Hey omniverse, I’m Sam Andrus. I’m an app designer by day, guitarist and beat-maker by night. As a musician since age 8 and artist since age 5. I used to just draw a lot. I’d invent characters, and imaginary worlds on a page, but then being an illustration major in art school taught me (correctly) that I had to commit to a world and a story to reel people into my art. I got frustrated because I had no patience for a story, I just wanted to make cool looking drawings. I appreciated the little adjustments and choices necessary to get just the right image across to the viewer, but I was much more interested in the dense surreal landscapes of another form of expression altogether. Free jazz and experimental Hip-Hop, which didn’t have to make any sense at all, exist in more than 2 dimensions, and share a simultaneous embrace and rejection of rules and predictability, roped me in. Surely this is true freedom. I thought. Any frequency, any sound; rhodes, foley, vinyl, reason synth, tape, voice, live drums, jazz, folk, funk, pop, hip-hop, anything. Craving inspiration for my own work, I’m always on the lookout for artists who are “staying out of their own heads” and unleashing their inner worlds to wander the outside world.

My latest inspiration is Rafiq Bhatia. He’s an up-and-coming Jazz composer and guitarist from NYC. Yes, that’s a cover of Flying Lotus’s “Pickled” at 10:10. The style is uniquely his, but the mix is heavily rooted in jazz tradition and his songs move forward with that smart stumble and unpredictable atmosphere that you expect from beat-making legends. Don’t expect the expected. Do check him out in the NY Times.