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Giveaway: Jacques Greene, Groundislava, Patrick Brian @ Los Globos (12/13/14)

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December 12, 2014
Contest
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Our second ticket giveaway of the week comes in the form of Jacque Greene‘s triumphant return to the City of Angels, brining with him a bevy of talented friends including Groundislava, Low Limit, Mike Penthouse and Patrick Brian. Taking over Los Globos this Saturday (12/13/14), Greene will be flexing out a new live set that will hopefully elevate his R&B-driven ballads into rarified territory. The Montreal-based producer has spent the better part of the past five years releasing on a who’s who of labels, including Night Slugs, UNO, LuckyMe and 3024, and he’s starting to take on the roll of scene figurehead, driving the Francophone city’s scene in new and exciting directions, as well as exporting some of its finest homebred talent.

Enter your favorite R&B ballad or maybe a tip top track from Jacques himself into the box below for a chance at a pair of tickets to tomorrow’s happenings. And if you don’t end up winning, come through anyways. Tickets are here and it’s going to be a special night.

Low Limit Hour Long Mix At Boiler Room LA

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February 19, 2013
Live, Mixes
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The conversation surrounding the collision of hip hop and electronic music has raged for the past 12 months or so without any regard for history or really any respect for context. In that time, certain media outlets have decided to differentiate between things like “trap rap” and “Trap”, while ignoring hip hop’s roots in dance music and its current incantation (not a new phenomenon by the way) as the predominant form of regional American club music. Amidst this shit storm of misappropriation accusations and general ignorance, a small sect of producers have arisen with the goal of mixing the two medicines (hip hop and dance music that is) into a perfect mind-altering concoction. These producers are not applying tried and true methods of dance music populism to existing hip hop formats, but rather attempting to meld the heavily stigmatized worlds of house/techno and rap music. Grown Folk and Lazer Sword come to mind immediately, but Brodinski and most of the Wedidit crew have been at it for a few years. Just take Low Limit’s (one half of Lazer Sword) recent performance at Boiler Room LA. After starting out strong with selection of pumping techno, Low Limit drops into a soulful house section before transitioning into regional club tunes and eventually hip hop. The mix doesn’t always sound natural, but it’s an engaging experience nonetheless and highlights hip hop’s roots in house music without offering a truly heavy-handed correlation. I, for one, would like to see more of this type of mixing, which offer a new perspective to all those blathering of tarpstyleChiefKeefstep. Stream below.

Three Years Of Innovative Leisure Culminates In Ouroboros

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November 29, 2012
Album Reviews, New Music
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Back in 2008, a video popped up on youtube featuring a then unknown Lunice popping, locking and dropping (it) to a then relatively unknown Lazer Sword‘s “Gucci Sweatshirt”. The video became moderately popular at the time, making its way around various social circles and then fading into black like every other video from 2008 (except for this one). The song offered a sort of glitchy pre-amble to Lazer Sword’s later work, but is almost indistinguishable from Memory, the duo’s latest album. “Gucci Sweatshirt” was officially released in October of 2009 as the first release on Stones Throw employee Nate Nelson’s new imprint Innovative Leisure. Influenced by his time at Stones Throw and hardcore labels like SST and Dischord, Nelson set off to institute Innovative Leisure as a driving force in North American electronic music.

“Gucci Sweatshirt”‘s idiosyncratic mash of hip hop and off-kilter electro was a fitting start, launching Lazer Sword as a force to reckoned with. By the end of 2010, Innovative Leisure was firmly entrenched and had hosted releases from Mexicans With Guns, Hanni El Khatib, Nguzunguzu, Machinedrum and, strangely enough, Freddie Gibbs. In November of the same year, Lazer Sword released their debut self-titled LP through Innovative Leisure, pushing Low Limit and  Lando Kal into international stardom. The release also solidified Innovative Leisure as a bastion of the most dynamic forms of North American electronic music.

2011 was a relatively quiet year for Nelson’s label, but saw it expanding into new territories and laying out an impressively variegated roster. That was the year Innovative Leisure trotted out bluesy as fuck whiteboy Nick Waterhouse‘s “I Can Only Give You Everything”, arguably the label’s biggest release to date. The Huntington Beach-native brought a brand new dimension to Innovative Leisure, one grounded in Motown and Van Morrison, far from the club-oriented music the label had peddled to that point. Not that club-oriented music is bad of course, but Waterhouse’s signing distanced Innovative Leisure from the hundreds of internet labels out there and gave it a distinct home in Southern California.

Without getting it too much, the first 11 months of 2012 have been absolutely massive for Innovative Leisure, seeing the label break the ultra-hyped Rhye and release Nosaj Thing’s first originals since 2009’s Drift. In just three years, Nelson’s label has gone from relatively unknown club outlet to one of the West Coast’s most divergent, groundbreaking labels. As a sort of celebration (culmination?), the label enlisted Low Limit to compile tracks from Innovative Leisure artists and associates. The result is Ouroboros, a 10-track opus that is as good of an indicator of North American electronic music as any release you’ll hear all year.

If names like Clicks & Whistles, Braille, Anenon and Obey City get you wet (not to mention the aforementioned Low Limit and Machinedrum) then this compilation is for you. If you have no idea who any of the involved artists are or what they sound like, but want delve deeper into North American electronic music, this compilation is for you. If you’re at a party and don’t know what to play, but want people to think that you’re hip to the newest trends (because, you know, that’s all that matters), this compilation is for you. So yeah, give it a spin below and grab that hard wax from the Innovative Leisure website.