TC Millan and Le Chev
Rachel Kober

Six months ago, Brooklyn-based musicians Le Chev and TC Milan started tinkering with different sounds until they came upon a groove too good to dismiss. “We had made some other types of music together before, but right after we made ‘Get Me Off’… we thought, ‘Oh shit, this is a good one; we need to go after this,’” said Crush Club’s Le Chev in a recent phone interview with The Santa Barbara Independent.

That song became the duo’s first single and quickly received a healthy number of listeners on Spotify. And it’s no wonder: “Get Me Off” is an endlessly playable track with an infectiousness that hooks listeners from the get-go. Their delightful, highly danceable subsequent singles — “Louder” and “We Dance” — reaffirmed Le Chev and TC Milan’s dynamic musical collaboration, which includes a layering of disco, funk, hip-hop beats, and ear-pleasing vocals, creating a signature sound that is sonically reminiscent of ’70s dance music but has a 21st-century sensibility.

During our three-way chat, the good-natured, droll pair shared how they met, the core of their music, and their love of matador-wear.

How did the two of you pair up musically?

Le Chev: We met through mutual friends. I was here making beats and playing with other rock bands. And then I got really into producing funkier stuff and house stuff and disco-influenced stuff because it’s so fun and it really captures the energy of the city and life here, I think. And when I met TC, he had already been here; he had gone to NYU …

TC Milan: I had done theater, but then I started to dive into more music-related stuff and found the characters I had hoped to find in theater when I first came to New York in the music scene. Then I started to write with Le Chev and realized that writing was really fulfilling. Making something and then playing something and then people knowing it and then singing it back to you is the best feeling, too. So we met and just kind of jived.

What instruments do you use in your music?

LC: Basically everything that we use has to be recorded. We both have background in playing a bunch of [instruments] and singing. We thought probably the best way to get a unique sound with so many people doing sample-based music is to try to record as much as we can. So if we do drums, we record the drums; if we use bass, we record analog bass. We try to do everything with actual recording and then we can hack it up afterward. I love using the ARP Odyssey; that’s the best instrument of all time.

Do you have a Lady Gaga stage look going on or is it just jeans and T-shirts?

LC: All of our songs start with the same thing, which is a Spanish call — it’s a matador call …

…That’s why your pictures have you two wearing matador jackets.

LC: Yeah, we are turning a negative into a positive. Turning a really brutal ceremony into a wonderful look. [Laughs.]

So you’re not enticing the audience to charge you?

LC: I don’t mind getting charged once in a while. [Laughs.] … But we really like it when people bring flowers to the show and throw flowers.

Any particular type of flowers?

LC: Cheap ones.

TCM: We prefer deli flowers that only have one day left. [Laughs.]

LC: Even just baby’s breath if that’s all you’ve got.

Do you have a record in the works?

LC: We have a couple records’ worth of material, but we are just releasing it one song at a time to, you know, tease “the bull” into a frenzy.

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Crush Club plays Tuesday, June 6, at the Goodland, 5650 Calle Real, Goleta. Call (805) 964-6241 or see thegoodland.com.

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