Shlohmo’s new album is the latest step in the evolution of emotional electronic music
In 1975, Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk was interviewed for Creem magazine, and talked about the true potential of electronic music, which was being written off as novelty music at the time. “The synthesizer is very responsive to the person,” he said. “It’s referred to as cold machinery, but as soon as you put a different person behind the synthesizer, it’s very responsive to the different vibrations—it’s more sensitive than a traditional instrument like a guitar.”
This, of course, was delivered in his robotic deadpan, alongside three other equally deadpan guys dressed identically, which made the claims hard for Americans to take seriously. But Schneider was prescient—not only has electronic music completely engulfed popular music, it indeed has become a tool with which artists express their inner emotional selves.
But what’s happened is that as electronic music has pushed more into the mainstream, the human element seems to get lost; EDM is the perfect example. In the underground scene, however, artists are going farther and harder in the opposite direction, and continuing to explore its potential for empathy; the Low End Theory scene in Los Angeles, for instance, where young artists like producer Shlohmo (real name Henry Laufer), who comes to the Catalyst May 2, cut his teeth. His latest record, Dark Red, which came out on April 7 is an instrumental, stark hour-long collection of electronic music, and a noteworthy entry into the genre. It’s simple, but it’s a heavy load emotionally, and dead serious.
While Laufer is by no means the first person to achieve such emotional anguish via computer, he is a part of a new wave of artists that produce beats with emotional weight. In the case of Dark Red, it’s a focused and intensely sad collection of beats, without a single word to clarify his feelings.
The 25-year-old producer has released a handful of EPs and the 2011 full-length Bad Vibes. He’s received the inevitable Flying Lotus comparisons, which at this point are now shorthand for any producer that falls outside of the big-room Swedish House Mafia sound or the bouncy dance sounds of groups like Disclosure.
But the difference between Flying Lotus and Shlohmo are vast. For one, Shlohmo isn’t nearly as informed by hip-hop, and more importantly, he’s not as psychedelic. If anything, he’s an artist who keeps his beats simple, taking the shortest course of action to express the greatest amount of feeling.
Dark Red goes into new territory for Laufer. Despite his prior album’s title, Bad Vibes, that record was actually a much more serene and tranquil offering—not unlike Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express. The sounds were slippery, wet, and seemingly changing shape as they radiated, as if he really were playing a keyboard made partially out of organic material.
By contrast, the sounds on Dark Red are cold and mechanical, and there seems to be nothing tranquil about the record. Whatever he is feeling anguish about is enough to sustain him through the course of 11 songs, and even the most technophobic, guitar-worshiping listeners will feel it, too.
If there’s any criticism to be made about the record, it’s that it is almost too much for a single album. The lack of variety of tone stretched out over the course of 59 minutes, and, particularly on something as pained as Dark Red, seems like overkill. The titles of the tracks suggest nuances in the feelings (“Apathy,” “Fading,” “Relentless,” “Buried”) but it’s not something evident to the listener. The only place the record really shifts gears is during the closing song “Beams,” where it picks up pace a little bit and builds some energy. Maybe this is exactly the point, this single-mindedness of darkness. But Laufer could have just as easily expressed it in 35 minutes and created a stronger, more profound record at the same time.
INFO: 9 p.m., Saturday, May 2, Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $15/Adv, $18/Door. 429-4135.
