LOS ANGELES – JANUARY 31, 2012 – Due to a medical emergency, the upcoming performance of CocoRosie, scheduled for Saturday, February 11 at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex, will be postponed. The new date is Saturday, June 9, 2012 at 8PM.

Sierra (Rosie) Casady underwent routine surgery and will need additional time for the full healing process to complete. Original tickets will be honored for the rescheduled date.

Any get well cards or well wishes can be mailed to:

Luckman Fine Arts Complex
Attn: CocoRosie
5151 State University Drive
Los Angeles, CA
90032

It’s easy to imagine Emily Lacy living inside of a giant old tree, and fairies come to her for wisdom about saving the world. For the past few months, Lacy has been rallying for the revolution with her Occupy shows in town, and she’s teamed up with producer Scott Barber to put it on virtual wax. Opening song “Beat” reveals she’s riled up with some psychedelic details and plenty reverb. The big tree she lives in, it has great natural reverb chambers. Flowers bloom out of its cracks when the sound escapes. “Country” is a catchy battle cry. “Riches” encompasses with guitars while “Rise” digs its fingers into some beautiful feedback as Lacy wails like a proto-punker. Stylistically, “America” and “Goodbye” will please fans of her meditative album Country Singer. And although the art is priceless, you can download the EP Rise for free. Whether you’re into the politics or not, this is fucking good and inspiring. Lacy is a true folk artist, whether she’s strumming a guitar or manipulating frequencies on a machine, she makes the people’s music. This EP is most literally “for the people,” the first of a proposed Occupy Trilogy by Ms. Lacy. Her musical message is unselfish, personal and universal. We ain’t in Greenwich Village and she ain’t really a hippie, but I’m going to go burn my bra now.

Oh, by the way, happy birthday Emily.

