Various Artists
Proximity One: Narrative of a City
Los Angeles is a paradox. It has an international reputation as the quintisential American city, yet driving around in its sprawling urban and suburban sprawl, any sense of positive, unique cultural identity is swamped by negatives — endless concrete and asphalt, strip mall, car lots and fast food drive-throughs. For a place so iconic, it’s remarkably hard to find a there there.
In the past few years, though, something big has happened in LA with the rise of a cohort of new instrumental hip hop producers. While Flying Lotus is the most famous, the scene is wider and deeper than just Steve Ellison and his friends in the Brainfeeder crew. Proximal Records is a new record label formed to document the musical output of this new LA sound and Proximity One: Narrative of a City is the label’s debut release.
The most prominent contributors to this compilation — Dam-Funk, Daedalus and TOKiMONSTA — might be the hooks that pull in the curious listener, but as nice as their contributions are (a space-disco joint “A Day at the Carnival” from Dam-Funk, a meloncholy sample-fest from “Cigarette Lust” TOKiMONSTA, and a dubby stepper “Off Angle Edges” from Daedelus), the less well-known artists are just as crucial to making Proximity One a satisfying listen. Owen Vallis’ “Trunk” employs heavy swing time and big bass drops to update the Boards Of Canada’s stoner head-nod sound. The corrosively cynical spoken word piece by Rosie Diveen on “Sea Water” rubs uneasily with Denny Denny Breakfast’s woozy beatmaking. ”Buttabump” by Wake is constructed from clipped, crusty little sound-bites, stitched together so drily the track seems to contain as much silence as sound.
Whenever a new scene pops up, it seems inevitable that it become ossified into a collection of signature cliches. What Proximity One demonstrates that in the case of the LA downtempo scene, there’s still a lot of independent thinkers willing to take chances. The vibe might be consistent, the love for a big boom bap beat might pervade, but in the making of these tracks, no cookie cutter was employed.
Leave A Comment!