Leb Laze “Toxic Knock (A)”
Now that we’re into, oh, maybe the 653rd installment of Asthamtic Kitty’s ongoing Library Music […]
Now that we’re into, oh, maybe the 653rd installment of Asthamtic Kitty’s ongoing Library Music series, things are starting to get a bit more interesting—conceptually speaking. (It’s actually only up to the 13th volume, but that’s still a lot of library music.) Musician/producer Leb Laze (who moonlights as Prefuse 73’s live keyboardist) ran into some problems with his MPC-2000 when working on the tracks for his forthcoming installment; it began to “uncontrollably spit out all of the sounds that are loaded in it in their unedited, raw form, over and over and over.” Taking the opportunity as a chance to make proverbial lemonade, Leb Laze harnessed the sampler’s sound vomit, turning its randomness into what will be released as Music For Troubled Machinery on March 29. “Toxic Knock (A)” comes from that offering, and sounds almost exactly like the artist described it: Underneath the swelling synth tones, lilting low-bit atmospheres, and smooth electronic grooves, a piece of music-making gear teetering on its last leg writhes and wriggles in a frantic dance of uncontrolled sound bytes. But the way Leb Laze handles the music, you’d have no idea anything was going wrong in the track without some previous explanation.