—Daiana Feuer

DF: When you go to a strip bar do you put the money in a woman’s underwear or do you just watch?
I just throw it onstage.
DC: Is that disrespectful?
People have different terms for what’s respectful strip club etiquette. I don’t really want to touch anyone unless it’s extremely necessary. Maybe it’s disrespectful to throw money at someone’s feet, but I also don’t feel comfortable just sticking money in a stranger’s underwear.
DF: Which one is more disrespectful?
It’s a question for the ages and I’m definitely not the right person to try to answer. If I could, I would steam it flat and gently place it down on a little pillow but I don’t have that kind of time.
DC: Which of your songs would be best for someone to strip to?
I guess it depends if you’re doing some kind of intense power dance or if you’re trying to do some graceful pole-sliding.
DF: Which one do you like better?
I find pole-sliding impressive. ‘C.I.T.M.’ on my new record is a kind of piano industrial ballad. That would be a good one to get down with but also be very graceful with.
DC: The first Corridor record was very clean but it had lot of ferocious technical activity. Is that different on the new record, Real Late?
As far as ferocious technical approach, it’s definitely been pulled back a bit. The first record was more my own self-discovery of what I was capable of doing. It turned into what it turned into and was released. As the virgin release for Corridor—I mean, this is the only project that I’ve written, sang and played everything for. My history as a musician until this was as a drummer for ten years. I never did anything outside of that. I wanted to write a record where I played all the instruments I could play to the best of my ability. I wasn’t trying to be grandiose or over-the-top, but I wanted to make something with every ounce of my being. I’m not showing off or being pompous.
DF: No one is calling you pompous!
DC: I think there’s a place for music like that. Is this album more song-based?
I wanted to make it a little more accessible than alienating. We all make art to have people enjoy it, look at it, listen to it, watch it, whatever. I don’t want to push anyone away with what I’m doing. The first record was good but it wasn’t the most easy listen. It wasn’t pop-structured. It wasn’t made for people to enjoy. It was just made to exist, in my opinion. After playing in so many different kinds of bands since then, I learned more about the structure of writing music.
DF: When did you learn all these instruments?
I’ve been playing guitar as long as I’ve been drumming—sixteen years. Cello has only been five or six years. I’m not classically trained.
DF: I imagined you playing in a school band.
Not at all. I bought that off a roommate who was moving and taught myself.
DC: Do you listen to classical cello music?
Some I do. I’m not authority on it. I have a lot of friends who are so I don’t even bother trying to assume I know anything.
DF: You have a lot of friends that are authorities on cello music?
Let’s put it this way: I have more than four, which is a lot. I’ve played with people who are classically trained. I honestly feel like I’m insulting them. I can see in their eyes, them judging my technique.
DF: Sounds like it’s their problem.
It’s definitely their problem. But I respect where they’re coming from. It is an art form. But some of my favorite musicians aren’t schooled but just made sense of the instrument and made it what they want it to be.
DC: Isn’t that what rock ‘n’ roll is at its best—a bastardization?
Absolutely. I just happen to make music with classical elements so I get lumped in with the genre. It’s cello, but it’s not ‘classical.’ It’s ‘avant-garde.’
DC: It would be hard for me to believe there’s not a classical influence on your guitar
playing.
DF: I’d say an early heavy metal influence might sound like a classical influence.
Since you brought it up, if there is any influence I can say I’ve taken things from, it’s definitely old metal. Initially when I started on music, I listened to punk and metal and thrash and those were the bands I played in. When I was a kid, the first records I got were from my brother. Slayer, Metallica, Judas Priest.
DF: What was the first song you learned to play?
I got a guitar in seventh grade and I would learn everything from Minor Threat to all the songs on Ride the Lightning on guitar and same with drums. It all stemmed off this adolescent shit. I grew up in a rural city, a kind of shitty area in Massachusetts called Brockton. It’s an old industrial city that got everything taken away from it and it just became sort of like Detroit, though not as bad. The businesses were gone, there was a lot of poverty and crime. It wasn’t the greatest place to grow up. It wasn’t in touch with ‘the now.’ It was very suburban. The music I could access was very technical, intense stuff—very hard and fast. I didn’t grow up listening to the Beatles or Rolling Stones. It wasn’t in my house. My brother and sister liked 80s hair bands. Everything I heard had a face-melting solo, from any room in the house. So that’s what I came to know as music. It wasn’t until later in life I realized this represented only a small percentage of music. But it’s how I learned to play, and the records I heard as a kid turned into what I do now. Once you push yourself that hard, it’s hard to regress. I try to hold back.
DF: You hold back the impulse to shred.
I don’t sit around in my room anymore trying to melt people’s faces off. But I’m interested in time and space in music. The space that is in music to be filled. When I’m writing, I listen to all the empty space where things can go and I think, ‘Well, if I have the possibility to put something there rather than not, I will try to do that tastefully.’ Or un-tastefully sometimes.
DC: Are you leaving more space unfilled?
There’s more silence and room to hear things. It’s not empty, but different things fill in the space now.
DC: You’ve managed to make an extreme form of music that is not reliant upon the way metal went—where it’s all demon voices and fast and loud as possible.
