Timothy Norris

Simon Green of Bonobo

Bonobo with El Ten Eleven
Fonda Theatre
5-4-13

On Saturday an electronic music show was scheduled at the Fonda. Instead, a jazz concert broke out. And it was awesome. New York-based Ninja Tune producer Simon Green, the man behind Bonobo, has been evolving away from his downtempo electronica roots for awhile now. His last three albums, including this year's luminous The North Borders, have used more and more live instruments and vocals, adding textures and layers of sound rarely heard alongside programmed beats since the early '00s heyday of nu jazz.

In concert, with a 10-piece backing band, Green brought those textures into the foreground, transforming his jewel-box compositions into extended, fiery jam sessions with live drums, vocals, sax and flute solos and even a damn string section. I'd call it "livetronica" but a) that term kinda sucks and b) it's already been claimed by shitty synth-based jam bands like Sound Tribe Sector 9.

More »

Credit: Nikko Le Mere

Tokimonsta is the subject of our music feature this week; for the story, we hung out with the beat scene DJ/producer at the dinner party event celeb chef Roy Choi whipped up for her at his restaurant A-Frame. A few days later we sat down with her over green tea to talk about her recently released sophomore LP Half Shadows. A few days after that, we ran into her again on the street after a late night party at SXSW in Austin.

See also: Tokimonsta Leaves the Nest: The producer's new album is on a big-time label

She spoke about her rise through the beat scene, her creative process, releasing her new album on a major label and how rad her cat is. Here's some material that didn't make the story.

More »

Dan Monick

Instrumental albums -- also known as beat tapes -- give hip-hop producers a direct connection with fans, without any of those annoying lyrics on top of them.

These can often be a nice change of pace. But make no mistake, they aren't albums to zone out to, or to put on while you do a crossword puzzle, they're fierce, compelling works in their own right. Below, then, are our top five (mostly) instrumental albums from L.A. producers this year.

More »

Captain Murphy, Pac Div
The Airliner
11/28/12

Earlier this week, a local mystery rapper calling himself Captain Murphy announced that he'd be performing at Low End Theory last night.

See also: More Low End Theory Oral History From Those Who Helped Build It

People got excited about it, so much so that at the Airliner, where the weekly beat-geek party is held, the line down Broadway started forming around 6 pm, hours before the event started.

More »

Henry Strange

Alluxe

In the past three years, one woman has ranked in DJ Magazine's yearly Top 100 DJs poll. (Lisa Lashes, #75, 2009). The international EDM circuit is dominated by men like Justice, Diplo, Skrillex, Swedish House Mafia, Tiësto, David Guetta and Avicii, and the underground scene is as much of a boys club. Check the lineup for most any electronic festival and you'll generally find just a handful of female names, usually near the bottom of the list.

See also:
*Despite Being Underrepresented, Female DJs Say There's No Crying in EDM
*DJ Gets Death Threats for Playing Dubstep

So, where are all the women in electronic music?

More »

Eric Coleman

[Editor's note: Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. Be sure to also check out the archives.]

See also: House Shoes: Seminal Producer Talks New Album, J Dilla Beef

Hang the DJ. Or don't. When Morrissey wrote the hook to "Panic," the definition of a DJ was straightforward. A DJ mixed vinyl on a Technics turntable for audiences whose access to music was limited to the radio, MTV, the record store and what they heard while out clubbing.

But the needle has skipped. With the advent of Serato, sequencing program Ableton Live and the ease of obtaining digital music, even Paris Hilton can pretend to be a DJ.
Collections that once took crate-diggers decades to assemble now can be obtained in a few weeks on BitTorrent. The ascent of EDM allows "button-pushing" DJs to entertain festival-sized crowds by merely pressing play. Technique and selection often are overlooked in favor of pyrotechnic light shows and ferocious fist pumps. Recent Rolling Stone comments from rodent-masked vaudevillian Deadmau5 lampooned the button-pushing brigade and raised the curtain on the legerdemain. A subsequent article from former turntablist champ-turned-dance producer A-Trak on Huffington Post reminded DJs of the importance of varying their setlists.

More »

Kai Flanders

Kloud gets down at Team Supreme

See also:
*Steve Nalepa, the Professor of Party
*The Glitch Mob Literally Heals a Guy
*Virtual Boy's Intergalactic Love Story

Better than... any dubstep show in this galaxy

The concept of Team Supreme, like most good ideas, is simple. Once a week a member of the electronic collective selects two different samples and a particular BPM, and sends them off to the other producers in the group. Then everyone makes a track. There are a few rules: 1. The song has to be about a minute long 2. The beat must begin and end with the provided transition sample 3. You're supposed (on the honor system) to finish your track in about an hour. And on Mondays they release the entire playlist, called a "cypher," on YouTube.

More »

6Bit Collective

Begun as the idle passion project of 17-year-old Pasadena resident and budding electronic music producer Max Wortman, 6Bit Collective has developed into quite possibly the best homegrown Los Angeles record label you've never heard of. The collective's various members, which include artists called Dreams, Caves, and Future Dollars, are all born and bred Angelenos, brought up on Alpha Pup and Absent Fever releases. They were early patrons of Fuck Yeah Fest and the Eagle Rock Music Festival, holding Daddy Kev and Gaslamp Killer as role models.

"L.A. is a huge part of 6Bit," Wortman puts in. "A lot of the people here have been involved with this scene for most of their lives." Indeed many of them have been regular fixtures at Low End Theory since before they could legally drive.

More »

Andy J. Scott

Usually, if an electronic musician's laptop craps out, he's fucked. But for Brian Allen Simon, who performs under the name Anenon, it just means one thing: Break out the saxophone and go nuts.

"It was honestly one of the most liberating performances I've done," Simon says of his recent show at Home Room in Silver Lake, where a laptop failure forced him to scrap his experimental ambient set in favor of a 20-minute free-form sax solo. "I really went for it, frustration turning into passion, in a way."

More »

Press Photo

It was the '90s in Bakersfield, and West Coast gangster rap gripped much of the town. But Charles Dickerson felt bored. So he ignored what was popular, sticking with his beloved electronic music.

He now performs under the name Mono/Poly, and released an EP under Brainfeeder last year. The 25-year-old plans to drop two more in the next two months, one downloadable off his website and another under Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's label, before he kicks off his international tour.

More »