Halfway through our interview, an Asian guy bowls up to Nosaj Thing, camp as a yurt, and claims he’s been mistaken for him: “I’ve just been asked for an autograph! I’m like: duh! Hello?” Nosaj shifts awkwardly, grins and resumes his chat about the LA beat scene with a sigh of relief.
Nosaj Thing, who is closely affiliated, yet very different to it-boy Flying Lotus, is that kind of guy, a reserved, intense, Stussy-wearing geek whose Dilla-inspired instrumentals alternate between clean space shuttle lines and a severe choral gothicism that he tells me he got from Edward Scissorhands.
“One of the influences for my choral arrangements, like on ‘Lords’, was that movie. Danny Elfman [with credits on last month’s Alice In Wonderland soundtrack] did the soundtrack to that, and there’s a lot of that used. I really like that human quality, the angelic sound. I have a virtual instrument for that where they actually sample a children’s choir, and every note I play on the keyboard just triggers their voices.”
Nosaj Thing, AKA Jason Chung, twenty-five, came out of a mixed heritage of classic 213 G-Funk and older P-Funk from the likes George Clinton. His first experience of raving was to industrial drum and bass when he would break out of his parents’ home in Pasadena, California, aged a tender thirteen. His parents had high hopes for him and enrolled him in after-school classes, where a bus driver with a weakness for the beat junkies would condition the fate of one susceptible kid. The poetry of tonight’s line-up at Fabric [for their March Brainfeeder session], in which Nosaj features alongside the BJ’s Jay Roc, does not escape him.
Arguably Nosaj’s catchiest instrumental, ‘IOIO’ has an oddly-satisfying sterility, all brushed chrome and flirty high-pitched hook – I ask him: is the faceless LA landscape strangely inspirational? “LA has a lot to do with the way I sound – the lifestyle in LA, the way you’re always driving around in your car, living in your own house…there’s not much of a community in LA. The artists in LA have a lot of character from their own sound for the very reason that they’re in their own bubble – you have a lot of your own space to put a lot of your own personality into it. You can be totally subjective in your music.”
Nosaj has however been working on remixes too – for The xx [‘Islands’], and Drake’s massive hit ‘Forever’, which has got him some serious airplay on international radio. More often than not moody, his style has been compared to Burial, and when he says he likes Mount Kimbie and James Blake, it’s easy to see why.
Unlike FlyLo’s often cluttered, unnavigable beats, Nosaj Thing gives the listener space to breathe and enjoy. It may be canned air, on board a rave on Deep Space Nine, but it tastes mighty good.
Words by Miguel Cullen
Where: Pasadena, California
What: Chrome, choral LA beat scene
Strange Fact: Nosaj first got into P-Funk at roller skating discos.
Get 3 songs: ‘Lords’, Drake – ‘Forever (Nosaj Thing remix)’, ‘Coat Of Arms’
