Brainfeeder

Sound of vertigo
BY MICHAEL KRIMPER

Music can teleport you to far-off lands and spark nostalgia for distant times. It might elicit lost memories or even summon illusions. You may have never visited Istanbul or São Paulo or lived in the 1960s, but music infects the imagination with a visceral experience of the unknown. The effect is uncanny, mesmerizing, beautiful, and even therapeutic.
But what happens when music pushes its ability to displace to an extreme? When music annihilates your familiar sense of space and warp holes your usual expectations of time? Can listening to music transform you? Los Angeles-based beatsmith and DJ the Gaslamp Killer certainly thinks so. “The music I’m looking for is the stuff that will cut through your brain and just make you feel … almost overwhelmed,” Gaslamp slowly explains whether arranging cosmic abyss mixtapes like I Spit On Your Grave (Obey, 2008) or crafting his own twisted productions, including his just-released debut solo EP My Troubled Mind (Brainfeeder), Gaslamp displays a developing genius for charting hallucinatory odysseys into vertigo.

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Where did the name “The Motherfucking Gaslamp Killer” come from?

I got my start deejaying in the gaslamp district of san diego. its where all the pretty people like to go to look at each other and get drunk in there button up silk shirts and high heel shoes. they dont go out to listen to music, the music is simply in the backround & “that outfit” or “thats my team” are whats important. So for the first 6 or 7 years of my musical life, i was being ignored / hated on by these fucking good looking jock morons & theyr cheerleader girlfriends.

i remember one of the first gigs i had in the gaslamp district, when the hottest girl in the whole club approached me and told me that i was ruining her night. whats new. reminds me of high school, minus the tiny paycheck i got at the end. i think force feeding the people is how i got my name. i made them all suffer for years & killed them softly i guess. now everything is the same & no one has to worry about their atmosphere being disturbed.

‘My Troubled Mind’ and your previous releases all share a similar disturbing, nostalgic sound, which is also reflected in the artwork. What has made you take this direction with your music, and what inspires you?

I am a scorpio & a nuerotic jew, born from a turkish lebanese mexican imigrant & a new yorker. I was a “surprise” baby born to older parents.
They let me do whatever i wanted most of the time & i learned the ways of the world by banging my fucking head against a brick wall every day.
Thats why i take this direction in life & in music. I love that dirt. That raw Unfiltered Dirt. Simple as that. that is what inspires me.

Tell us how you became a part of Brainfeeder? What is Brainfeeder?

Brainfeeder is the SQUAD ~ I think it started out as Flylos Dublab.com radio show & then turned into a party featuring some of his musical friends & heros. Then he decided that so many of his talented friends didnt have a home for their music that he would start a record label to put some of this filth out! We have evolved as a traveling freakshow since. its fun. Flying Lotus & i became friends a while ago … since then we have been building an EMPIRE of Beat Freaks.

When you DJ you play a lot of dubstep, which is very different to the music we hear on your records. How did you discover dubstep and tell us how you feel about it?

I LOVE DUBSTEP! It brings me back to my rave roots & it makes me feel excited about deejaying again. I cant remember the first time i heard it or who introduced me to it but it was love at first WOMP. Im still into all the same music that i put on my mixes & my 10″, but i have been really into playing dubstep in my sets as of late. Its Freakin’ Live Shit You Know!

Your mixtapes have been known for a mashing together of eclectic styles and genres of music – if you could make your ideal music group of musicians, producers, singers, MCs, etc, etc (dead or alive) – who would it be?

Jimi Hendrix / Erkin Koray / Bernard Purdie / Malcolm Catto / Herbie Hancock / Lonnie Liston Smith / Les Claypool / Thunder Cat / Gonja Sufi / Beth Gibbons / Miguel Atwood Fergason / L. Subramniam / Todd Simon / Pharoah Sanders / Dorthy Ashby / Richard Wright / & ME!

Thank you and goood night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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