I come from that format of music. There’s so many kinds of heavy music in the Northeast that weren’t metal or hardcore. Lightning Bolt is a good example. I grew up hearing that band. They’re heavy technically and crazy but they’re not really metal. They don’t sound like Slayer. I grew up in an artistic time with heavy music. There weren’t really boundaries. You could still be heavy and crazy and mosh and trash the place. The music I make now comes from that. I was molded a certain way to begin with. I would like to pretend to fight that stuff but I don’t have the ability to fake it. The honest truth about my music is that this is what comes out of me without any premeditation or boundary. But, of course, the music is definitely orchestrated. I have to compile and do it piece by piece.
DF: You created this music entirely yourself in order to play it by yourself, so what’s brought you now to playing it live with a band?
There was a sort of romanticism to starting Corridor as the anti-band. It was like flying a space ship—one false move and the whole thing collapses and crashes. I learned to do it from playing awful shows. It wasn’t even trial-and-error. I was just learning from error, and then eventually it got good. But after six years of it, I feel like I’ve hit the ceiling with that. I’ve conquered that aspect of this project.
DC: One of your new songs is called ‘Rebuilding My Internal World.’ Is this album more personal?
It’s definitely more introspective. I wanted to make the album more accessible and to do that, I had to focus more internally on what I thought accessible meant. These songs are actually influenced by experience. The first one was more for everyone and this one is more for me. There’s a paradox, I know. I wasn’t up there shaking my ass, just a guy sitting onstage. It was bare bones: ‘I’m here for you to listen to, not to be entertained by.’ Now that I’m trying to entertain people by giving them something they can relate to, I have to reverse everything. I have to dig into a place that’s more personal, like a diary.
DC: Isn’t it weird that the personal is more universal?
DF: Whoa, Dan!
DC: I know.
DF: In the spectrum of weird music there’s the light side and the dark side, and you would
have to be on the dark side.
DC: Ha! Every silver lining has a touch of gray and you’re that touch of gray. How does it feel?
If someone in a dark place, darker than I’ve ever been, gets a moment of relief from listening to my record … There are plenty of records that I listen to because they relate to how I’m feeling when I don’t want to feel better. If don’t want to get out of the dark place, I just want that misery loves company feeling.
DF: Why do you feel this way about stuff? Why does your dark side come out in music?
The easiest answer is that I have to go out in the world and be an approachable person and I have to do the things I have to do for basic functioning in life. The one time I can be at ease and feel how I want to feel without judgment is when I create music. When I sit down to write music, I’m not trying to get people on a dance floor. It’s not happy or sad but it’s this tonality. It’s not to bring anyone down.
DC: What does “C.I.T.M.” stand for?
‘Caught in the moment.’ It’s about a friend that I had an intimate relationship with that spearheaded my seriousness about playing music to get me where I am today. It’s about an intense violent experience we had. It’s not an apology but it’s an explanation why. We’ve reconciled, but it was something that I felt I need to always remember so I put it in a song. I know that sounds like bullshit.
DC: That is heavy and personal and a lot of people can relate to that.
I know the both of you, and we’re sitting in my house, and we’re fucking around a little bit, but to truly answer your questions I have to step outside of myself. This isn’t an artist rant but it’s more like an alter ego. This [points to himself] is all the performance and this [points to CD] is all that’s real. This is my attempt to exist the way I would like to exist. I would rather exist on record than in real life.
DC: I do feel that your music is very real but the ability to be purely on record is an illusion.
It is an illusion but it’s no more an illusion than reality, I’d say. We’re all an illusion. I don’t think anyone’s really real unless they’re alone.
DF: There’s six songs on this record. Why not make music all year long and put out tons of records? Wouldn’t that be closer to shifting your existence to a recorded form? By existing to record?
People do that. Rather than leave a footprint by putting out twenty records a year, I’d rather leave a miniscule existence with stuff that I think is relevant to me and an exploration of my meaning. I stand by every song I’ve written and put out. I’m not trying to sound spiritual or melodramatic. I’m really not. I’m really boring and normal.
DC: I really don’t think that’s true.
DF: I don’t think you have enough shirts and shoes to be normal. But you do like to watch News Radio, which is very normal.
DC: You’re getting all dark on us but I feel you’re moving in very human directions.
I can only look at myself in the mirror and think I’m normal. But I’m sure most people think I’m somewhat different. I’m not saying I’m not human. I’m as human as you or her. Music can be taken too seriously and literally. I take it too seriously and I take myself too seriously. But I have to find a balance between being serious with what I do and not being arrogant about it. I love what I do. I truly enjoy making music, as dark as it may be to other people or off-putting because you can’t shake your ass to it. I think it feels good to write sad songs, not that these are all sad. I wouldn’t even say they’re sad, they’re just intense.
DC: Do you feel like how the Sales Brothers must have felt in Tin Machine?
DF: Or do you feel like Clint Eastwood?
Definitely more like Fistful of Dollars.
DC: Do you have any ponchos that you wear?
DF: No, he has like four T-shirts.
I have four T-shirts and two cardigans, and one pair of shoes.
DF: You have your little moccasins, too.

