Few things strike a chord like being confronted with something that is at once vaguely familiar and undeniably new. When executed well, this potent combination has the power to evoke a sense of powerful nostalgia while simultaneously conjuring a sense of rejuvenation. It’s within this emotional lexicon that beatmakers like Madlib, Knxwledge and the New Jersey-based producer Aaron Velasquez operate.
Creating under the moniker Flamingosis, Velasquez cobbles together each composition from a mix of freshly sequenced drum tracks and whatever sun-bleached soul sample might be stuck in his head that day.
“To be honest, a lot of times it’s just stumbling upon really cool music randomly on YouTube or in record stores,” Velasquez says of his creative process. “Sometimes it’s the drums that come first, but usually I hear something that catches my ear, and its easier to build everything around that.”
Halfway through last July’s Flight Fantastic, Velasquez’s latest Bandcamp-only release as Flamingosis, this process becomes clear. Album highlight “Cruise Control” opens with the sound of a warm keyboard melody lifted from The Futures’ “Ain’t No Time Fa Nothing.”
Here Velasquez chops up the composition, laying down a hip-hop beat and putting the punchiest elements front and center. He highlights a few key guitar squiggles, pumps up the strings and deploys a single, skronking saxophone note as a lively exclamation point. The original’s slow-burning hook is repurposed and pitch shifted until the song’s final minute when the bridge re-emerges to take its place.
The LP’s title track sounds like it’s being picked up from some interstellar radio frequency as it gradually fades in behind an acid synth sound collage. Once you’re tuned in, though, the song wastes no time dropping into a propulsive staccato rhythm of boom-bap kicks and snares paired with the occasional trap high-hat roll. Near the song’s half-minute mark, a washed-out electric guitar glistens, panning in stereo delay as it swirls around a rapid-fire, ping-ponging slap bass run that recalls the furious fingerwork of Thundercat. The brief sequence feels a bit like Discovery-era Daft Punk.
By itself the song is a perfect example of what makes the whole album work. Each of Velasquez’s compositions is a cache of mined musical ideas being slowly drip-fed to the listener. Where many beat makers might let a loop run through an entire song, the relentless variation here keeps anything from wearing out its welcome.
Velasquez says that’s something he learned while working on his own.
“If you just have a nice loop the whole time, it can get repetitive,” he says. “Sometimes it ends up being easier to work with a vocalist rather than just working on your own because when you’re just working with a sample you have to really go through and pick out which parts will make the whole piece interesting.”
That’s not to say Velasquez is shy about collaborating. Some of the producer’s best work has served as a backdrop for frequent collaborator and fellow New Jersey denizen Ehiorobo.
From songs like last year’s “Stowed Away” it’s easy to see how the two bring the best out in each other.
“When I work with him, sometimes I feel more comfortable just finding a really nice loop and letting him fill up the rest of the space,” Velasquez says.
He’s also been working with future funk luminary Yung Bae for going on three years now. Their newest collaboration, a quick loosie titled “Cookout on Cloud 9” follows the “lo-fi hip-hop to chill to” trend that’s emerged on Youtube over the past couple years.
“I came up with the drums, and then we came together and just reformatted the whole song,” he says. “We tried to form a groove that locked in with the sample really well.”
They succeeded. A singular flute sample worms its way throughout the two-minute track anchored to a series of deftly placed booms and baps. In the YouTube clip, a GIF of Sailor Moon protagonist Usagi Tsukino drinking a green beverage loops continuously on the screen.
Vaporwave this is not, but it’s clear the 2012 movement had its effect on Velasquez. Even the album art for Flight Fantastic, with it’s ’80s fonts and picturesque pastel landscape, seems like a small callback.
Flamingosis
Sep 20, 9pm, $7+
The Continental, San Jose
