Once you get past all the decadent, gaudy squalor of Hollywood, perhaps the most defining characteristic of Los Angeles is the myriad of gentle, swaying palm trees lining the streets, standing tall and surreal against the smog-stricken sky. L.A. is an urban tropicalia muddied by human ambition and confusion, and this sensibility has seeped into some of the most prominent and experimental artists working in the city today. Whether it’s in the chime-ridden new age of Leaving Records, the sandy jam sessions of Not Not Fun, or any of the sundry attitudes that coalesce under the local community radio standard-bearer Dublab, you can hear the palm trees coming through in the forward-thinking sounds of the L.A. underground, becoming churned from an object of paradise into something caught between imagination and reality. This mix gathers some of the most exciting voices making music in Los Angeles today, and attempts to find some common ground in their scattered, psychedelic visions.