CORRIDOR’S REAL LATE IS OUT NOW ON MANIMAL. VISIT CORRIDOR AT MYSPACE.COM/EASTCORRIDOR.

(Click the video above to launch the playlist or check out the individual tracks below!)

TRACKLIST:
“Turkey Lurkey Time” from the musical Promises Promises
The Coon Creek Girls “How Many Biscuits Can You Eat?”
Mika Miko “Turkey Sandwich”
Susan Christie “I Love Onions”
Rick James & Ike Turner “Love Gravy”
Dee Dee Sharp “Mashed Potato”
Joe Tex “Yum Yum”
Domino “Sweet Potato Pie”
The Newbeats “Bread and Butter”
Animal Collective “Green Beans”
The Coral “Song Of The Corn”
Parliament Funkadelic “Do That Stuff”
Julia Lee “The Spinach Song”
Laughing Gravy “Vegetables”
Louis Jordan & The Tympany Five “Beans and Cornbread”
Kimya Dawson “The Beer Song”
Dennis Brown “Lips Of Wine”
Jay and the Techniques “Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie”
Nancy Sinatra “Sugar Town”
Warrant “Cherry Pie”
Candypants “Dishy”
Isaac Hayes “Chocolate Salty Balls”

…Then prepare for Leftovers.

The first time Zola Jesus performed in Los Angeles, it was just Nika Rosa and some backing tracks. She crawled across the floor between people’s legs and though she was as small and delicate as a cat, she filled the room with her voice like a big shadow or a ghost. Finding a welcoming audience here, Rosa moved to Los Angeles and wrote her second album, Conatus, dyed her hair and introduced color into her wardrobe. We met up at LACMA to discuss these things. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

