Don’t mess with Hippie Sabotage.
The EDM duo with roots in Sacramento, brothers Kevin and Jeff Saurer, have bigly numbers, including more than 1 billion electronic streams of their electronic music. And there’s that spat at the What The Festival in Portland, Oregon, two years ago. A video showing a scuffle between the band and security drew more 500,000 views on Facebook.
Suffice to say that the bros are pumped up to be onstage.
The Portland incident started with a technical glitch — and microphones being tossed — that led to a security guard attempting to clear the stage, according to social media witness reports cited in a Sacramento Bee article.
In a statement to Willamette Week newspaper in Oregon, the band held that it was acting in self-defense: “It was an unfortunate incident that placed us in an unsafe situation in the middle of our performance. We feel terrible that the fans didn’t get the full set, but we love performing for Portland and will be back.”
The fortunate sons now live in Venice, surrounded by that mellow SoCal vibe. All better now. But perhaps the Saurer brothers haven’t totally lived down the Portland stage fight. “Hippie Sabotage are all about love, though not necessarily peace” reads a current headline in LAWeekly. That story ends with some sage advice: “Just, y’know, don’t get into any fights, lads.”
“Are these the dudes that (grappled with) security at a festival?” asked one Reno fan on Facebook.
“Coming to Reno to fight sound guys and security? Awesome,” replied another.
In simple terms, Hippie Sabotage describes itself as “two brothers making music.” Pretty innocent. They started making music in their middle school years, first hip-hop and eventually embracing EDM.
“It transformed into a more electronic thing once EDM came to the fore,” Jeff Saurer told LAWeekly. “Now, we’re on a more live jam, guitar, live solo type of vibe. So I think it’s really gone through a wide progression that’s been heavily influenced by us going from not being a live act to doing shows over the last couple of years.”
Hippie Sabotage has been actively recording for the past several years. It released the EP “Vacants” in 2013, followed by the “Johnny Long Chord” EP and “The Sunny Album” in 2014. In 2016, it released “Providence,” the “Options” EP and “Vibes.” Last year, “Drifter” was sent out into the world.
Currently, Hippie Sabotage is focusing on its Path of Righteousness Tour, which stops at Reno’s Cargo Concert Hall on Tuesday, Feb. 6. Melvv (aka Jeffery Melvin of Milwaukee) will open the all-ages, 8 p.m. show. Tickets are $26.30 in advance or $29.80 at the door.
“You can expect a completely new set with a lot of beautiful moments, and we have about triple the size of production rig as we had last year,” Jeff Saurer told LAWeekly. “A huge LED wall. It will be a psychedelic and trippy experience, for sure.”
English singer Daisy Guttridge will join the brothers onstage.