Reed Juenger, founding member of Seattle three-piece Beat Connection, spends a lot of time worrying about flow, probably more than he should, but the concern pays off big on record and in concert.

Beat Connection’s atmospheric electro grooves flow like Juenger wants them to, foregoing the familiar quiet-synth-to-loud-synth structure of so many electronic artists in favor of songs that evolve and grow in unpredictable but always danceable ways. After catching their Red Bull Sound Select performance at Sasquatch Music Festival, we spoke with Juenger about future projects, the concept behind their recent album Product 3 and the weird ways they achieve exactly the sound they’re searching for. Here are 10 things you should know about Beat Connection.

They Started Out as Typical College DJs

Juenger moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington and almost instantaneously founded an early form of Beat Connection, working as an electronic duo with a friend who has since left the group. “We were all living together in a house, where we threw house parties and DJed them or performed for other people’s parties all the time. We were just trying to make beats—standard college stuff—but then we just got really into it,” he says.

House Parties Helped Shape Their Flow

The modest early history of Beat Connection as house party DJs for hire has affected their output and approach to music ever since. “The most obvious influence,” Juenger says, “is that we spend so much time working on the flow of a record, and the way the songs fit together as an aesthetic whole. That comes from curating a playlist and controlling the ebb and flow of a party. When I’m DJing, I want to play this sad hip-hop song but then I know I want to play this upbeat house track later, so I need to think, how do I get between these two things that seem to be separate but can actually work together if you contextualize them.” 

Their Songs Are Inspired by Movies and Visual Art, Not Just Other Music

Juenger knows his musical progenitors well, but some of the band’s best ideas come not from other music but from different art forms. “We’re always talking about trying to make a sound that’s like this scene in this movie, or the way this painting looks,” he says. “We might try to make a song that’s like a Picasso etching, where the perspectives are all overlapping. Or with a movie — it goes for an hour or so and the way it reaches its climax is just so beautiful, so we try to do something like that in our songs. But you can’t just translate it one-to-one — something’s lost in translation.”

Two of Their Members Come From a Background in Jazz

When his original collaborator left the band, he was soon replaced by three new members, including drummer Jarred Katz and bassist Mark Hunter, both of whom studied jazz performance at the University of Washington. Juenger credits their involvement — plus the distinct vocalist perspective of singer Tom Eddy — for Beat Connection’s growth as a band. “They’re both incredibly accomplished musicians in a variety of genres and capacities. They’re always introducing me to new stuff and challenging my ideas of pop music. It’s made the process a lot more exploratory.”

They’re Always Trying New Things In the Studio

The evolution of Beat Connection from DJ duo to a full band imperceptibly blending electronic and analog sounds came from their exploratory approach, their “pushing ourselves to be better.” By now, they’ve learned to carve separate lanes for both elements of their sound while keeping themselves open to new ideas.

“We go out of our way to make things difficult for themselves and stumble upon something new and exciting,” he explains. “We can usually tell if something isn’t working right away — like let’s get rid of that synthesized slap banjo — but that doesn’t mean don’t try it out.”

They Record Everyday Noises to Create Textures In Their Songs

For all the analog and electronic layers that go into any given Beat Connection song, there are often elements that fit into neither category, simply taken from everyday life and buried underneath it all. It’s a way of giving their music extra texture, much like one of their major influences The Avalanches, sans the sampling of other artists. They’ve sampled random conversations for white noise and even recorded a rainstorm that plays beneath the entirety of their song “The Effort” to give it “an element of grit.”

“We’ll even try weird things out, like record something and play it aloud and record the sound of it playing in the room, and do it again and again just to use the noise in the background,” Juenger says.

They Work Hard To Make Their Music Sound Imperfect

The band wrote and recorded Product 3 roughly simultaneously and switched studios a few times during the process, volleying between recording spaces around Seattle and even one in San Francisco, but Juenger says the most difficult part of it all was deciding which takes to keep and which to discard. For them, he says, it comes down to “finding the imperfections in takes that make the song exciting or give it some special character, and using that without losing it or making it too polished.” Thinking another moment, he continues, “or maybe we just need to focus on it less, because no one’s going to notice anyway.”

They Have To Completely Rethink the Songs For Their Live Shows

But the hardest part comes after recording is finished, once the band members need to figure out how to translate their most sonically ambitious songs to a live setting. “We get into our zone and compose parts that are impossible to perform — like four guitar takes chopped up and layered over each other with vocals on top — but now we’ve got to do it anyway,” Juenger says.

Plus, a live show has to have its own flow, separate from the one Beat Connection builds into their studio efforts. “On the record, it goes song A to song B to song C, but on the live show, we’re going to go C to B to F and find these other ways to transition between them and change the tempo. We just obsess over that.”

The New Album Is a Satire of Itself and of Commercialism in Music

Juenger says Beat Connection’s recent album Product 3 was in part a statement on “the blatant commercialization of art.” The album title makes the idea somewhat explicit, and even the cover art pays homage to an earlier artists’ commercialized blend of high and low art using the color of International Klein Blue, invented and informally “owned” by late French artist Yves Klein. “We were trying to regroup as a band and make self-aware pop music that’s critical of itself, but also honest about the fact that pop music is for sale,” Juenger says. “What we’re making is ephemeral, it’s the soundtrack to a Toyota commercial.”

Of course, he clarifies, Beat Connection would jump at the chance to do a Toyota commercial. “I’m trying to get paid,” he laughs.

They’re Focusing on Singles For Now

In the wake of Product 3’s release, Beat Connection is keeping busy, and Juenger is already itching to release new material sometime this summer.

“We just finished this song yesterday, and I feel really good about it,” he says. “We’re not thinking about a record now, we’re just thinking about songs, because the way people consume music now is one-at-a-time through playlists on Spotify. We’re just going to put this single out and do everything we can on our end to push it. I think we made a great one, so I’m excited to see how it goes.”