So you came to LACMA because you moved in nearby, what would you do?
Sometimes I would go to the exhibition; sometimes I would just walk around to all the nooks. It helps to look at someone else’s work because it made me feel better about everything I was going through. It removed me. Gave me some perspective.
Even if it’s visual art?
I feel more from visual art and music and books than I do from music.
Anything in particular infiltrate this project?
Nothing completely direct, but I was really obsessed with winter when I made this record. I made it in the winter and into spring, but I was living here and it looked like this. And I’m used to living in Wisconsin. I would watch a lot of documentaries of Inuits and look at pictures of ice. I read this book called Ice by Anna Kavan, which for me felt like everything that I was going through. It was the perfect compliment to the music I was making at the time. There were a lot of feelings of isolation. Sometimes I take solace in watching movies and reading books—isolation comes from that.
Do you think isolation is important for an artist?
For me it is. I can’t say this without directly quoting Schopenhauer, but ‘a man is truly himself so long as he is alone.’ When you’re alone you’re free from influence or other people’s decisions and expectations, and you can live freely within your own universe.
Probably if you weren’t entertained by that universe you wouldn’t find anything worth relating about it.
I’ve always felt like being around other people or having the impulse to be around other people is a weakness. If you’re not comfortable being alone then you’re not comfortable with yourself or who you are. It’s always been important to me that I was most comfortable being alone. I think that proves to myself that I have a strong sense of myself and what I want.
If you made this album in your universe, does this music replicate the sounds of your interior world?
The interesting thing about this is that music helps me communicate what is going on in my head. It helps delineate ideas that I have trouble putting in words. It always takes a fight to get it out. I don’t know how to turn something in my head into something you can hear and express to other people. Absolutely this record is so insular and intimate and introspective, everything ‘in,’ everything personal.
I could see that because it made me want to move around weirdly in my room in a way that is uninhibited.
You saying that made me instinctively terrified. ‘Oh my god, you’ve heard the record!’
Yeah, I have. I heard it twice.
I still can’t come to terms with the fact other people will hear this record. I turn myself inside out and we pressed it to vinyl and now people are going to hear it and I’m like, ‘Wait, no, I didn’t … let me change it!’
Why would you want to change it?
Because it’s so raw. It feels so vulnerable. I feel stripped. I feel a little naked. But that’s important. It means I’m getting to a place in what I’m doing that it’s a deep cut. I don’t want to make a record that’s easy to listen to or feels effortless. I want it to feel like I went through the process.
Do you listen to hip-hop?
I do. I listen to everything.
Just curious. You have some cool beats on this record.
Do you like ‘Shivers?’ I hate hi-hats and cymbals. They sound too weak. But I tried to take things I didn’t like and make myself more comfortable with these things that I once avoided. ‘Shivers’ has hi-hats and cymbals and crazy bass like a sound system. That song taught me a lot about the importance of certain drums and why I avoided them. And why I shouldn’t. A lot of songs on the album were about exploring things that made me uncomfortable as a songwriter.
Yeah, I see you exploring but not replicating—staying within yourself.
I like taking things that feel out of context. Everything for me is out of context. I can’t be like, ‘I’m going to make this kind of song.’ There is always this thread of what is intrinsic to me, to my own personal style. That’s always going to be there.
Do you know what that is?
Whatever is on that record. I like extremely specific things. That’s why it took me so long to not wear black. I only feel like I’m a human being when I wear black. And I’m forcing myself to not wear black because I feel like that’s too extreme.
So you’ve moved on to gray.
Yes! Slowly making my way through the spectrum of color. It’s just like weird obsessive-compulsive things that being unmedicated OCD you kind of work through on your own.
Did you start wearing a different color before or after you made the record?
I think it was a little bit after. But it was right towards the end of it that I felt this record seemed ‘white’—cold but not in a dark way, finding warmth in the cold. That feels very white to me.
I think you talked about warmth in the cold to me before.
Yeah, I get into that. I like dualities a lot. For everything in the world there is two extremes and then there is the middle of these. Everything that I do, everything that I am, is about those two extremes and finding a middle ground. I’m drawn to very extreme things, but to be a functioning person in society you have to find a middle ground. You can’t function on the fringes. Even though that’s where I feel more comfortable—on the edges on the world. It would be in my best interest if I try to find a middle ground.
What are some examples of extremes?
Music. I’m only drawn to things that are extreme in one way or another. Things that are just palatable I can’t understand. It needs to be clearly black or white. When I do something, I overcorrect. There’s no subtlety in anything I take in or anything I put out, so this record was about trying to find subtlety, because it’s important. It’s a quality that I would like to learn, to be subtle. Subtle in how I think and make things. I always think subtlety is oppressive in a way. When you try to do things quietly, it’s because you’re being oppressed. And I’m always afraid of being oppressed. It’s strange, I can’t really explain it.
You just walk down the street and you’re like, ‘Hey, don’t oppress me!’
Pretty much. It’s nothing to with politics or feminism. I think it’s important when you exist in the world to know what you’re capable of and to know what you want to do, you can do and cannot be stopped. People set boundaries based on society, social norms, what people tell them, what they tell themselves. I’m sorry to sound like an episode of Oprah.
Oh Oprah, I’m going to cry now! But you are right, people say, ‘I can’t do this, I’m not allowed.’
People don’t want to think about that anymore. They grow older and tired and give up the fight. People think it’s an adolescent struggle but the thing about adolescence is that—I mean, I hated being a teenager and I still hate being the age I am now—but the thing I value is the naiveté, the feeling they can do whatever they want. If people in their forties felt that way a lot more could get done.
Do you want to be an old person or a young person?
Ha! I don’t know. I would like to have time. I feel like I’m constantly running out of time. But I would like to be in a place where I can have more perspective.
How do you feel about the computer as a musical instrument?
I like it. I used to be ashamed that I used the computer, but I’m embracing it. You can do things that are beyond what we understand as instruments of sound. You have the entire spectrum of sound. I refuse to work with a guitar because the guitar has been abused. We understand what we can do with them and people have done everything within their power. Computers can give you anything and you can sculpt the sound.
How do you choose when there’s a million potential drums?
I like things that are indiscernible. I like synth pads, things that can weave in and out of each other, I like layering sounds. I don’t like very defined sounds like ‘This is a glockenspiel, this is a guitar, this is a harmonium.’ Actually, I really like the harmonium. It’s a really thick sound. You can’t really tell where it’s going.
You don’t like words?
I do like words. I appreciate people that can explain things in words, but I have a hard time with it.
Do you make up words?
On ‘Ixode’ I’m not using any words. They could be words in some language but it’s just syllables and consonants. But ‘Ixode’ is the scientific word for ‘tick,’ which is something you get a lot in Wisconsin. I like the way the ‘oh’ sounds. That’s why I use words like ‘throw’ a lot, ‘no’ a lot, ‘road,’ ‘home …’ ‘Road’ is the worst word you can use. It’s like saying ‘teardrops on a windowsill’ or something.
Have you had any good California encounters since coming to the big city?
It’s strange, I’ve lived here a year and been here probably five months.
Three of which you spent in LACMA.
That’s true. I like the resources here, that’s good. But my life hasn’t changed. I’m not a social person. I don’t go out. It’s nice to have a grocery store near me.
Did you have one in Wisconsin?
We did, but it was a drive so I would wind up not eating for a while. I didn’t have a car. Now it’s nice—I can get up, get some food, I can eat now. I learned when I moved away from home that your environment, everyone is the same. Your environment doesn’t affect you after a while when you realize what your priorities are.
But your environment is what gives you the things to do something with.
I know, but I like being able to live in a way where you live like a minimalist. Everything you want you can provide for yourself. I can’t provide for myself without going to the grocery store living in West Hollywood. But as long as your basic needs are met, I don’t need anything beyond that.
What do you need?
Food, a place to shower, a place to sleep, and a little bit of love. And a house.
What about a computer?
A computer is great, but I could always just sing.

