If there’s one thing that the guys and gal who compose Austin’s The Octopus Project seem to embody, it’s a pure, unfiltered joy in musical composition.

Of course, nearly any savvy navigator of the Internet could tell you the same by listening to songs like “Music is Happiness” or “I Saw the Bright Shinies” on their Myspace playlist. That wouldn’t be nearly enough to share in the band’s zeal for creating beautiful, engaging pop music that compels your body to start moving though. For that, you’ve got to see it live.

And aren’t you lucky. Thanks to the collaborative efforts between the people at the Campus Activities Council and Opolis, The Octopus Project will bring its infectious live show that busts forth with bizarre synthesized bleeps and bloops to Meacham Auditorium at 8 tonight.

One of the band’s multiple multi-instrumentalists Josh Lambert spoke to The Daily about playing a festival with ’80s synth icons Devo, why Octopus Project’s music sounds so positive and the new Kanye album (which he likes).

The Daily: You guys recently got to share the stage with [cult hit New Wave band] Devo at Moogfest in Asheville, N.C., and judging by your sound and age, I imagine Devo is a big influence. What was that whole experience like?

Lambert: It was pretty nuts. We were planning to play at Moogfest and that was the end [of] our tour, the last show. Devo was supposed to play right after us. The show before that was in Tucson, so we were driving all the way from Tucson to Asheville when we got an e-mail from our booking agent saying, “I have really bad news. Devo has to pull out, they can’t play because their guitar player [Mark Mothersbaugh] sliced open his hand and they’re canceling their tour and everything. But, a couple of the members want to be there and want to know if you want to do a song with them,” which was kind of insane [laughs].

The one they wanted to do was “Beautiful World”. We all started listening to it, trying to learn it in the van on the way to the show. We figured it out pretty well and decided to also learn “Girl U Want,” which seemed easy enough to figure out in a day. So we figured both of those out, we got to our soundcheck in Asheville and started practicing — that was the first time we’d ever practiced those songs as a band — and while we were practicing, Mark and Jerry [Casale, singer and bassist/synthist] from Devo walked in and they were like, “Oh, this sounds awesome! Let’s do it!” We ran through the songs a couple times with them and it was super fun, then we played the show and they came out at the end and it was just kind of ... well, it’s impossible to put into words how amazing it felt to just be in that position, the sheer luck of it. Those guys are the nicest guys in the world and it was an amazing, amazing opportunity.

The Daily: Your music sounds very futuristic and robotic but also very positive, where typically most people see those things as dystopian. Why do you think you have that outlook?

Lambert: I don’t know exactly. We’re mostly just really excited to take whatever sounds we can find or technology there is to use as a tool to — I wouldn’t say that when we write songs we’re going for anything in particular; we’re just attracted to certain sounds or beats or certain elements — and we roll with it and wherever that takes us is where we go. It’s not necessarily a conscious thing. I think we’re just really excited about stuff and whenever we come up with a new sound we haven’t used before or heard before, I think it just translates into excitement. It tends not to be too austere — more excited and joyful.

The Daily: From the creative stage to the performances you guys did at South By Southwest this year, you have been tinkering with [your latest album] “Hexadecagon” for over a year now. How does it feel to actually get it all on the tape?

Lambert: Pretty awesome. We wrote the songs and figured it out the first three months [of 2010] for the [SXSW] show and we didn’t have any idea about what to do with it after the show; we just wanted to do something new and see where that took us. After the SXSW show was when we decided to record it.

After the show we hunkered down at our house and started pushing ahead. It was kind of hard and kind of easy at the same time because all the songs were already written, so it was just a matter of laying down the tape. The only hard part was changing the stuff that moved around in physical space into a stereo.

It was a little challenging to figure out how to do some of that stuff. We put the eight speakers in a circle and then put a stereo microphone in the middle and then, stuff that absolutely needed to move in that space we would spin around the circle and record it with the stereo microphone.

The Daily: Do you think the idea for “Hexadecagon” was partially influenced by “Zaireeka” [the Flaming Lips’ 1997 album which required four speakers to play it simultaneously]?

Lambert: Yes and no. We’re definitely huge fans of the Flaming Lips, but it sort of came from a completely different place. Honestly, I know this sounds totally crazy but — I love “Zaireeka” — but it never once crossed my mind that they were even remotely similar.

After we’d been doing it for a while, we were like, “Oh my god, I hope nobody thinks that we’re totally ripping them off! We weren’t even thinking about it that way!”

When we’re on tour we tend to listen to a lot of really long, spacey, minimalist stuff. Really repetitive — duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-stuff — that goes on for an hour and you go into this completely other space in your brain and lose contact with reality for a little while. That was what influenced us to think it would be so awesome to do that and have people in the middle and have sounds surrounding you, creating this environment that would be totally crazy that nobody’s done before.

The Daily: What do you do on tour to keep yourselves from going insane from being stuck in the van?

Lambert: [Chuckles] We listen to a lot of music, read and watch movies — stuff like that. The three guys, we switch off driving every day. Every third day is your turn to drive, which is pretty exciting because you spend the two days before that finding as much new music as possible. We tend to only listen to things once or twice. Usually we find as many new things as possible to fill out the seven hours or whatever that we’re driving. It’s pretty exciting to find new stuff. That helps a lot.

The Daily: What have you guys been listening to in the last week or so?

Lambert: [Whistles] Oh, man ...

The Daily: How about the best thing you’ve listened to in the last week?

Lambert: I got the new Kanye record yesterday and I’m liking that a lot. We tend to listen to a lot of really old stuff. There are a lot of blogs where they’ll find weird old records that they’ll just rip stuff that you’re never, ever gonna find on iTunes or whatever. It’s stuff from all over the world, like quiet guitar music from Sweden from the ’70s or crazy, insane Thai rock music or something. Stuff from all over the place, really.

The Daily: I guess if you’re only listening to an album once or twice, you’ve got plenty of time to listen to music from all over the place.

Lambert: Yeah, definitely. It’s really, literally all over the place.

Concert Bill
WHAT: The Octopus Project with Yellow Fever
WHEN: 8 tonight
WHERE: Meacham Auditorium in the Union
COST: $10