The Standard

Poolside’s daytime disco groove is custom fit for the chill, sunny vibes of The Standard, Downtown LA’s rooftop. In fact, it’s where the duo played their first poolside gig as “Poolside.” Filip Nikolic, who played bass for L.A. popsters Ima Robot, and San Diegan multi-instrumentalist, Jeff Paradise, drop their new album in June, but they’re making the Coachella rounds this weekend and will playing a live set at The Standard, Downtown LA on April 17. Standard Culture snatched them from their booth and asked them about how this whole Poolside/poolside thing took root.

What was your very first Poolside gig like?

It was a DJ set on the rooftop at The Standard in Downtown LA. For our first song, we brought the tempo down from the 130 BPM that the last DJ was playing to 88 BPM and this Swedish girl came up to the booth and told us we were the worst DJ’s she had ever heard, mind you this was literally seconds into our set. She proceeded to tell us that she knows lots of world class DJ’s so she knows what she is talking about and we were by far the worst. She ended her rant by saying we need to play some “dirty, dirty house,” if we want anyone to dance.

Where did you guys meet and when did you decide that you should make a band?

We’ve known each other for about eight years. We met at a party I used to throw in San Francisco called Frisco Disco. I had Junior Senior as guest DJ’s on their first US tour. At the time Filip was the bass player in the band and he came out to the gig. He and I got to talking about music at the club and really hit it off. At the time he lived in Denmark and a year later he came out to LA and we started playing around in the studio. Every year or so, we would get together and make songs together and we completed some a year or so ago under the name Poolside.

How do you guys define “Daytime Disco?”

Disco-influenced music that is nice for daytime enjoyment. The back story is our studio is a converted pool house in Los Feliz that is literally steps away from the pool; we were making music and then listening to the demos in the pool one hot weekend and decided that we would focus the music on that sort of “poolside” vibe and we call that “daytime disco.”

When you want to get inspired to make music, what bands do you listen to, and what is inspiring about them?

Honestly, inspiration just kinda hits, or not, I haven’t found much success in trying to get inspired. Some music we enjoy is J.J. Cale, Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Russell, way too many to name.

How often are you booked to actually play beside a pool?

Pretty frequently actually, our first two DJ gig were both beside a pool. We played beside a lake at the Pacific Fest last summer. Our recent Vegas gig was the first time we played live by a pool. We’re DJing a club called Rhonda’s Coachella pool party this Saturday. We’ll be DJing a lot of pool parties this summer so look out for that.