ZOLA JESUS WITH LA VAMPIRES AND XANOPTICON ON MON., OCT. 31, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12-$15 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. ZOLA JESUS’ CONATUS IS OUT NOW ON SACRED BONES. VISIT ZOLA JESUS AT ZOLAJESUS.COM.

Read about it here

Catch Buraka Som Sistema at the Echoplex on October 14 with ORO11 & DJ Panamami. The group’s new album, Komba, comes out 11/8 in the US. You may have shaken your ass before, but Buraka Som Sistema releases the power of your bunda.

—Daiana Feuer

Warning, this video is N.S.F.LUNCH. Unless watching people chew with their mouths open makes you happy—as demonstrated by Doña Nicha, this two brother + 1 cousin +1 neighbor family band grown in Southern California. “Sandwishes” is two swishy guitars and a swoony melody of swirled together words that guide us through a minute and a half long wash of noisy shoe material. The video created by The Great Nordic Swordfights makes eating yucky things a metaphor for love. The family that eats together, and spits on each other, gets its faces melted off together.

Here are some moments we liked:

eyeballs
playing the tongue spittingdismembered sandwich ship

Whoever can correctly identify all the ingredients of the sandwich eaten in the video will receive free tickets to see Doña Nicha at Lot 1 this Saturday, October 8, with George Glass, Radars To The Sky, and Pick Up Sticks.

