Lakeshore Driving

Micheal Pacheco and Pete Compton, for­merly of The Slants, have been through a lot together, includ­ing five prior bands, before bring­ing their long-time, studio-only side project into the lime­light. Lakeshore Driving is the musi­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of their long­time friend­ship, with nos­tal­gic begin­nings in an ele­va­tor at a New Orleans goth music fes­ti­val in 2000. Though their music has changed styles since then, the way that they cre­ate music has not. Admittedly self­ish and made to please no one but them­selves, the 1980’s influ­enced elecro-pop sound takes two forms — the brood­ing band with shoegaze and new wave influ­ence, and the DJ name Micheal uses in Tokyo’s mega-trendy club scene. At first, they seem like two com­pletely dif­fer­ent sounds, but after lis­ten­ing to a cou­ple tracks it is evi­dent that the sounds are merely dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties pro­duced by the same entity.

Lakeshore Driving has been the musi­cal foun­da­tion between Micheal and Pete since record­ing their first track together in 2001. Now, solid­i­fied as an offi­cial unit they pro­duce, remix, and write music with­out compromise.

Describing their niche as part of an alter­na­tive electro-pop move­ment, they pro­duce tracks heav­ily influ­enced by the new wave and post punk sounds of the late 1970s and 1980s. When asked about their opin­ion of con­form­ing to pop­u­lar music, Lakeshore Driving feels that “if the music dic­tates con­for­mity, we’ll con­form,” show­ing how gen­uinely raw their music is.

In recent years, Lakeshore Driving finds them­selves on dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents. 2009 saw Micheal move across the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo, Japan while Pete remained in their home­town Portland, Oregon. Micheal found the fast-paced Tokyo lifestyle both inspir­ing and moti­vat­ing, and any ini­tial con­cerns about the change of loca­tion were proven to be unnec­es­sary. Through many years of friend­ship and prac­ti­cal use of the inter­net as a means to com­mu­ni­cate and col­lab­o­rate, their music has not suf­fered the dis­tance. The cur­rent state of Lakeshore rep­re­sents this new stage in their friendship.

Lakeshore Driving has DJ res­i­dency at Emotional Signal, a club in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. In addi­tion to play­ing at some of Japan’s trendi­est night­clubs, Micheal and Pete have played through­out the United States, as well as in Germany and Canada. Lakeshore Driving also per­formed at three fea­ture venues for the 2nd Annual Japan Music Week (2010). Although Micheal DJs alone, the pro­duced sound is still rec­og­niz­ably Lakeshore.

Micheal’s love of what Lakeshore Driving rep­re­sents can be summed up in a few words that carry so much mean­ing: “Music in Lakeshore is so easy.”