MIXED BY Larry Gus

Each week, we present a set that pushes the boundaries of its style, and the only prerequisites are impeccable taste and skill. This week: Larry Gus.

THUMP: How did you get started?
Larry Gus: Well, It all started in late 2005 - early 2006, out of bitterness somehow, because my then bandmate/drummer abandoned me, quite unexpectedly (we were a bass and drums duo, and i played bass). i had grown super used to him in the context of our musical relationship, so in the beginning it was extremely hard for me to write music on my own, without having someone helping me refine my ideas. but i kept trying. in my very first tracks i was consciously trying to recreate four tet's sound, and it all started from there.

Your name is greek for larynx? Explain.
Yes. Larry Gus, when pronounced in greek it is heard as LAREEGAS (give or take), and in Greece this is the word for larynx (ΛΑΡΥΓΓΑΣ or λάρυγγας without caps). So, yeah, it's just an extremely stupid wordplay, but it stuck there. Some of my other choices were Panagiotis Melidis (my birth name), The Chocolate Grinder or Heilig Honig, but they were all so pretentious that it felt much too weird. Stupidity is always more preferable than pretentiousness i guess.

Your performances have been described as "intense" and "chaotic". Could you give us an example?
In my first live shows i was using live looping techniques with many proper instruments (drums, guitars, percussion,synths etc), and as you can imagine i tended to be super stressed onstage, making lots of mistakes and all that. After some point i only played improvised shows, and most of them failed super hard, but they were always fun. Right now i just play with a sampler-based setup, but i still get to improvise a lot. I don't use actual backing tracks, i somehow replay the songs part by part live, and this is still quite stresfull at times. I have to change the cards for the samplers between songs, messing with different effect settings and all that, while trying to sing at the same time. It seems a bit weird at some points, but i still enjoy it a lot.

You are from Greece originalyl but attended school at The Music Technology Group in Barcelona.
I lived in Barcelona for a year, doing a master at MTG. But i didn't have such a good time, mostly because i hated the weather there. I can't stand any more this Mediterannean sun and in fact i live in Milan right now, where it normally rains for at least 20 days each month. And of course this is amazing. I don't think i can stand the summer though, but truth be told, summer is quite tolerable here, compared with the summer in Greece which is the worst torture imaginable. And with the Neo-Nazis running around, things are even worse right now, summer or not.

What are the differences between the Greek and Spanish music scene?
Hmmm, regarding music scenes: I generally don't want to be part of any scene, in the sense of socializing with musicians, mostly because i get super easily intimidated when comparing myself to other people. Also, i really prefer being secluded and having the chance to work on my own pace. Maybe this has to do with the previously mentioned event, (that guy that broke up our band), a thing that maybe led me to being unable to trust other people that much. But who knows for sure?

Anyway, while in Barcelona i hung out with some guys of the local scene (for instance Cristian Subirà, who now runs an amazing show on Dublab as Cosmic D'Alessandro), but i didn't have the proper chance to delve too much. But I am still shocked from an amazing concert by this band named Les Aus, a cross between Alice Coltrane (Universal Consciousness era, with Rashied Ali freaking out) and The Durutti Column. It was fucking intense.

The music scene in Athens, GR is extremely busy and dense, and about to explode any minute now. you can literally spend a year there just listening exclusively to extremely skilled local bands and producers, and going around shows and parties organized by enthusiastic promoters. There is a strong sense of community, and with the crisis this warm feeling gets to prevail even more. But being Greeks, we tend to be super aggressive at certain points, and you also get to witness some back-stabbing going on, which is always nice and refreshing.

Where has been your favorite place to perform so far and what made it the best?
In early 2010, I played a small festival outside Barcelona (Gargall Fest), in a small town called Manresa. It was amazing, in the sense that it was one of my first shows outside of Greece, and i felt liberated in a really strange way. Untill that point I was used to be playing among friends or people who were a little bit aware of me and my songs, but over there nobody seemed to care about my act. It was a perfect feeling, i even started rapping in Greek, played extended versions of my songs and danced without worries about my fat figure. Happy times indeed.

What can we expect from this mix?
There are 29 tracks in there, and the total duration is 66 mins, 26 secs. It's recorded straight from my Numark PT-01 into the laptop via a desktop konnekt 6 audio interface. Most of my records are waiting silently and patiently in a garage in my small hometown in Greece. Which is quite an unfortunate event, but i can't do much at this point. So, for this mix, i used records that i bought while living here in Milan. I really enjoy listening to mixes that are diverse and surprising, although someone could even use the expression "all over the place" to describe them in a negative manner.

I included some unreleased beats, edits and remixes i did. I found the secret link that directly connects Prince with Black Dice's Eric Copeland. Also, at some point in the near future I want to do a minimix solely with music from Copelands. Eric, Inga, Aaron and Stewart. He (Stewart) has soundtracked some movies by himself, playing different instruments, and those albums seem to be much weirder than i initially thought. But in a good way, I guess.

Truth is that i spent the last months listening compulsively to Marc Maron's WTF podcast, and i slowly realize that somehow, the way i perceive things is slowly changing.

Tracklist:

01. Percussion Profiles - Movement 1 (excerpt) [ECM, 1978]
02. Sam Rivers - Expectation (excerpt) [Red Record, 1976]
03. Dana Buoy - Best Around (Larry Gus Remix) [Unreleased]
04. Bellows - Untitled 6 [Entr'acte, 2012 / Holidays Records, 2013]
05. Eric Copeland - Get Along [Post Present Medium, 2012]
06. Prince - The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker [Paisley Park / Warner Bros, 1987]
07. Mark Isham - Raffles In Rio [Windham Hill Records, 1983]
08. Oh No - Believe [Stones Throw, 2006]
09. King Elephant - Under The Bed [Inner Ear, 2011]
10. Larry Gus - Human Migration [Demo]
11. Daniel Padden - 17 Leaves In The Low Register [Dekorder, 2011]
12. Hymne An Indien - Dhanya Prabhu (Traditional) [Fontana, 1976, reissue]
13. Larry Gus - Thailand II [Demo]
14. Daniel Padden - Various Saints (excerpt) [Dekorder, 2011]
15. Larry Gus - Reverse Braille [Demo]
16. Snoop Dogg - Knocc Em Down (Larry Gus Remix) (Instrumental) [Unreleased]
17. Thanasis Gkaifylias - Ekdromi (excerpt) [Minos EMI, 1975]
18. Mo Kolours - Mini Culcha (Beautiful Swimmers Remix) [One Handed Music, 2012]
19. Lee Gamble - ExpRand Trace [PAN, 2012]
20. Ippu Do - Radio Cosmos [Epic, 1981]
21. Lorenzo Senni - Windows Of Vulnerability (excerpt) [Editions Mego, 2012]
22. Black Dice - Motorcycle [DFA, 2005]
23. Sakis et son Orchestre African Safari Soukouss - Ngoma [Mayala, 1987]
24. Angelos Kyriou - Ksedipsase Apo Tin Anagnorisi (excerpt) [Exostis, 2011]
25. Azymuth - Toc De Bola [Milestone Records, 1988]
26. Daniel Padden - War in a Battle Song [Dekorder, 2011]
27. Ulrich P. Lask - Sucht [ECM, 1984]
28. Take Six - Twangy [Music De Wolfe, 1980]
29. Andrew Pekler - Waltz for Minor Planets [Schoolmap, 2009]

Larry Gus - Years Not Living LP Available June 25th on DFA Records