—Daiana Feuer

Some people seem transported from a parallel universe, sent here to make this world a little more magical or strange. Like Mia Doi Todd—she seems out of place standing on a street corner. She should be floating on a carpet, leaving a trail of flowers, or accompanied by a river that washes the city clean of all the creeps and malevolent vibes. Listening to her latest album, Cosmic Ocean Ship, a little bit of cosmic energy seems to seep in and that parallel universe becomes visible. Suddenly, you wish you lived in France or Brazil. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Would you be able to kill a cow?
Single-handedly I could definitely not kill a cow. No. And I’m OK with adopting a more vegetarian diet. I’m almost a vegetarian. I am allergic to shellfish but most anything else I eat.
What about a chicken?
If I could corner it and catch it, I could kill a chicken. Or a rabbit. If I needed to feed my family. I think I could kill a chicken or a rabbit. I’m a rabbit.
You are?
In the Chinese horoscope.
What does that mean about you?
It’s the lucky sign and you know how rabbits propagate so rapidly … it’s known as a fertile sign. I have not produced any offspring but I have made many albums which are like babies sent off in the world. We’re easygoing too. We’re pretty smiley in general. Andres Renteria, who plays percussion with me, is also a rabbit.
How many of your own albums have you released?
I started a label for my third record, Zeroone. I returned to putting out my own records with Gea in 2008. My first record was very limited-edition press, so I reissued that. So Gea, an instrumental record with Andres [Renteria], Morning Music, and Cosmic Ocean Ship. This time I’m partnered up with Virtual Label in New York, so they’re helping me with distribution. This is different because I have a broader independent distributor. Up until now I was with Revolver, which is a great company in San Fran.
And you’re on the radio.
KCRW has been supporting the album so much. I’m so local, they’ve watched the whole process of my singer-songwriter becoming. The new album is the most accessible so far. They asked me to play at the Hollywood Bowl this summer. It’s a soul tribute. I feel honored to be a part of that. My music is super soulful, but with the stereotypical definition of soul … it’s not what you’d think of my genre as.
What is your genre?
It’s hard to define. I’m really multi-genre. I feel very soulful—soul, jazz, singer-songwriterdom is my main category—Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan. I’ve mostly written my own songs but I have started doing more covers and Brazilian music. I’ve gotten more jazzy and more world music. I have also collaborated with electronic musicians over the years. I have songs that are trip-hop—but that’s an outdated term. I even recorded vocals on hip-hop albums. And my meditational music that Andres and I made, that was new age music. You could play it in yoga class—not that I like to hear music in yoga class.
Does your music reflect the interests you’ve taken up in other areas of your life?
Being a multi-ethnic person, I was always looking for myself. I have to keep redefining myself and that has contributed to my interest in world cultures—trying to mix everything together within myself and my music. I’ve been traveling a lot in the last few years, Brazil, Cuba, India and Mexico—gathering those influences and trying to digest and make it more a part of myself. This record is more Latin-music-based than my previous one. There is a song dedicated to Paraty, a town that is between Rio and São Paolo. There’s a song dedicated to Havana, in Cuba. The influence of Cuban music is really strong inside of me. And I had a chance to digest it.
How has this translated into your music?
Working with Andres, we’ve been playing for six years now, and his experience with AfroCuban music and percussion has definitely influenced my songwriting. Going to Cuba and Brazil, it’s all about the drums. All the percussion. Being around that more makes me think differently about music and sing differently, try to play guitar differently. I am stuck in my patterns still and I come from a North American tradition. I’m trying to blend all these things—to try to create a new world culture. See, I imagine … I dream to participate in that and be a source of inspiration to others. Things get overlooked, like nature, with all the development that’s happened in the last 100 to 200 to 1,000 years. There’s a lot of nature here in L.A., but you have to drive through big cities to find it. In Brazil and Cuba nature is still more left on its own. I have been learning Brazilian songs about nature spirits. One thing that’s interesting about Central and South America is that all the cultures have collided there, they’ve all met there and mingled and that creates music that is so inspiring to me. In Brazil, indigenous music has very much mixed with African and European music.
Where are you from?
I’m from right here! Being of mixed culture, I definitely feel like I had to go search for myself and find myself in things. I am half Japanese and half Irish and I identify with both—but being mixed I identify a lot with Latin culture too, being a place of mestizos.
So there’s no Latin in you?
Well, Ireland was Roman at some point. In my family nobody speaks Spanish. But growing up here in L.A., you can’t help but absorb the Latin culture that’s all around. That’s another reason why I identify with it.
Why do you hang out in nature?
Every time I drive to the desert or the mountains at the Angeles Forest I spend just a few hours listening to the creek or the birds in the trees, where it’s free. The birds actually love it here by the L.A. river, but going out farther out of the city I always feel a great release. I can hear myself more and it’s invigorating, refreshing, and helps me come back to the city. It’s about that. I love L.A.
Why do you love Los Angeles?
My family is here, and it’s very hard to leave for long periods of time because we all rely on each other a lot, and so many friends, my musical community. I respect the city and I love my city. I can buy amazing kale and I can also grow it, but there’s so much variety here—culturally, artistically. I like man-made things too. I am such an appreciator of the arts: sculpture and music and film and art. That’s more common in the city. That’s one great factor in favor of cities. That’s where people can see things. You can be out in the country to make those things. I want to find a balance between the city and nature. I have grown up so much in the city and I think it would be great to be among the wind and trees and hear more sounds other than the 5 freeway.
How can a city develop but keep in touch with nature?
