In the hands of producer Djavan Santos, a.k.a. D33J, what should be computer-quantized or staid is given light and life. Aquatic textures overlap with bedroom clicks, muffled vocals & vacuous guitar to form hazy late night jams with just enough rhythm for a syrup-drenched dancefloor. Colors change over the course of a song — cool blues melt to hearthy reds — and melodies wind their way through shifting textures while new forms are created at every turn. Though D33J is a solo sound technician, his sound is variegated. It is lush and large and it is alive.
Of course, the 22-year-old’s pedigree demands as much. Los Angeles born and bred, D33J attended the city’s prestigious yet public Hamilton High alongside Anticon’s Baths, OFWGKTA’s Syd the Kid, the FIDLAR boys, and Friends of Friends bit-bender Groundislava. While there, he studied both guitar and electronic music, and caught friends’ shows after-hours when he wasn’t experimenting with software at home.
When D33J moved north to study experimental audio and visual design at the San Francisco Art Institute, he was initiated into the WEDIDIT mafia (via Shlohmo, Ryan Hemsworth, RL Grime), with whom he nurtured a strongly weirdo cult lifestyle and further developed his unique approach to crafting instrument-infused, R&B-touched bedroom techno.
D33J recently returned to L.A. to claim his rightful place among the city’s vital noise-makers. While he continues to seed the Wedidit BlogSpot with bold R3MIX3S — see clutch reinventions of Brandy, Sigur Rós, and Drake — Anticon is giving his Tide Songs EP the debut it deserves. The five tracks contained therein offer an inventive, brightly budding intro to an artist who’s only just begun to blow the eff up himself.
