Teebs’ “E S T A R A” album review

by Eric Evans

Taken on its own, painter/producer Teebs’ new record E S T A R A is a pleasant diversion: 12 tracks that serve more as tone poems than songs, textured and rich, melodic yet not song-crafty. Which is not to say there’s no structure to them, but Teebs doesn’t seem to be after the verse-chorus-verse-chorus mainstream crowd who is so enamored of beat producers like, say, Calvin Harris.

You could play Teebs at a gallery or a dinner party and no one would be tempted to twirl lightsticks or walk away humming a particular hook. His aren’t those kinds of beats. They’re mellow. Outside of a larger context E S T A R A charms but feels more like an evolutionary branch of ambient music than anything borne of the new generation of electronic music producers.  However, if you place Teebs (Mtendere Mandowa) within the context of the Los Angeles BRAINFEEDER crew his work becomes part of a larger puzzle. To better understand a piece, it helps to know more about the whole.

Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, established BRAINFEEDER in 2008 as a home to L.A.’s burgeoning electronic music and experimental hip hop scene. Part label, part crew, BRAINFEEDER’s diversity and consistent quality helped cement Los Angeles’ rep as an electronic music city in short order. And what diversity: Thundercat (Stephen Bruner) sounds like 70s jazz/fusion channeled through a thinking machine while TOKiMONSTA (Jennifer Lee) tracks fluctuate between shuffling soul (Midnight Menu) and Kraftwerkian beeps and clicks (Half Shadows).

What the various BRAINFEEDERs have in common is an ear for something other than what you expect when you come to electronic music. Teebs somehow makes sense here as an eccentric yet accessible beatmaker whose tracks sound the way his paintings look: organic, gentle, immersive, and composed of disparate yet harmonious elements. E S T A R A won’t be your go-to summer jam but it’s a record you’ll play on rainy evenings for the next 10 years. It soothes.

Release date: April 7, 2014