Saturday, March 2, 2013

The Gaslamp Killer: West Coast Weird Beats, Turkish Psych, Astral Jazz

The Gaslamp Killer: West Coast Weird Beats, Turkish Psych, Astral Jazz: William Benjamin Bensussen is a DJ and producer who started DJing in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, where his weird, heavy sound was generally a dancefloor killer, earning him the name The Gaslamp Killer But he kept at it, and found a home in Los Angeles, performing with the Low End Theory crew. On December 1, 2012, Gaslamp Killer joined an ever-growing list of notable DJs and appeared on BBC Radio 1 with an Essential Mix "This runs the gamut, freak flag and spliff waving in the air. 2 brutal and beautiful hours of raw beats, boom bap, and Birdman. There is psych-rock, there is juke, there is Spaghetti Western. Exclusives from Lotus, HudMo, and Dilla." If you like what you hear, there's even more below the break.

Though Bensussen has been DJing for quite a while, he hasn't released that many original works. His wide accolades came for his work on Gonjasufi's A Sufi and a Killer (prev). It wasn't until last September that the first Gaslamp Killer album, Breakthrough (YT playlist), was released.
It's a run of occasionally disorienting, sometimes frantic, usually unnerving trips into distinct corners of psychedelic and experimental influence that spark briefly to reveal vivid life and fade out just as quickly.

With that, there are quite a few of his mixes online, giving a broader view of his musical influences and tendencies.

A whole lot more:

Interviews with The Gaslamp Killer:
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