Two nights
in the life of Brainfeeder,
LA's low end high-flyers
How did Brainfeeder Records turn a love of beats, jazz and the avant garde into an underground empire? Paul MacInnes joins their freak scene in LA to find out
- The Guardian, Friday 18 November 2011
Three kings: Brainfeeder's key creatives GLK, Fly Lo and Stephen 'Thundercat' Bruner. Photograph: Theo Jemison for the Guardian"Weaponry would be a very good place to start," says Stephen Bruner, AKA Thundercat. He's thinking of products to put the Brainfeeder name to and it's a lengthy list: "Weapons, kittens, in that order. Then art books that have already been drawn in. Blank CDs, booty shorts, slingshots. Home porn videos of people that you wouldn't expect to be doing porn. A piece of amethyst that's been cut into the shape of Charles Manson's face. All at the Brainfeeder store!"
There is no Brainfeeder store, at least not currently, and that's probably a good thing. There is, however, a growing body of groundbreaking music appearing under the imprint of this Los Angeles musical collective. Brainfeeder make music that's equal parts for the club and those headphones that clasp around your ear and drive bass into your skull. Their signature sound is a psychedelic collision of jazz, electronic and beat music, and it could be said to be the most modern in the world.
Bruner's debut solo album is a case in point. Released on Brainfeeder records this summer, The Golden Age Of Apocalypse mixes the freedoms of jazz with the sensitivities of soul music. More simply it's a platform for Bruner, sometimes described by aficionados as "the future of bass", to show off his virtuosity. Bruner has stuck a large Thundercat logo on his small red car. He also wears a Thundercat cardigan. Oh, and in his spare time Bruner plays in the seminal skate punk band Suicidal Tendencies.
The uniform preferred by The Gaslamp Killer is a thick woollen poncho. His hair, meanwhile, is styled like the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. He has the drawl of a quintessential Californian hippy and, really, looks like he's emerged from a Coen brothers movie. This appearance is misleading, though. A pioneering DJ and producer of his own distinct brand of hip-hop/psych rock crossover, GLK is, in the flesh, a ball of bubbling enthusiasm.
"Maybe I'd sell horseshoes," says GLK, real name William Benjamin Bensussen, on the subject of the store. There follows a dramatic pause. "Actually no, I'd sell weed. Weed that makes you call your mother to tell her you love her. Weed that makes you call your girlfriend and ask her to get back together again. Weed that makes you want to hug a cop."
It appears GLK's answer wasn't entirely unpredictable and laughter breaks out. The loudest barks come from Steven "Flying Lotus" Ellison, owner of the Brainfeeder label and the collective's creative hub. Fly Lo is one of the most celebrated musicians in what you might call the electronic avant garde (in layman's terms, that means Gilles Peterson loves him). His 2010 album, Cosmogramma, redefined the boundaries between jazz and dance music. Like Bruner, he comes from a musical family; his great aunt was the pianist Alice Coltrane. He dresses consistently in black. He also has a chit that allows him to claim medicinal marijuana from licensed salesmen. Which may explain the laughter.
'It started in 2005 … we'd gather around our cars, bring out our boomboxes and start playing each other the beats we'd just made in the week' – Steven 'Flying Lotus' Ellison
Flying Lotus. Photograph: Theo Jemison
A rare day of rain has left a peachy evening sky, and as the sun sets the trio have gathered at Ellison's home in the LA hills to be interviewed. From what I can gather there are always people round Steve's. An unassuming but well-appointed house, it has a pool and a lemon tree and a drum kit, plus a massive screen on to which epic Marvel Vs Capcom contests can be projected. But while his guests might make use of the facilities or shoot lumps out of each other with pump-action airguns, Ellison prefers to sit and work on beats.
"I guess it all started in 2005," he says, taking a break from his massive Apple Mac to discuss the beginnings of Brainfeeder. "It was the MySpace era and a lot of musicians started to connect." That digital connection soon spilled over into real life: "We would all post up at various shows across town and we'd gather around our cars, bring out our boomboxes and start playing each other the beats we'd just made in the week."
These gatherings inspired a scene that finally allowed LA's beatmakers to emerge from under the gangsta sound that had dominated people's perception of the city. "It was kind of overlooked by everyone and had been for fucking 20 years," says GLK. "All the beatmakers in LA were just swept under the rug, but there had always been an amazing scene going on in LA and an avant garde, 'fuck you' attitude, too."
When Flying Lotus signed to Warp, things began to gather pace. Ellison moved into a San Fernando valley artists' complex called Das Bauhaus. There he was joined by two future Brainfeeder artists, Samiyam and Teebs, and Adam Stover, who would go on to manage the label. "It just seemed like we had the operation right there ready to go," says Ellison. "There were all these shitty little labels trying to cap off the LA sound and I thought if anyone should do this, it's got to be us. We should do it ourselves, because we make this. It should be that a lot more people don't feel bad about being in the avant garde."
That's twice in five minutes the avant garde has popped up, and while it's not the sort of language that's always being bandied around in this company – more common subjects are superhero movies and local area tacos – neither are they shy of such terms. There's something distinctly Californian in this: not only do Brainfeeder represent an LA sound, they represent an LA attitude. They might mess about, they might be fixtures on the club scene, but just like their peers in the entertainment industry, when it comes to their art they are ambitious, driven and decidedly earnest.
'Creating in itself, there is nothing funner than that … and music is such a strong emotional outlet, man; it never gets old' – Stephen 'Thundercat' Bruner
Thundercat. Photograph: Theo Jemison
The next day I get a sense of how far this LA sound has come. We descend en masse on a suburb north of LA called Eagle Rock which is holding, essentially, its annual community fair. There are local councillors tending stalls and pro-cycling groups offering puncture repair. Then, at one end of the main drag, is the Low End Theory stage, named after GLK's club night which has weaned a generation of Californian kids on dubstep, drum'n'bass and beat-lead music. Fly Lo, Thundercat, GLK, Teebs and Tokimonsta, a stalwart of the LA dubstep scene, are causing a literal roadblock. The crowd is young and the most diverse group of people I have ever seen at a gig: black, white, Asian, Latino and all shades in-between; skate kids, rave kids, B-girls and preppy boys. By the end of the evening they number as many as 10,000.
The climax of the night is Fly Lo's set. He mixes his own music with classic hip-hop and R&B, liberally dropping old Dre productions and thanking the crowd for supporting LA music. For the last four songs he's joined by Thundercat, who plays over the beats. It goes down well and Thundercat is obviously enjoying himself; perched on top of a speaker stack he braces himself in classic lunging rock pose, his head raised like a triumphant statue. The crowd goes mad.
After the show, it's all back to Steve's again and immediately he's on the Mac editing a series of short, discordant loops. "The term 'creating' in itself, there is nothing funner than that," says Bruner. "You have sex to create. A little bit. You create art or food, it's a combination of imagination and desire and music being such a strong emotional outlet, man; it never gets old."
The group's creative energy has an almost evangelical quality to it. To spend even a little time in their company makes you feel you should be jacking in your day job and taking up video art. Or dubstep theatre. "It's like lights going off and stuff," says Bruner. "That's the attractive part of making music with other people. It's about falling in love with art, falling in love with what you're doing. I want to feel the high of creation."
And with that, somebody switches on the Xbox.
