The first time I saw Lotus play was in 2003 at The House, a venue in Dekalb, Ill., where I was working. More people were dancing at that concert than I had ever seen there.

Twin brothers Jesse and Luke of Lotus sat down for an interview at 2:30 p.m. on June 17.

Luke: Jesse and I are from Colorado. When we first met Mike, he was from Kansas and we first started exchanging tapes, we’d send him some, like, Miles Davis thing, he’d send us some Jimmy Smith thing.

JL: Have you seen your audience change since you started touring?

Luke: There actually is an audience now. (Laughs)

JL: Have you guys ever been to Kansas before?

Luke: Oh yeah, we played some of our first shows here since Mike grew up a few hours from here. We’d come to Lawrence and play someone’s front porch. We played a couple of times at the Gaslight; we could barely fit our stuff on stage. Café’s and stuff.

JL: How’s nomadic life?

Jesse: We played 100 shows in the last two years. In a lot of ways its like vacation, we get to see family and see different parts of the country.

JL: How does this festival compare to other venues you’ve performed at?

This is the first year we are touring. Last night was awesome--it was one of the biggest crowds we’ve had, so it was awesome. I’m sure tonight will be even bigger.

JL: Does drug culture play a part in your audience’s experience?

Jesse: I think people take drugs when they go to concerts so I think it plays a pretty big part. I wouldn’t say it’s the primary part.

Luke: Hopefully the music can take you into a trance of its own.

JL: Do drugs play a part in your music making?

Luke: I wouldn’t say so. No.

Jesse: No one takes drugs before we perform or when were writing or anything. It doesn’t play a part.

JL: Tell me about the twin situation.

Luke: It’s the twin power. Jesse and I are twins, our guitarist Mike has a twin too who is working merch for us, and he is dating a twin ([her twin sister lives in Lawrence and works at Milton’s]. They say that twins find each other (Jesse laughs). I don’t know if that’s necessarily true

JL: The twin power, is that how you stay so tight and connected while you play?

Jesse: We have been playing together for a really long time. Like Luke was saying, when we first met Mike and Steve in high school so for a long time we have not only been learning about music by playing it but also by listening to it together too. From all those shared experiences we have a common ground.

Luke: I think another aspect that maybe not that many people know about is that all of us with the exception of Chuck grew up in a Mennonite background. We’re not really with the Mennonite church right now, but in that culture there is a strong sense of community and growing up with those values have been a factor.

Jesse: When we get on the road and have to spend like 24 hours a day with the crew you know we can get to hate each other really quick, but we’ve found ways to deal with it.

JL: You’ve gotten a lot of complements on the cohesiveness of your band…

Jesse: Well, I mean. That’s one of the most important aspects of music we play is being able to listen [to each other]. It is one thing to put a bunch of electronics and a bunch of petals and triggers and samplers on stage but it’s another to use that stuff in a musical way. Especially when you have five musicians. Silence definitely becomes as important as any sound or note that you are going to produce.

JL: How would you define the word vibe, what does the word mean to you?

Jesse: When you’re out on stage, before a note is even played you can feel something. It’s just the energy in the room. So many different things contribute to it. The attitudes of the people on and off stage and the sound, the lighting. Everything that’s happening. And when the vibe is right you can almost do no wrong on stage. Everything feeds on everything else. When the audience is dancing we’re going to play a lot different show than if the audience is sitting down.

Jesse: Are you trying to deliver a message to your audience, anything beyond the music?

Luke: I think that gets into sketchy territory because I don’t know I believe music has a power deeper than language, deeper than semantics, so whatever the message may be I think it’s inherent in the music we try to play. We want our shows to be fun. It’s all about the groove and getting people dancing. It’s not just like dumb dance music. But also there are layers that ate intelligent and you can think about intellectually and then there are layers that your body can respond to by the rhythms.

Jesse: Some of my most eye-opening experiences have been seeing or hearing instrumental music and you know its something were a lyric strike you in one way—it can open you up to other things [beyond music with lyrics] by being more ambiguous. I think music connects to people on a higher level.

Luke: Yeah. Often people can describe music with colors or metaphors or words. We surround ourselves with music everyday. We all have IPODS. Music is so ubiquitous it’s like this blanket; it’s just everywhere [People listen to music everywhere], especially over the last few years.

JL: Do you guys subscribe to any specific subcultures or musical genres? Like hippie music, funk…

Luke: No, I think we are always trying to transcend categories like that. Of all the really good things I have seen, whether it be a movie, a book, it seems that all the best is either the pinnacle of the genre or it creates a whole new genre onto itself—that’s something we strive for. Whether we are succeeding or not is up to the audience.

Jesse: We don’t want to limit who this music is made for. It’s not made only for hippies or eletro-heads to enjoy. I think there is something there for all kinds of people.

JL: Plans for the future?

Jesse: We’re working on an album and touring.

JL: What’s the new album going to be like, what’s it going to be called?

Luke: No title yet. We haven’t done too much yet. We’ve laid down some drum tracks, and we’ve done some writing. We’re going for more of a….

Jesse: …We’re bringing in more ideas into the writing. In the past we worked on putting live instrumentation to different types of dance beats. But now we are taking it in directions that fuse in more rock elements and post-rock elements and avant-garde.

Luke: I think there is going to be more electronics and more natural sounding things. Not trying to mimic things but existing in separate worlds. It will break down less into genres, like this is our house song, this is our funk song, this is our drum and bass song. That slate will be wiped clean, and even more genre-less songs.

JL: Anything else you want to add?

Jesse: I don’t think so; we covered a lot of territory. Pretty good.