L.A.-based visual artist and musician Mtendere Mandowa, who creates under the moniker Teebs, works with paint and frequencies that are pleasing to the eyes and ears. As a painter, he fashions precisely imagined bouquets of color, disciplined abstractions that convey a love of beauty without a trace of sentimentality, and the same could be said about his abstract hip-hop beats.
Teebs is a member of the Brainfeeder Records roster, whose proprietor Flying Lotus has become an expert collector of electronic music with an improvisatory — but razor sharp — spirit. "Collections 01," Teebs' new instrumental snapshot, is the first in a series of what he calls "mini collections of ideas" that he plans to release intermittently through his life "as if they were paintings in a drawn-out series."
Strangeloop's art is nothing like his nuclear near-namesake Dr. Strangelove. While Peter Sellers' rogue scientist sought to incite holocaust, the music and A/V installations of the artist born David Wexler aim to produce elemental harmony. Sound as color, color as sound -- all ambient everything.
Indeed, the mission statement that governs the locally based artist's gallery exhibit at the Gus Harper Art Studio in Venice details his desire to meld psychedelic states with the disorienting flood of modern media:
Through art I seek an understanding of natural patterns, language, and evolution, which for me, are topics best approached through a variety of media and applications of creativity. I am fundamentally inspired by altered states of all varieties, and approach my materials with the intention of infusing them with the awe and strange aesthetics. I am deeply inspired by all forms of mysticism, but tend towards a merging ancient esoteric motifs with the scientific revelations of our age.
Chances are if you've attended anything Brainfeeder or Low End Theory-related over the last four years, you've seen Strangeloop's body of work: computer-constructed visuals full of twisting technicolor tentacles of light. Images that frequently draw upon anime and esoteric film and suggest psychedelic screen savers gone right.
The grandson of Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "American Graffiti"), Strangeloop has made his own forays into film, with his experimental opus “2010: (or) How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technological Singularity" earning placements at film festivals and a cult fandom for its chimerical imagination and vibrant palette.
In celebration of the art opening and the release of his new Brainfeeder EP, "Fields," Strangeloop will be hosting a party Saturday night at the Harper Art Studio (11306 Venice Blvd). Performing alongside Wexler will be Teebs, Austin Peralta and promises of special guests. The exhibit will feature signed prints, concept drawings, sketches, paintings, 3-D stills and videos. It's free and goes from 8 until midnight, or the DMT wears off.
Flying Lotus has described Teebs' music as sounding "the way 'Avatar' looks." And those familiar with the 23-year-old visual artist and musician's canvasses would be prone to concur.
Like the Teebs-painted album cover at right, his music is a yarn ball of intense colors and peculiar crevices. His last EP was titled "Tropics," and it boasted the spectral beauty of his artwork, with beats that bloomed with pastel color. His sound is a Gordian knot, impossible to unravel but bright as agate.
It's a balance of the baroque with the abstract, a collision between tangled futuristic projections and everyday objects. One of his best mixes was called "2 a.m. Wine," and it captured Teebs' ability to project an Ambien-addled aesthetic -- a gauzy, gorgeous haze ideal for the witching hours.
His first single for his Brainfeeder debut LP, "Ardour," expands on these ideas, and illustrates why it's one of the most anticipated records within the Los Angeles beat community. Since moving from New York several years ago, the producer-artist born Mtendere Mandowa has been one of the city's brightest prospects, a member of the My Hollow Drum collective, a frequent Dublab guest and a Low End Theory staple. Additionally, BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs included one of his tracks on her "Wild Angels" compilation.
"Ardour" is slated to be released Oct. 19th. It figures to be worth marking your calendar in advance.
