Lá-Bas (record release party!)

LÁ-BAS is a dystopian space funk collaboration between film composer/ art-rock vet Nathan Larson (Shudder To Think, Swiz, Hot One) , Canadian wunderkind Jordan Kern, and Angelica Allen (My Midnight Heart).

The debut album features such indie luminaries as Jon Natchez ( voted Most Valuable Sideman by NPR! Beirut, Camera Obscura, War On Drugs, David Byrne band etc) , Daniel Mintseris (St. Vincent, David Byrne band) , Brian Kantor (Nina Persson band, Yellowbirds) , Bengt Lagerberg (The Cardigans) , Eric D. Johnson ( Fruitbats, The Shins) , Grant Zubritsky ( MS MR, Nina Persson band, Doe Paroro ), Kevin March ( Guided By Voices, Shudder To Think, the Dambuilders).

Jordan and Nathan enjoy a working relationship dating back to 2006, with the short lived Hot One. Their goal here was to construct lean, angular and danceable oddball pop songs with an emphasis on beat more than chord structure. In evidence is their love of Minneapolis 80s funk, new wave as exemplified by the Talking Heads, and the ass-shake of Parliament Funkadelic, run through an indie prisim.

Vocalist Angelica Allen and Larson mind-melded over visual art and architecture, bonding over the aesthetic of German Expressionism and Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS, and very specifically over the vast brutalist Ryugyong Hotel (aka the “Hotel of Doom”) in North Korea. Lyrical content owes much to Philip K. Dick, Orwell, J. G. Ballard, and Afrofuturist authors such as Octavia Butler. Allen brought soulful grit, as well as a smattering of Kate Bush luminosity.

Recordings took place throughout 2014 in Brooklyn and Larson’s home studio in Harlem.

LÁ-BAS ’s debut album will be released on MODERN IMPERIAL RECORDINGS in 2015.