Beards, Blazers & Brainfeeder: The Brainfeeder Sessions With Nosaj Thing, ESKMO, and Mono/Poly

I’m still reeling from last night’s Brainfeeder Sessions. Mono/Poly, ESKMO, and Nosaj Thing torpedoing my mind into scattered tessarae. Think a hip-hop laserium, cat-nip for the stoned–as evidenced by the billowing clouds of smoke periodically erupting in the darkened Downtown Independent theatre. Standing room only, clumps of people from Low End graduates to those studying at top business schools, commanding the stairwells, the aisles, every last square inch of real estate. Whooping cheers. Shouted props. Mono/Poly, all stuttering glitches and raw power, bass heavy like a hammer at your rib cage, synthesizing bland Bakersfield flatness into neurotic stabs of paranoia. Hip-hop at its most bent and baleful. ESKMO with visuals of ultra-violent anime, casting a sinister hybrid of worm-riddled dubstep and warped break beats, teasing in shards of color only to return with a wobbling dub the color of San Francisco fog.

Nosaj Thing, the star of this homecoming performance, debuting his new visual show, a labyrinth of clean lines and cold geometry wrestling on the big-screen. Figures and shapes cresting and falling, forming and disintegrating in time with the sounds–the ethereal haze of Drift, punctuated by its elements of inspiration: Busta Rhymes “Dangerous” disembodied and dazed, the UFO sounds from the intro to “ATLiens,” Cube’s “You Know How We Do It.” Jason Chung is the quiet composer of the camp, or the “George Harrison of the Low End” as August Brown so aptly put it. There is something very rare going on in Los Angeles and everyone involved nods and talks about it in whispers like a no-hitter. I should probably shut the fuck up. Hopefully, no one will tell the Fire Marshall.

See Also: Dance Fever 5000’s Review.

Download:
MP3:  Nosaj Thing-”IOIO”
MP3: Mono/Poly-”Distant From”
MP3: ESKMO-”Colorbrain Mix” 

MP3: DJ Nobody & Free The Robots-Low End Theory Podcast Episode X

Posted in Nosaj Thing, Brainfeeder, Mono/Poly, Low End Theory | 2 Comments »

The Boardwalk Beats of Mono/Poly

Bakersfield is Buck Owens and Merle Haggard territory. A dust-choked, sun-split farm town of about 300,000 people. Geographically, it is roughly 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Culturally, it is about 10,000. If you look hard enough, you can find 10 gallon-hats, spurs, rodeos, and most terrifying of all, vast hordes of people who pre-ordered Sarah Palin’s book. The most famous band to emerge from Bakersfield in the last 20 years is Korn. Not only would you not expect to find one of the brightest lights of wonky/dubstep/beat-culture in Bakersfield, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything vaguely hip-hop. Unless you count that time that Korn had Ice Cube on their album. We won’t count that.

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Posted in Mono/Poly, Low End Theory, Dubstep | 8 Comments »