Love Songs and Dark Loops: A Conversation with Samo Sound Boy

"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles." - Frank Lloyd Wright

Let me state the obvious: DJ Dodger Stadium is a hilarious artist name. The stadium is such an obvious monument that straight-faced de-contextualization renders it laughably surreal. The name also serves as a statement of purpose for the duo, who released their debut album Friend of Mine last week on Body High. Sam Griesemer and Jerome Potter—BKA Samo Sound Boy and Jerome LOL—aren’t trying to be high-concept abstractionists. They're more interested in the absurdity and romance of the landscape right before their eyes.

A few weeks ago I caught up with Griesemer over coffee. In his mid-twenties, wearing black and white clothes with a loose hat, he reminded me of the seniors I knew when I was a college freshman: effortlessly cool with a hint of weariness, on the verge of bigger things. I asked about his favorite experience at the titular ballpark.

“We had seats really high at the very top, above home. It’s really steep, like sitting on this cliff in the evening in the summer. It’s in the middle of Elysian Park. You’re surrounded by palm trees, a weird L.A. evening vibe.”

Making an album about L.A. without falling into cliche demands close attention, and DJ Dodger Stadium have put in the effort.

“The biggest inspiration for the album is place, the feelings and the sentiment that are local to where our studio is in L.A. Jerome lives downtown and I live in Koreatown and our studio is right in the middle so it’s this two mile portion of the city. We’ve spent a lot of time walking back and forth from home to there, taking everything in. L.A. is made up of amazing, weird little places. There’s this area near the stadium at the top of the park, this helicopter landing pad. It’s this paved zone where you can see Dodger Stadium and downtown and Pasadena, and no one goes up there. Maybe you’ll see some teenagers drinking.”

The video for “Love Songs” echoes this wide-eyed fascination. Shot with an aerial drone—“it just seemed natural”—the viewer seems to embody a consciousness observing a human city for the first time. We hover above Macarthur Park, soaking up an iridescent panorama of backlit palm trees and basketball courts. The drone revolves, swallowing the skyline, and then swoops down to gaze at kids on the street. The image feels almost as solitary and romantic as the song’s chorus: “Recently I’ve been singing love songs by myself.”

Press materials described Friend of Mine as a concept album. While there's no obvious lyrical narrative, I asked Sam if song titles like “Sit Down Satan” trace a protagonist's spiritual redemption.

“[The album] is about being down and out, and slowly finding your way back. It’s also about how for a lot of people life repeats over and over. It’s cyclical. Redemption is a good word for it.”

After a few listens through Friend Of Mine I couldn't help thinking up my own storyline, about a happy-go-lucky type teetering on the brink after a bad breakup. I imagine his Shia LaBoeuf-ish odyssey around L.A., wearing ripped clothes and ordering weird shit in diners. “You know you’ll never win!” he shouts at a couple on Sunset, running off down a riverbed. By the time the shuffling organ-dirge of “Sit Down Satan” rolls around he’s lost everything, and found…himself. Or has he? It’s unclear whether or not redemption is even possible in the morally tenuous universe of DJ Dodger Stadium.

“The vocals never stop and the loops never stop and those patterns don’t stop. Everyone is always going down and up. It’s not like this constant build in an upward direction all the time. We were talking about how religion tends to be an answer for a lot of people. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It can be a false answer that doesn’t solve your problems and fix everything.”

The gospel loops illustrate a truism that the artists observed firsthand: in L.A., salvation is always right around the corner.

“You can’t help but notice these little pop up churches and little ministries, they’re always around the neighborhood in all different forms. Some of them will be more established, they will have a little building with scheduled services. Then on Sunday afternoons in MacArthur Park you’ll see these groups of five to ten folding chairs and some guy is preaching to people there. Or there’s just somebody on a megaphone with someone next to them holding a Jesus Saves sign. There are all these different levels of scale in which people seek that stuff out.”

In the age of Disclosure's unavoidable, BuzzFeedian take on UK Garage and house, it’s refreshing to hear a vocal house album with such morbid content, especially from duo who’ve found themselves booked among the squeaky-synth hordes on Holy Ship! and Hardfest. I’m not surprised when Sam expresses aversion to mainstream dance music’s fascistic obsession with cheerfulness.

“EDM videos are literally a bunch of bros that break into a pool with Super Soakers. It doesn’t have anything to do with us. It’s like the positivity you get in a commercial for Old Navy, these bright colors that don’t look like anything in real life. Ultimately you feel really empty. To me, that’s actually depressing.”

DJ Dodger Stadium offers a different sort of vision: “It’s all dark. The loops are not very positive. Combining what’s actually being said in those loops with fast dance music is how we want to show duality.”

The notion of duality reminds me of one of my all-time favorites: “Dance My Pain Away” by Baltimore Club legend Rod Lee—“such an incredible song,” notes Sam—a poignant examination of the tension between suffering and musical release. Just as Lee’s work embodies his environment Sam and Jerome have captured the texture of life in a city of big dreams and small lives. Pain and pleasure are all well and good as abstracts; anchor them in a concrete place and the stories come alive on their own.

Ezra Marcus is dancing to "Brooklyn Girls" in London. He's on Twitter - @ezra_marc

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