Seeing The Gaslamp Killer aka GLK aka Will Benussen back in Australia, headlining over DMZ, Rustie, Theo Parrish and a load of music’s finest brought back memories of this interview / podcast from 2008. A few radio stations and online areas rinsed this for a short while, mainly excerpts, but the full edit only appeared briefly, and was taken down soon after the jump to a different station for Awkward Movements.
It’s important to remember the context of this interview. 2008 was before Gonja Sufi releasing on Warp, before Gaslamp Killer had any wax releases out, just some amazing mixtapes and credits on projects such as the limited MRR-ADM. The man was pretty much a mystery, and despite having done it for years was relatively only just getting known outside of the states. The LA scene was in the midst of an important second-coming, and going next level, and a lot of us thought after about a year in this was how high it would peak. None of us had any idea that Low End Theory would get bigger and bigger, and the explosion that was happening in LA would still be influencing the scene so heavily 5 years on.
Despite the release of the Los Angeles that year, things wouldn’t hit proper stardom for another few months. A few years before I’d had the pleasure of interviewing Flying Lotus just before 1983 came out, and he was championing hard The Motherf**king Gaslamp Killer, which in many ways led to this interview. The point here being, the creative hub and talent of these guys didn’t come from being in the right place at the right time or a necessity of hip-hop boiling over, it came from them chipping away and dedicating their lives to exploring sounds.
Got a chance to hang with the Gaslamp Killer before his London show, dude blew my mind. One of the most inspiring interview I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. Out to Cherrystones for letting us use his East London place to do the interview.
One last thing to add – in 2007 ‘The Gaslamp Killers‘ mix / edit was released, and is one of the most interesting and mind-bending creations I’ve ever heard. Track it down if you can.
In some ways the soundtrack here was a personal ‘best of’ The Gaslamp Killer to date, made up of my favourite elements from his mixes, edits and podcasts. Download or stream the 60 minute session with the interviewing flowing throughout at the bottom, what I used to make it is in the tracklist below.
Playlist
0:00-8:58 I Spit On Your Grave (0:00-8:58)
4:28 Gaslamp Killer On LA now
8:58-17:30 The Gaslamp Killers Mix (Track 7-13)
9:03 Gaslamp Killer on The Gaslamp Killers Mix
12:03 Gaslamp Killer on finding his niche
14:28 Gaslamp Killer on LA then
17:30-29:27 It’s A Rocky Road Part 1 (Tracks 1 & 2)
21:15 Gaslamp Killer on It’s A Rocky Road Vol. 1 & 2
25:45 Gaslamp Killer on not including tracklists
29:27-37:23 Heliocentrics vs GLK Podcast (18:37-26:34)
30:36 Gaslamp Killer on The GLK vs The Heliocentrics podcast
34:18 Gaslamp Killer on what he plays out and puts on mixes
37:24 The Gaslamp Killer – Zalim
39:13 Gaslamp Killer on his own tracks
39:53 The Gaslamp Killer – Showstopper
44:07 The Gaslamp Killer feat. Gonjah Suffi – Kobwebs
44:08 Gaslamp Killer on Gonjah Suffi
46:10-61:00 I Spit On Your Grave (25:01-39:36)
48:29 Gaslamp Killer on I Spit On Your Grave
54:14 Gaslamp Killer in what he’s working on for 2009
56:29 Gaslamp Killer on The Low End Theory in LA