edIT Got Athletic Shorts and a LEGO Playset From His Fans

Edward Ma—aka edIT of the cyborg-like, festival-banging bass music trio The Glitch Mob—lives in a lovely house in the hills of L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood. The place has fantastic hardwood floors, four bedrooms, and a living room outfitted with recording gear. You can also climb onto the roof via a ladder and get a spectacular view of the city, though Ma says he can’t have parties up there because someone might fall through the floor.

Before doing The Glitch Mob full-time, Ma made music for advertising. He was bringing in a solid enough salary that his parents recommended he buy a house. He now shares the place with his girlfriend—the musician Yaarrohs—and their four animals. Ma has a dog named Ichi the Killer (after the Japanese gang movie/manga series of the same name), and Yaarrohs has three cats: Sheba, Ninja and the Homie.

Here, in his own words, Ma gives us a tour of the humble abode.

Santa Cruz Nomad mountain bike

Every morning, I wake up at 4:30… there’s a shuttle that picks me up and takes me to the top of Mount Wilson and drops me off. And then I can basically descend over 5,000 feet… It’s pretty gnarly up there to begin with; I wear full body armor and everything. But… I don’t do anything too crazy. The first thing that comes to my mind is, “All right, I’m a musician first and foremost.”

My other mountain bike actually got stolen out of my garage on Christmas Eve. Basically, I think the thieves, they’d been casing me for a while, man. I think they had it all planned out, because all they stole was my bike and a bunch of bike stuff. They had to have known that it was a really nice bike. If you don’t know bikes, you’d just be like, “Oh, it’s a bike. Whatever.” But that got stolen. I was like, “OK, well, I can just be depressed until I get my insurance claim from it, or I can just go out and get myself a new bike.” So, I went out and got this on Christmas Eve. It’s my new steed.

Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S49 and Maschine Studio Gear

These two are made by Native Instruments. They’ve shown us a lot of love over the years. Native Instruments makes pretty much the sickest virtual instruments that you can buy on the market. Synths and samplers and stuff, they pretty much make the best stuff. And this [Maschine] is basically like the second coming of [the Akai MPC], but way iller. It can integrate with your computer and everything. I actually slept on this for a really long time. It’s like a piece of hardware that controls Maschine, the actual software.

LTJ Bukem, Logical Progression Drum & Bass LP

This is pretty much what started it all for me. I guess nowadays this would be considered the equivalent of like, liquid drum & bass. But it was the side of drum & bass that was not really dark and aggressive; it was very spacey, very soulful, sometimes jazzy. And when I heard this record, dude, it totally blew my mind. If you listen to this, you can kind of hear where both my influence and the Glitch Mob’s influence comes from. Hard drums, deep sub bass, the emotion that’s in it, the soulfulness of it—it’s all in there.

Athletic Shorts

We have this fan club in The Glitch Mob called The Mob, and in every city that we play, at soundcheck we go and we meet The Mob. It’s an invite-only fan club for the die-hard mega-fans that always tweet at us, always hit us up on Facebook. For Halloween, we played in Philly at the Electric Factory, and we had The Mob come down and decorate. This guy called Travis, he came up to me, and… he was crying. He was like, “Hey man, I want to give these to you. I want to let you know that I was a heroin addict, and I was basically down and out, at the lowest I could possibly go, and I was thrown in jail. And [The Glitch Mob’s] music helped me turn my life around. Now I’m clean, and now I make athletic wear—like this stuff. My dream is to be a DJ, make music like you guys, but also just inspire people with positivity and let them know that no matter what, you can turn it around.” It was literally one of the most inspiring stories. I slept with these on the tour bus, and dude, they’re literally probably some of the most comfortable shorts you could ever wear.

“LEGO Blade”

This is something that a fan made for us after they saw us at South by Southwest. They went back home to wherever they were from—I might be completely wrong, but it might be Nebraska or something like that. They made this thing out of LEGOs, and then they came to our show, held it in their hands the entire show, and then at the end—we always jump down and hang with the fans, sign shit, take selfies and stuff—they presented it to us.

Pins

These pins were made by The Glitch Mob fans, and they gave them to me. I’ve got tons of these fan mementos.

Trophy

We played the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, Colorado, and we sold it out, with Beats Antique and Prefuse 73. So they gave us this trophy.

DJ AM poster

We did a show with DJ AM at La Cita in Downtown, at one of those Dance Right events. It was just a rare occasion in this crammed-ass Mexican bar. Totally ram-jam packed. It was a while ago, man. Maybe like a good solid year before he passed away, I would say. Our manager was AM’s best friend, so that’s how the connection began. Through that, my manager was like, “Hey, AM’s got some projects coming up. He’s doing this DJ Hero thing—do you think you could go over and help him with that?” I would go over to AM’s mansion in Beverly Hills and work the Ableton for him. He was one of my homies. Sad to see him go. He was a good dude.

Guitars

This acoustic guitar right here… I’ve had since high school. This is the guitar that I wrote [my debut album] on. This guitar right here, the sunburst Washburn, was the one used on a couple tunes on Crying Over Pros for No Reason. It’s actually the first guitar that my dad ever bought me. My dad, he’s kind of a pseudo-professional gambler. He’s got those massive checks in his office that he’s won from gambling tournaments, and he’s got tons of gambling trophies. Our first time going to Vegas, my dad was like, “If I win big out there, I’ll buy you a guitar and an amp.” And he did, and this is it. I don’t know why the hell I picked this color. There’s so many other guitars I could’ve chosen to be my first guitar, and I picked this? But I did.

Upright Piano

This actually belonged to [Glitch Mob bandmate Justin] Boreta’s ex-girlfriend… She was moving to Berlin, so she was like, “If you want it, it’s yours.” It’s kind of out of key. But that’s kind of the character of it, you know what I mean? I really love playing this thing. It’s got vibes.

Animals

It’s crazy, man. My pad—it’s literally like Animal Kingdom up in here. I’m allergic to these [cats]. I’m basically constantly congested. But I love these guys.