The Gaslamp Killer Kind of Gives a Fuck
The Gaslamp Killer reserves the right to do whatever the fuck he wants. Anyone familiar with the DJ/producer—a resident at L.A.’s famed Low End Theory and a wonderfully madcap performer worldwide—knows that his onstage ethos is rooted in being delightfully unhinged and thrillingly unpredictable.
Occasionally though, he’ll happen upon a crowd that just doesn’t get it. Such was the case on a recent Saturday night, when he played a headlining set at a club in New York for a crowd more inclined toward trance and bottle service than experimental beats and soulful esoterica.
“I play my first song, and a guy walks up to me—some drunk white boy with a collared shirt—and says, ‘It’s fucking 2am on Saturday night! Play something we can fucking dance to!’” GLK recalls over the phone from his home in L.A.’s Mount Washington neighborhood. “Dude, I haven’t heard that since I was fucking 19 in the Gaslamp District.”
The Gaslamp District is the clamorous sector of bro’d-out nightclubs in San Diego where the artist born William Bensussen honed his chops in the early 2000s. It’s also the place that inspired his stage name. “I had it so bad growing up in San Diego,” he says. “I used to get punished and treated like shit at every show I played because people didn’t understand it. So I know how to play in front of people who don’t care.”
Despite his recent experience in New York, Bensussen has come a long way from playing for ambivalent SoCal frat boys. Just this month, he led a 12-piece band dubbed the Gaslamp Killer Experience in performances in the Gobi Tent at Coachella. With this rise in popularity has come the identity crisis experienced by many electronic artists who are lumped into the broad-stroke “EDM” genre and all it has come to represent.
I used to get punished and treated like shit at every show I played because people didn’t understand it. So I know how to play in front of people who don’t care.
“It hurts me to say it,” he says, referring to the divisive acronym. “Just keep me in the hip-hop category. I’d rather have that. Or ‘experimental.’ I don’t even want to be in the electronic music section at this point.”
GLK has always been an artist in, but not quite of, the electronic dance music world. He’s played plenty of electronic music festivals, and at Low End Theory, he and his fellow residents have been crucial in building a bridge between the instrumental hip-hop of producers like J Dilla with the original dubstep of South London and other strains of bass music. Lately, however, he’s strayed from his sampling, beat-chopping and DJing methods and made an ambitious move toward live sound.
He makes his interests clear on his new effort, The Gaslamp Killer Experience: Live in Los Angeles. Released April 18 (and today via iTunes) and recorded at L.A.’s Mayan Theater in November of 2013, the record finds him adapting songs from his 2012 album Breakthrough for a 15-piece instrumental ensemble that features horns, strings, sitar, synthesizers and guitar. As Pretty Lights also recently exemplified by taking a live band on tour, it’s one thing for a beat-maker to conjure breaks and cut-up samples, but it’s a whole new challenge leading a live band. GLK and his crew, however, actually make for a potent outfit as they take on the challenging grooves of Ethiopian jazz (“Apparitions”) and Turkish psych (“Nissim”) while venturing off into various psychedelic odysseys.
Live in Los Angeles was recorded only four months after, as L.A. Weekly reported, Bensussen nearly died in an accident that happened when he flipped forward going down a hill and got smashed under his scooter. Suffering from internal bleeding, he had his spleen removed in an emergency surgery. It took him months to fully recuperate.
The experience has been impactful on his art, as reflected in the album’s cover photo, which shows Bensussen covered in the multicolored powders used in India’s Holi festivals and looking up into the sky in the Southern California desert of Joshua Tree. It’s a strikingly serene image for a guy whose Twitter bio reads “I WILL TEAR YOUR FUCKING FACE OFF.”
“The photo kind of represents the rebirth, and leaving behind heavy-metal, punk, Satanic kind of visuals and stepping into a new chapter of GLK,” Bensussen says. If he once got a kick out of “scaring the common folk,” he’s now moving into a more peaceful maturity, shedding shock-value and showing more respect for the organized religions he once mocked.
“It’s one of the biggest parts of what keeps us together and keeps people from totally killing each other and going insane, so I guess it is more important than I once realized. I don’t really want to disrespect that too much.”
That’s not to say that he no longer intends to slay onstage. When he performs solo, he imagines himself playing “Mortal Kombat Music Machine, where I’m blowing peoples’ heads off and ripping peoples’ spines out and fucking controlling every beat.”
It’s a kinetic persona that has served him well, and moving into full band territory could thus be a risky move. He isn’t a professional conductor and wasn’t classically trained on instruments like many professional bandleaders. Even with talented musicians, it can be hard to capture the right mood of musical styles that come with specific historical contexts and technical approaches. But Michael Raymond Russell, an old friend who played keyboards and effects at the Coachella shows, says GLK’s live ensemble is the summation of what he has long been working toward.
“Being onstage with him this time, he’s grown so much, and to see what he’s embarking on is amazing,” Russell says. “He’s got a huge vision from all the records he’s listened to and has pretty much accumulated since now, and that’s what he’s doing. He’s basically archiving all of the music he’s heard, and getting top-notch musicians to portray his vision.”
As for the EDM thing, while what Gaslamp Killer is doing is arguably light-years ahead of your average hardstyle DJ lurking on SoundCloud, he says he doesn’t want to be seen as a hater. He respects producers and DJs like Skrillex and Diplo, who are working in more mainstream channels, and he himself is down to play anywhere that will have him—rock fests, hippie gatherings, and full-on EDM blowouts alike.
“I’m happy that I’m able to get out there in the world and perform for more people,” he says. “And the more the merrier, man. Put me in front of any kind of crowd.”
While his fusion of brain-busting drums, border-spanning twists and transcendent synth freakouts are not for everyone, they are open-ended enough that some bottle service types might end up digging them after all.
And if not? Fuck ‘em.
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