 Hi, I'm Emily Yoshida. I'm the entertainment editor for The Verge and I am in LA with Yacht. Yacht is Jonna Balchtholt and Claire Evans and they make really fun futuristic dance music. Their new album is called I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler and it's sort of themed around outdated technology, just different older visions of the future that haven't really quite come to pass. So I thought it would be perfect if we hung around LA and looked at some of the more interesting lost visions of the future that still exist around the city. Can you breathe the running on the wall? So we are here at the theme building at LAX. LAX being the major airport of the Los Angeles area. It's a pretty recognizable structure. Anytime anybody's flying in or out of Los Angeles, that's pretty much the identifier of where you are. But it's a place that not a lot of people go to and it's kind of been in disuse for a while now. It's true. Well it was originally supposed to be the central ticketing building of the entire airport when this airport was designed in the 60s. It was supposed to be this massive central glass dome under which all the terminals would connect and people would come in and this would be like an atrium interchange. Especially with all the greenery in here. It's a metaphor for Los Angeles. It's a metaphor for Los Angeles as a whole. It's this protected glass dome where everything's green. They began construction in 59 and they finished it in 61. Facts! And how long was it actually used before it kind of... Zero amount of time. By the time this building was dedicated, it wasn't serving its central function at all. It was just, I want to say decorative, it seems like the wrong word, but it was kind of more like a symbolic building. It was supposed to represent LA's vision of itself as a city of the future. So in addition to the theme building kind of being a symbol of Los Angeles and a symbol of LAX, it's kind of this symbol of how travel used to be this sort of glamorous thing or this aspirational thing. And I guess that's sort of why I've never come here before because now when you travel, it's a hassle and you're just trying to get from point A to B as painlessly as possible. It's way more stressful than it used to be. Well yeah, I mean it's less of like a novelty I guess. Yeah. It's like, let's put on our nice clothes and go on a trip. And smoke a cigarette on the plane while we have our cocktail. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's true. Now it's just like brutal as in and out as fast as possible. You have to pay to have the luxuries that you once had for free. The finish line is somewhere... in the Bonaventure Hotel. The Bonaventure Hotel! The Bonaventure Hotel. Bonaventure Hotel. The Bonaventure Hotel. Bonaventure Hotel. The Bonaventure Hotel. The Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. This place was built in 1976 and it feels like 1976. Like 1976's dreams, 1976's aesthetic aspirations. It's like all crazy concrete and pods and mirrored pools and clear elevators. I think it was originally designed to be like an indoor retail hotel public space. But I don't know, I think in Los Angeles people are not very receptive to the idea of manufactured interior space like this. It was kind of bound to fail. It wants to be a pedestrian place, it wants to be like a public place, but it's completely in zero conversation with the rest of the city. It's hard to get to on foot from other parts of downtown. It's kind of like this weird pod and it has this kind of like weirdly utopian idea of how people would use public space in the city. Like there's this running track. You know, no one's running on that except for you in 2004. But considering, yeah, that this is like the biggest hotel in LA and we are in a massive metropolitan city, like it's empty. You know what I mean? Like all these retail spaces are empty, which is weird. I mean it's totally underused in that way. And it's that thing again and again of people using modernist buildings to stand in for the future. Like this confusion of modernism like a very specific period of time. Or postmodernism, I guess is something that's postmodern. To stand in for tomorrow when buildings in the future are never going to look like this, you know? Everywhere we look we see a million miles away, further than a dream. So here we are in the shadow of the Triforium. It's six stories, 60 tons. No one likes it, no one ever liked it. No one ever liked it. But this was kind of like his big utopian dream. This sculpture, which was supposed to light up at night and play music on a series of glass bells. It was supposed to be reactive. It would react to people's footsteps in the pedestrian mall down underneath us. What's the word? Polyphotokinetic. You got it. As soon as they opened it, I mean as soon as it was unveiled, the computer broke. They called it a lot of names. I mean like they called it like Three Wishbones in Search of a Turkey and like the Psychedelic Nickelodeon. The Trifoolery. The Trifoolery. I think it's my favorite one. Yeah, I don't know. For us it's always seemed like it was a very beautiful aspiration. It was originally supposed to have laser beams shooting into space. Yeah. They're all these things. Like before the Luxor. Yeah, it was really ahead of its time. I mean the thing that's super tragic about this piece of art for me is that like we have technology now that could very easily just do what this sculpture originally intended to do. So I guess in its own way this sculpture kind of asks a lot of questions about sound that a band has to ask itself in 2015. Where it goes, how to make it the most enjoyable and accessible. You guys play around, I think you're pretty experimental as far as where your music is used and how it gets out there. We kind of see our music as like a platform for us to do a bunch of stuff. I mean it's not like the music is not important, it's hugely important. It's number one. It's number one. But then there's all this other stuff that surrounds music, especially now, that are all opportunities to do interesting things. You know, it's like there's got to be some visual component, there's got to be some video component, there's got to be language around it, there's got to be like the way it is disseminated. It's pretty much expected at this point that if you're going to put out a single there needs to be a second piece of news, you know? There needs to be some stunt or something around it. You're creating a whole experience, a band is an experience. So obviously this is a very cool building. It was built in 1965. And it also, I guess it's where they keep all the water. This is it, all of Los Angeles is water, right here, right now. I'm shocked about this water. People complain about the water, the Department of Water and Power keeping this water here because it seems wasteful and a drought. But apparently, A, it's recycled water, B, all the DWP servers are in this building. And so, ostensibly if there's a power outage then this water would be drained out and used to cool the server room. This building has two amazing things about it. One, it's surrounded by water. And two, at night it lights up like crazy, so it's like this huge excess of both water and power. Just to show us, just to show us that they have it. Because water and power is power in Los Angeles. Water especially is power in Los Angeles. Great soil, great sun, no water. Add water, great place. But not sustainable in any real way. People are always fearing some kind of disaster in LA. I mean, you guys identify so much as a Los Angeles and as a California band. Would there be anything that could ever get you guys to want to reconsider? We're going down with the ship. Yeah, down with the ship for sure. I can't imagine, I mean I really cannot imagine another place that would excite me intellectually and personally as much as Los Angeles does. Especially right now. I mean, I think the way that people in this city are banding together to make a sustainable city. I mean, it's a little late and our infrastructure is certainly not supporting it. You know, there are efforts that are being made and there are these grand utopian plans that are being made about the future of LA. But I haven't seen those kinds of things since similar plans in the 60s. All these buildings that we've seen today, I have this kind of aspirational quality to them. And I think that that is coming back into the language of being an Angeleno. I think it's exciting no matter what. Having lived in both LA and New York, I do think it's exciting to be in a place where it's not all the way figured out yet.