D/B Recommended: Eskmo & The Gaslamp Killer @ Gretchen Berlin | Thursday, 23.08.2012

Brendan Angelides is a San Francisco based electronic music producer who records and performs live as Eskmo.

His multi-genre compositions have been featured on influential labels like Warp Records and Planet Mu.

While Angelides’ tracks encompass a wide range of electronic styles, he avoids classifications. Bleep.com described his tracks as “Masterfully produced… sophisticated, post-Dilla hip-hop funk”.

Eskmo | Cloudlight
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=g3ro7Us5mbg

Angelides’ performance moniker was inspired by San Francisco experimental music icons The Residents’ 1979 album “Eskimo”. Drawn to the album’s character-based stories and shamanistic themes, he dropped the title’s middle “I” and launched his Eskmo project in 1999 in his home state Connecticut.

Prior to that, in the mid-90s, he was introduced to renegade funk combo Primus and UK breakbeat techno wizards The Prodigy. The music virus soon took hold. He learned to play bass and formed bands while absorbing ’90s electronic music from Aphex Twin, Frankie Bones, 187, Dieselboy, The Chemical Brothers and Moby among others.

Eskmo | Agnus Dei
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=yvXXvLHguiI

Delving into conspiracy theories and moved by the 9/11 attacks, his music took a darker turn. However, by 2005 he grew tired of his remote outpost and emerged to explore new environments and sounds. “The [conspiracies] were separating me from people,” he says of that period. “I wanted [people] to be motivated to come together and make change, but it had the opposite effect. I realized that music could be a tool to bring people together.”

Following a month-long backpacking trip to the UK where he heard emerging electronic sounds at London club Fabric, he began composing and releasing breakbeat tracks on labels like Vertical Sound,Downbeat and Cyberfunk. During this period he began working with other styles, developing his genre-less approach, music that DJ Mag described as “twisted, funky and quite magnificent.”

The Gaslamp Killer | Shattering Inner Journeys
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=G2Ol1vIBSCs

The Gaslamp Killer is a Los Angeles-based DJ whose eclectic style ranges from psychedelia and world music to dubstep and left-field hip-hop. Born William Benjamin Bensussen, he originally came from San Diego, CA, whose downtown Gaslamp District’s bar scene inspired him to name himself the Gaslamp Killer in disgust for much of the patronage.

Upon relocating to Los Angeles, he found a niche for himself amid the city’s massive underground party scene. Gaslamp ultimately landed a residency at the club Low End Theory, which resulted in a series of club-sponsored podcasts.

The Gaslamp Killer | I Spit On Your Grave
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=tHoYco3pPYc&feature=related

As a producer, the Gaslamp Killer made his production debut in the late 2000s, with a series of EP’s, for instance, a split single with Free the Robots, The Killer Robots on Obey Records in 2008 and an EP, My Troubled Mind, on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label in 2009.

GLK’s sets stand out due to strange juxtapositions and rapid collision of styles from the wide range of genres he covers, which are bolstered by turntablist tricks and off-the-cuff commentary.
________________________________________________________________

Eskmo & The Gaslamp Killer  LIVE

Dj: Delfonic

Thursday, 23 August 2012 | 23:00 CET
Gretchen | Obentrautstr. 19-21 | 10963 Berlin/Kreuzberg

eskmo.com | thegaslampkiller.com | gretchen-club.de
________________________________________________________________