or may not mean anything but what it meant to me would be a time when the membranes between dimensions start to melt down and in doing so time would have to stop – because on the other side of the membrane of the third dimension there is no time; all events are kind of simultaneously occurring.So the end of time observatory would be a persons silent watching of that meltdown.VC: Did you know at that time that it means good sound in Japanese?MT: No, I did not. Its a funny coincidence, which is awesome.VC: So did you come up with the idea to do this duo or was it a mutual decision?MT: I think it was kind of me. I had wanted to do an improv looping duo for a while, and Jason was the perfect person to do it with. He joined String Cheese [Incident] and he would stay at my house and we would start jamming on this silly little looping pedal I had and Id play bass and hed play drums.VC: Can you tell me a little bit about the other equipment you use? How does a show really work?MT: Its all improv, a little bit more than people can really conceptualize I think. Ableton Live is the program a lot of DJs use to build their tracks and to sequence them for a show. We use the program but theres no music in it when we start, its totally empty.We just push play, push a space bar, and then a click starts in my head [cluck cluck], whatever tempo we want to start at, and we both just start making stuff up. He generally does vocal washes and effects at the beginning and his drumming is always live.He loops it sometimes but not that much, and then Ill just start making up a part, recording it, making up another part, recording it, drop the bass line, record it, and then as we go I kind of operate in a circle that fits.There are all these effects we can do to the loops but its all live playing, and I try to keep it fresh and feeling like a journey.VC: You guys must be telepathic now.MT: Oh, yeah, its getting more telepathic all the time for sure. I have a hardware sensitive bass and guitar that all goes into the computer, loops, and then he has his stuff going into the master computer.VC: How do you guys think your sound has evolved since you started in 2006?MT: Well, Ive always wanted it to be like a super down tempo gentle band like our contemporaries, like Bonobo or Emancipator, that kind of vibe. Thats the stuff I really fell in love with electronic music for.Then we modulated into thinking we needed to be the worlds only dubstep band, so we went crazy with that for a while and people didnt like that out of us.In fact, I didnt like it that much. We werent really good at it, you know a great dubstep producer like Excision or whoever can do stuff that we cant possibly do.Weve kind of modulated again to being a whole journey/odyssey- like the String Cheese of electronic music, where we dont ever rest on a style, we keep moving through everything we can. Sometimes its gentle and pretty and sometimes its super edgy, and we keep going, doing more of a journey through every style we can possibly manage to fit in there.VC: Are you guys planning on recording anything any time soon in a studio setting?MT: We dont have plans right now. EOTO has become this kind of self-maintaining organism. We can kind of plug ourselves into this spaceship weve created and make it fly.Ive been working on other projects, doing a solo-producer DJ set. Im trying to pull together a couple different identities, pop music identity and all this stuff, so thats where my main recording focus has been.Weve talked about recording but you know, we get done with these shows and we just go our separate ways. We dont even live in the same town; we dont even have to talk about music cause its all improv.VC: You guys are always on the road.MT: Yeah weve stopped doing that a little bit. I was doing 200 plus shows a year for 15 yearsVC: How did you have the energy to do that?MT: Well the music is the power cell. Every night you plug into this amazing generator of energy and creative expression, thats how. If I was like, selling socks around the country, I dont think Id have the same energy for all of that.VC: Whose idea was it for the 3D mapping on the lotus and the lotus design in general?MT: I remember Jason [Zebbler] showing me 3D mapping a long time ago, so he did the 3D mapping. And then someone started drawing the lotus and then I drew it, it was all very collaborative. Like little bits of an idea would keep stacking onto another idea. It just became this collective effort between Jason Zebbler and me.VC: Do you change your sound depending on the crowd you play to?MT: Yeah well it used to be more, now we just kind of do our own thing. But when we first started doing dubstep in 2008 it wasnt a very well known thing. So it was still in that era when we first started doing it when we would go wawawawaweeweeewaaamp and some kids would come to the front and be like thats my jam yo and other people would be like what the hell is going on.VC: So where do you guys see yourselves going now in terms of your music?MT: I mean, I know were the only people doing this. For another group to try and catch up to what we created as an all-improv, live-looping expression, it would be pretty tough. And so I would like to use that to have different types of shows. Maybe have a dance music show Id like to incorporate having like, a different percussion world that we could go to, have more acoustic instruments like a cello. We just dont have the manpower to set it up.I would like to investigate all sorts of intricate, more thoughtful expressions through this machine weve created and also reach out internationally. Because Europe would appreciate us more I think in some ways cause theyre a real attentive listening crowd. You know like, what is he doing? [with a European accent] and in America it seems to be more like lets rage!VC: So you guys have played at so many festivals, was there a particular one that you really loved or a particular venue maybe?MT: Oh man, Electric Forest is pretty hard to beat; its an amazing place. Minneapolis has been, or was for a while when we were just coming through the 2007-2008 years. Minneapolis was this home of, I want to say, wild fans. It felt like we were going into the wilderness, like a bunch of wild animals.People were just crazy in there, punching each other and pulling knives and theyd try to crawl on stage and like, eat us. It was pretty crazy. It felt like our home since it was an inspirational spot where every time wed come back to Minneapolis itd be like yes! our team! And we met so many people, I love it.