People are increasingly fascinated with the L.A. beat scene... no wait, I mean the L.A. beat scene is increasingly fascinating to ME. Names from this small but growing circle of regulars are getting dropped with increasing frequency. Flying Lotus' 2010 release Cosmogramma (on Warp Records) features a visit from Thom Yorke amidst it's 17 track space jazz beatdown, and Low End Theory, Brainfeeder (Flying Lotus' label), Dublab Radio, and other keywords are showing up just often enough from different enough angles for my brain to sonar together a fuzzy picture of the amoebic form of whatever the "L.A. beat scene" even actually is. I'm sure natives will tell me I just have to be there, but it's been interesting and ambitious enough to reach it's tendrils through the internet and reach lil' ol' me, half a country away from the rooms that hold this movement, just digesting all the free podcasts I can with my borrowed wireless connection. Any artist I find turns up two more, and the unifying element of 'their' sound is elusive, even within a single entity like the Brainfeeder collective. Flying Lotus' bass bounces between jazz noodles and waterfall drops over the edge, while label-hopper Daedelus' albums brim with island guitar, woozy bass clarinet, and his deftness with the futuristic monome (pictured above with his weird weapon of choice, his 2010 release is his first with Brainfeeder). Shlohmo and Dr. Strangeloop are almost polar opposites within electronic music; Strangeloop (Brainfeeder) brings twitchy schizophrenic blasts, and WEDIDIT Records' Shlohmo's (aka Henry Laufer's) beats often skirt the middle ground between beatbuilding and ambient music. Strangeloop often lends his VJ talents to his contemporaries' live performances, and his own sets are long movements of audio/visual sensory drills, deeply symbolic and decidedly pushing away conventions of mainstream film.
The easy route is to say that this is all experimental music, but what does that ever tell you? Sure people dance to it, but these are songs that sink you into your couch as easily as electrify your limbs. A common thread, if there is one, is the willingness of most of these artists to stutter out of lock step into very human feeling, unquantized pace. But this rhythmic wandering takes place in many different contexts. These dudes all make sense together, but aren't pushing identical sonic agendas, except that the beats move people, and they've got quality control on lockdown.
From it's west coast origins, it looks like the L.A. beatsmiths are pushing outward, but mostly they're being pulled, as more ears tune to the sounds at the borders of beatcraft and electronic music. A local force teasing some of these fine folks our way is Austin's Ron Strong Productions (the brainchild of Aaron Miller and Emily Strong), whose Hot Sh!t series has had guests including Dr. Strangeloop and Take, and Anticon newbie, the beat-minded Baths (whom I reviewed here) and also showcases similar local talents like Butcher Bear & Charlie, Deejay ChickenGeorge , and the spellbinding Ernest Gonzales, giving a common stage for local heroes to mingle ideas with like-minded visitors. Keep your ear to the ground for the Hot Sh!t summer finale, with Mono/Poly (from Brainfeeder), in late August.
Download a free Shlohmo EP from Error Broadcast here.
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