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Samo Sound Boy (Sam Griesemer) and Jerome LOL (Jerome Potter) were relatively obscure names in L.A.’s dance music subculture until they completed an EP called Stadium Status under the moniker DJ Dodger Stadium in 2011. Combining the uptempo, looping vocals of Baltimore ghetto-house and Miami bass with 909 drum beats and claps, the five tracks provided a stripped-down, raw alternative to other popular EDM of the day.
A year later the pair formed Body High, an independent dance label for likeminded house artists. So far it’s dispatched releases for Norwegian DJ Todd Edwards, uptempo futurist Floyd Cambell and Myrryrs, among others.
Friend of Mine (July 8), Griesemer and Potter’s second album as DJ Dodger Stadium, is the latest addition to the Body High canon. Each of its ten tracks, all of them emotional dance tunes, revolve around a looping vocal sample backed by gradually swelling synths and jumpy percussion. It’s the most endearing, and listenable, kind of repetition. On “Love Songs” – one of two singles, the video for which is filmed using a quadcopter floating over L.A.’s Westlake neighbourhood – a distant female vocalist chants “Lately I’ve been singing love songs by myself” over shuddering drums and an echoing clap. “Never Win” builds to a smilier crescendo, this time with wailing, crude synths and a distant cry: “Never win, I know you’ll never win. Never win, I know you’ll never win.”
Friend of Mine is as much a throwback to late-90s ghetto-house and bass as it is a repurposing of the fundamental elements that lend dance music its transcendent emotional quality. For DJ Dodger Stadium, it’s achieved through simplicity; an uncomplicated mix of kicks, drums and synths along with the perfect vocal track to drive it all home.
