Samiyam (USA)

Beats People Movement in association with Sick Disco! and Dubstep Alliance Aotearoa are proud to bring international guest Samiyam to Auckland.

Representing Brainfeeder / Hyperdub / Poo-bah Records / All City Records

A master of the shimmering, synthetic and rhythmically stunted, Brainfeeder/Hyperdub affiliate Samiyam’s can be defined artistically by relationships. Firstly, with music, secondly, with the intensely talented modern beat musicians (Flying Lotus, The Gaslamp Killer, Ras G etc.) he moves within both the L.A. of the real world and the uniquely spiked L.A. of the internet…

A kid whose parents could only punish him for being naughty by confiscating his boombox, Samiyam also remembers being affected by the music of Michael Jackson and recounts singing along to the big tunes and mimicking MJ’s dance moves in the mirror at age six. Captured by hip-hop in his teens (“I really got into dudes like DJ Premier and Alchemist,” he says) at the end of high school, Samiyam purchased an MPC and began attempting to write like his heroes. Eventually moving onto to a Roland MC-303 Groovebox, with this shift in hardware came a shift in musical mindset. “That was when I started really feeling like I was making the ideas that were in my head,” he says.

Obsessed with “seventies [and eighties] RnB and funk,” having been programmed to approach music in a looped format by his years of hip-hop fixation, Samiyam found himself listening for the “one four bar part that sounded so good I wanted to hear it repeat for three minutes.” Applying this to his arrangements, he formed what he calls, “a friendship of the new millennium,” with L.A beat auteur Flying Lotus when the two discovered each other’s music online.

Now based in L.A., which he describes as, “full of people I felt like I could really get along with,” as a key member of Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder movement, the last few years have seen Samiyam perform across America, Europe and Asia. This September, following recent visits from L.A. residents Dâm Funk and The Gaslamp Killer, Samiyam will make his New Zealand debut. “I’ve had so many people hitting me up about it online,” he says. “I’m pretty happy about it all.”

- Words by Martyn Pepperell for the Groove Guide.

- Flying Lotus, March 2009 download: http://media.brainfeedersite.com/podcast/brainfeedermix1.mp3

More links:

http://www.myspace.com/samiyambeats
http://92bpm.com/2010/03/samiyam-beat-cinema-dwnld.html
http://www.brainfeedersite.com/

Local support from:

Julien Dyne (BBE)
Scratch 22 (The ARC)
Dapht One (BPM*)

& guests.

Event listed by Dapht One

View their other events or contact promoter