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Louis Cole Jam Sessions Look Fun as Hell

Louis Cole is a classically trained jazz musician in Los Angeles who makes hyper-proficient electro-funk songs about things like not wanting to check your bank accountpeople ignoring you when you’re ugly, and how the hours between 3 and 6 a.m. are the weird part of the night. As one-half of the schlocky dubstep-funk band Knower, he has written tunes about eating pizza and the government spying on citizens while they masturbate. Those clowns playing thrash jazz inside a porta potty? That was him on the drums and keys. None of this is satire, really, but frequently sentimental, so far down the irony wormhole that it’s sincere, finding in sounds deemed kitsch a way to be truly honest. A decent analog might be Cole’s Brainfeeder labelmate Thundercat, on whose soft pop album Drunk, which disguises postmodern angst as chintz, Cole co-wrote two songs: the one about tweeting, and the one about flying a spaceship away from the police.

Cole’s latest EP Live Sesh and Xtra Songs is out today. It features nine new tracks, including three recorded live in a two-story home where Cole stuffed a 12-piece wind section in the dining room, a drum kit on the stairs, a synth player in the kitchen, and three vocalists on the patio. In a press release, Cole said they forgot to turn off the air conditioning. Five friends wearing beekeeper suits mic’d up the performance. (From the press release again: “Beekeeper suits are really cheap by the way.”) The beekeepers filmed the sessions, too, and I can’t recommend the videos more. Captioned with VHS-font descriptors like “(throat slap vocal run)” and “FULL BAND ACTIVATED,” with tangled cords and mop-mounted microphones filling the frame, and a mix of deadpan expressions and vicious bass faces, they will hopefully lighten your Friday. It helps that the funk slaps, too.

Please enjoy the spectacle below.

My Buick (live sesh) – Louis Cole Live sesh album out now

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