When a friend told me that Shlohmo would be performing at Old Cabell Hall right here on grounds, and that the entrance fee was the whopping sum of five dollars, I had two thoughts– the first, cool, five dollar electronic show, and the second, who is Shlohmo? Without doing much investigation into the artist behind the name, I decided two hours at an electronic music concert would be a cool way to spend my Friday night.
Shlohmo swaggered on stage a few minutes past 9 in a large, black hoody and black pants. His form loomed above the DJ table that held his laptop and soundboards. Cinematic, sprawling beats filled the cavernous room of Old Cabell. A deep, rhythmic bass scored nearly every song, while electronic riffs and staccato drum beats zigzagged in and out of the music, accompanied by the occasional haunting, edited vocal track. The music was slow, ambient, heavy, and undeniably sexy. It was hard not to move to it. While nobody was about to rise from their seats and start grinding, most people in the hall were nodding along or swiveling their shoulders, many with their eyes closed. Shlohmo’s music has a beautifully abstract and visual quality to it; when the bass is booming from the stacked speakers and the sounds of the synthesizers are slicing through the room like air through a harmonica, if you closed your eyes you could almost see shapes, scenes, and colors, stemming from the music alone. In the darkness of the room, the accompanying lightshow blended seamlessly with music. Alternating patterns in deep fuchsias and acidic greens swooped, hovered and rotated across the ceiling, sometimes clusters of stars, other times strange, abstract, amoeba-like shapes. Throughout the show, Shlohmo never paid much attention to his audience. I watched him as he bobbed and bounced along to the tracks he mixed, as he adjusted levels on his computer, as he mouthed the words to songs that had lyrics. His face was pristine and calm throughout the entire show. It was clear that this was what he loved, that the DJ table was like an alter for him and that the performance space was like a church, a place of practice and worship.
While I probably wouldn’t be able to pick out any of the songs he played and put them to a track name, he did make a sweet mix of Christina Aguilera’s Genie In a Bottle. His ability to take an old pop track and manipulate it into this slow, winding, sexy electronic mood song is pretty impressive. Despite the fact that he had slowed Christina’s vocal track down so that she sounded more like a fat black gangster than a blond pop princess, everyone still recognized the song and sang along–not that you could hear them over the volume of the speakers. After about an hour of mixing, in the middle of a grooving song, Shlohmo cut the music and spoke calmly into the microphone, “that’s it.” And that was it. The lights rose, Shlohmo grabbed his computer, the audience surfaced from the trance the music had placed them in, and the concert was over.
The man behind the alias, Henry Lauffer, started mixing beats at the young age of 14, and by the time he was a senior in high school had co founded Wedidit Collective, an Internet label for his local community of fellow Los Angeles based artists.
If you’re into synth beats and smooth, mellow electronic, definitely check out Shlohmo. Here are links to two of my favorite tracks. Enjoy!
Later, Shlohmo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj5i8s6icsQ
F**k You All The Time (Shlohmo Remix), Jeremih: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6xMzltep_8