Dominic Lalli got a scholarship to Northern Arizona University on the strength of his saxophone playing and went on to earn a master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music, which is a genuinely unusual academic pedigree for someone who'd go on to co-front an EDM duo.
He met Jeremy Salken in Boulder, Colorado, where Salken was working as The Motet's drum tech while also doing graphic design and delivering pizza on the side — the two became roommates, and Big Gigantic came out of that overlap in 2008.
Lalli's saxophone became the whole selling point: live horn over electronic production, at a time when almost nobody else in dance music was doing that. Brighter Future, their fifth album, released in 2016, is generally considered the record that turned Big Gigantic from a live-electronic curiosity into an actual commercial act.