The hip hop music of California has always been deeply stoned, and the wave of instrumental beats that have emerged from LA in recent years have taken this to quite some extreme. The scene around the Brainfeeder collective and Low End Theory club have, in fact, produced some of the most deeply psychedelic music of the 21st century, and Sam Baker aka Samiyam is one of the key figures within that.
Baker's profile is relatively low outside the scene but he is a foundational figure within it, and his influence is subtly felt more widely: key UK label Hyperdub released an EP in 2008, and electronic superstar James Blake cites him as one of his biggest influences. Despite rap vocals now appearing on a couple of tracks, his sound on this, his third album is not so much a progression from his early, deliberately scrappy records, as an intensification of it, still dominated by deceptively short, simple beat sketches that bristle with detail which draws you in and won't let you go.
Baker is the most conventionally hip hop of his compadres. There's none of the intricate electronica of Flying Lotus, the apocalyptic psyche-rock and dubstep of Gaslamp Killer or the dread dub/reggae influences of Ras G – instead the influence of California forefather Madlib and his Quasimoto alter-ego hangs over this like thick smoke, with soul, easy listening and global pop samples twisted and detourned over monumentally wobbly beats.
Everything is out of proportion, out of shape, out of kilter – and it is just wonderful. This is Lewis Carrol music with psychotropic properties of its own, that will make your eyes wobble and your head expand as much as it makes your hips twitch. You don't need any herbal assistance any more than you need a vial of Owsley acid to enjoy Sergeant Pepper or Piper at the Gates of Dawn: this is beat-making that will wire itself directly into your nervous system and alter it in strange and joyful ways.
Overleaf: watch a 25 minute DJ set by Samiyam in Los Angeles