That’s a rough one. That’s the crisis of the 21st century—how to reestablish a balance. We’ve become so populous. How can we cooperate with Mother Earth so we can blossom rather than kill each other? And feel nature? Hopefully it’s part of the new culture we’re building—the village. Last summer I spent in France living in a village where I had to bike to get groceries and produce was coming from the fields right there. The meat, the eggs, everything was more local. It’s cheaper.
Do you think civilization will collapse?
It’s possible. It’s very possible but it will take a while. If natural disasters like the tsunamis and earthquakes, fires … if they begin to swallow up coastal cities and destabilize the status quo—if New York was hit by a tsunami, life there would have to change drastically. But maybe those buildings are strong. A friend was in Japan on the 21st floor of a skyscraper during the tsunami, and it shook so hard back and forth for five minutes, and it was terrifying and life-changing, I think. If more things start to rock our cities, they might have to fall down. The U.S. was large-scale built on the car culture, whereas in Europe, agricultural land is still more interspersed within the cities. Once gas prices reach astronomical levels and we haven’t tapped into solar power as much as we need, people won’t be able to get water and food the way they could if they lived in villages. Villages of the world will have a leg up on the cities. They have a smaller structure. All the people coming to the cities in the last 30-50 years, going to cities for work, it’s probably going to reverse. Water will be the big situation in L.A. We live on more of a desert plain. Maybe we’ll sort it out and the cities will be fine—if we can work out water desalinization and solar power. I am always trying to plan my escape route.
Where will you go live then?
Perhaps somewhere in California. I have been dreaming of Ojai, which is still close enough that it’s almost like home. They have a long history as a spiritual center. I imagine Native Americans who lived here before found Ojai to be as beautiful as we did and hung out a lot. Ojai has some of the best new thinking. Krishnamurti has a center there. In Ojai, it would be easier to get food from close by.
Do you find you have become more new agey with time?
Yes, yes. I don’t feel sooo new agey. I am not a burner. What’s it called? I’ve never been to Burning Man. I don’t know exactly the definition of new age but it often pops up that I’m a new age artist so I guess I am.
When you and Andres were sitting in the artist area at the Silverlake Jubilee around all those other people, did you feel that you two came from a different planet?
Yes! And it’s only in situations like that in which I realize that I’m pretty far out. Someone who was organizing the Jubilee came up to me and Andres and she had to tell us some stuff about loading in and schedule and she said just talking to us and being around us for a minute really helped calm her down. Growing up in L.A., people hardly think I am from L.A. because they associate it with Hollywood. Or what else is L.A.? Maybe beachy? Not exactly Andres and I. We are so L.A. though. It’s a bit hidden, our L.A. I worry about people that come to visit for a few days in West Hollywood. Come hang out with me and you get a vision of the secret L.A. It’s all about the secret woodsy parts. We have great parks in L.A. Especially here on the east side. Griffith Park and Elysian Park and the Angeles Forest. Central Park in New York is amazing but it’s man-made. The parks here in L.A. haven’t been as controlled by man. With the big fire in Griffith, they’re letting nature take its course.
At your house you host late-night jam parties with big groups of musicians. Did you ever attend the ones Jonathan Wilson did in Laurel Canyon?
No, I didn’t know anything about that. Laurel Canyon is far from my neighborhood. I never went over to those music jam parties. He came over to my house for a party and I didn’t even meet him that night. He was friends with a girlfriend of a housemate of mine. Money Mark and I share a compound and he was playing drums with him. I have fun parties where musicians come and play together casually, all night usually. I definitely remember saying hi to him.
What led to recording Cosmic Ocean Ship with Jonathan Wilson?
Gabe Noel, my bassist, had been playing with him. He recommended I record at Jonathan’s. I had written all these songs and I needed a place to record. He asked me what size shoe do I wear, and I said, ‘five and a half, six.’
Wow, you’ve got small feet!
Sometimes old things fit me because things used to be quite small. So I go over there to show him my songs and he came out with these cowboy boots that were my size. It was a sign that we should work together. We recorded the whole album all very much live in his amazing room. He is so skilled as a musician and engineer. He plays different instruments on all the songs. He played drums, guitar and bass and percussion, piano, organ, and he just knows exactly what a song needs. That’s his great producer mind and then he can play it. He lives near my house so it was convenient and felt homelike.
What did he bring to the album?
He brought more of an American roots tradition to the record. North Carolina, hippie North Carolina. He brought a more American Southern tradition to the record—to Andres and I, who are more California-Latin based. We synthesized somehow. One track is more doo-wop, doo-wop-a-doo—‘Summer Lover’ is more like that. Jonathan helped bring out a little more country aspect to my songs. He totally understood where we were coming from. Another thing—that first day, I had barely met him. I just said, ‘Can I come over and play my songs?’ It’s easier to play your songs for strangers in a small place. He was a stranger to me then. I played the songs, he gave me the boots.
Why did he have little cowboy boots in your size?
He had gotten them at a thrift store, not knowing who they were going to fit. I think he goes to thrift stores and looks for precious items.
The album cover you’ve reenacted for our poster is very provocative.
[Gal Costa’s] record cover for India was very provocative when it was released, and still is today. Not too many people put a full cameltoe crotch shot on a cover. I am more modest, but I look a lot like her and identify so much with her album, her music, so we wanted to pay homage to her. My album Cosmic Ocean Ship also celebrates American culture. India was very orchestral in parts but it celebrated the Native American. That’s a piece of my record as well, what I was trying to put out in the world. I feel very native to L.A.
Do you feel like a babe right now?
I will probably get fat. I hope I do. So it was a good time to take those pictures and celebrate my womanness, my womanhood, and the universal creative mother spirit and beauty. It’s a good thing to celebrate naturalness—the human body is a part of that.

MIA DOI TODD WITH HANNI EL KHATIB, KISSES, TOM BROSSEAU, SWAHILI BLONDE, AND THUNDERCAT AT THE DUBLAB X L.A. RECORD BROOKS STAGE AT THE ABBOT KINNEY FESTIVAL ON SUN, SEPT. 25. MIA DOI TODD’S COSMIC OCEAN SHIP IS OUT NOW ON CITY ZEN. VISIT MIA DOI TODD AT MIADOITODD.COM.