Credit: Gari Askew

Beatmaking its way across North America for the last month has been the Magical Properties tour. Created and curated by L.A. experimental noisemaker Daedelus, (née Alfred Darlington) the 26-date tour serves as a training ground and showcase opportunity for electronic world fresh talent. Now in its fourth year, previous Magical Properties have hosted artists including Tokimonsta, Nosaj Thing, and Shlohmo. This time around, the lineup includes Canadian producer Ryan Hemsworth, L.A.'s own Samo Sound Boy and Salva, Denver twins Two Fresh and Darlington himself as the dandy-ish magic making ringleader.

We spoke with Darlington (who was posted up at his favorite coffee shop in Atlanta) about the premise behind Properties, the time his face was on the side of the tour bus and what it's like being on the road with some of the fastest rising names in the game.

See also: "Life Lessons I've Learned from Role-Playing Games," by DJ/Producer Daedelus (Low End Theory)

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Credit: Patricia Miller

Matthewdavid

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.]

"All profoundly original art looks ugly at first," opined art critic Clement Greenberg. He was alluding to the abstract expressionism that he helped to popularize, but his mantra describes much experimental music as well.

A thin membrane divides the beautiful, bizarre and bogus. One man's Animal Collective is another's yelp for institutionalization.

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Katie Bain

The Smog Crew

Red Bull Music Academy Culture Clash
Feat. Friends of Friends, Smog, Dim Mak, Jeffree's
Exchange L.A.
12/5/12

It was beatmakers vs. beatmakers as a bunch of dudes in flat brimmed hats competed for bragging rights at last night's Red Bull Music Academy Culture Clash. The L.A. incarnation of the international event pitted four local music collectives -- Smog, Dim Mak, Friends of Friends and Jeffree's -- against each other in a high-energy four round face-off at downtown's Exchange L.A. It went like this:

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Jena Ardell

Pick your poison

Dance music is all the rage these days. That time you thought giant robots were battling at your recent family reunion? Nope, that was just your 12-year-old niece listening to dubstep.

See also: *Moon Rocks: The Best High on Earth
*What the Hell Is Trap Music (and Why Is Dubstep Involved)?

But not all electronic dance music was created equal. There's EDM, which, you aging out-of-touch rockist, stands for electronic dance music. Nowadays often associated with giant clubs and festivals full of pacifier-toting ravers who wear electrical tape on their boobs, it's not always the most contemplative or adventurous music. That's more the domain of L.A.'s beat scene, which happens in smaller clubs before folks who wouldn't want you to call them hipsters.

Confused? Peep our illustrated guide, below.

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Emma Gutteridge

A trippy scene from Amon Tobin's show

When experimental electronic producer Amon Tobin takes the stage at the Greek Theatre tomorrow, his audience will barely be able to see him. He'll be ensconced inside a massive, 2.5-ton structure made up of white, interlocking cubes, stacked Tetris-like atop one another.

A sci-fi kaleidoscope of 3D-rendered video projections will play across the structure's oddly shaped surface as Tobin unleashes the crunchy, experimental tracks from his latest album on Ninja Tune, ISAM.

Girls Who Look Like Skrillex
EDC 2012: The Underground Has Left The Building

When the audience can glimpse him inside the structure, they'll realize that he's wearing a full spacesuit. "I had this idea to have sections of the show where I appear as a computer render and switch to being there in person," Tobin explains via email. "I had to make sure I was always wearing the same thing for it to make sense. So that turned into wearing a spacesuit both in the motion capture and on stage for consistency."

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Jonny Coleman

In an oversaturated festival market, the Eagle Rock Music Festival returns this Saturday, October 6. For 14 years it's been creeping up as one of the most ambitious and forward-thinking local festivals, and become tremendously successful. It's got cheap tickets ($10), adventurous local bookings -- including The Pharcyde, Imperial Teen, and folks affiated with Mochilla, Dublab, Brainfeeder, Stones Throw -- and even unique venues. Experimental music in the local church, anyone?

Produced by the Center For The Arts Eagle Rock, the festival is now helmed by Brian Akio Martinez, a local whose job has become recognizing the connective audio and visual tissue of L.A.'s Northeast district. We recently caught up with Martinez, in the midst of last-minute fundraising and juggling line-up changes.

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Timothy Norris

Animal Collective & Flying Lotus
Hollywood Bowl
9-23-12

Better than... shrooming while watching the Emmys.

See also:
*The Time Flying Lotus Pretended To Be A UCLA Physics Major
*Flying Lotus - Coachella - 4-14-12

The Hollywood Bowl is not the venue for working out new shit, that is if you don't count Herbie Hancock's unfortunate ode to peace last month. Barry Manilow did not show up on the Fourth of July looking to test out new material. Anita Baker hit quick and frequent with her radio jams. Nonetheless, last night's bill at Hollywood Bowl's World Festival dealt largely in the unfamiliar, for better and worse.

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Timothy Norris

Daedelus

Dublab 13th Anniversary Party
Echoplex
9-22-12

Better than...waiting in a Wendy's drive-through congested with D.U.I. candidates at 2 a.m.

At the 13th anniversary party for Dublab -- L.A.'s beloved nonprofit web radio collective -- there were nine DJs on one stage in roughly five hours. The party had been hastily moved from Freak City to the Echoplex, and it felt a little strange to kick things off at 8 p.m. (That's early, even by L.A. standards.)

Still, Dublab is known for showcasing an eclectic mix of obscure hip-hop, funk, and electro, and they came through with artists who each brought something different to the table. To our surprise, it wasn't the headliner, Daedelus who brought the house down, but his immediate predecessor, The Gaslamp Killer, whose gritty beats made us feel like we were dropped into an ecstatic party scene from another era. (Look for him on LA Weekly's cover this week!)

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Brendan Goco

Daedelus

For our music feature this week Rebecca Haithcoat profiled Freak City, the Hollywood dance club that throws, perhaps, the best parties in the cities. They don't like to call themselves a club, however, partly because they're not zoned as one and don't have a liquor license.

See also: The Freaks Come Out At Night: But are their parties legal? Under-the-radar Hollywood dance venue Freak City tests the limits

It's a great story, but we're hoping it's not the reason that tomorrow night's Dublab party -- in which the web radio nonprofit will celebrate its 13th anniversary with sets from folks like Daedelus and Teebs -- has been moved from Freak City, where it was initially scheduled to be held. It will now happen at the Echoplex. We're trying to figure out exactly what happened, and will let you know when we do. (Update: A Dublab representative declines comment on what prompted the move.)

Oh, and the line-up is different. We have it below.

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Benjamin Gallardo

Matt Gangi and Eric Chramosta

While the sound of the Glendale-based duo Gangi -- composed of Matt Gangi and Eric Chramosta -- has been called psych rock, that doesn't do justice to their delicate arrangement of noises and tones. It's art really, or sonic architecture (as they call it). That term might sound pretentious, if what they were doing wasn't also really good.

Gangi's output is a highly specific arrangement of sounds and tones produced by an amalgamation of instruments, computers and random noises the guys hear coming through their windows during recording sessions. It's both loose and highly constructed, high and low art, analog and digital, the product of a thousand influences and a testament to making music in an era when most noises can be accessed by a few keystrokes.

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