Lokua
̸
Biografía
- Chicago based techno, house, hip hop, ambient producer and live p/a performer.One day Lokua added a pitch envelope to a low octave sine wave. He titled it "BD" for Bass Drum; the sound was something like BOOM. He laid it down on the first, second, third and fourth beat and looped it. After that he duplicated the track and changed the sine oscillator to white noise, slightly opened (or slowed) the amplification's attack, added a hi-pass filter to kill the lows, and moved every note an eighth forward; this became "OH" for Open Hat; a sound like SHHHH. Next was to be "HH" for Hi-Hat which was very similar to OH only with a sharp attack again like BD, a much shorter decay, even more lows cut, and a placement on every 16th note ts ts ts ts ts ts (very fast). At this point Lokua realized what was to come next - can you guess? Lately Lokua hasn't been all too fond of Snare Drums or Claps so he decided to record his one bar loop into a new channel. Scratching his head, it dawned on him to take the first dotted eighth of the bar and loop it so it met every three beats with his original loop (though he pitched it down an octave to stand out). He called this "1" and created altered duplicates 2, 3, 4 etc. in much the same way he made BD, OH, and HH. Lokua continued in this fashion until after about an hour he realized it was time to turn the speakers on so he could hear what he made. "It's a good start", he thought to himself, "I wonder if we have any oatmeal cookies left" and off to the kitchen he went. Seriously though... Lokua (born Joshua Jay Kleckner) is a master of texture and mood. Heavily influenced as a child by Chicago's gritty hip-hop scene and undeniable house presence led him to start producing in 1995, where-after he majored in music composition at Columbia College, Chicago. Earlier works consist largely of down-tempo instrumental hip-hop (literally thousands of tracks) from jazzy boom-bap to nightmarish theme music. Recent works branch out to include a large scope of electronic genres with a significant amount of ambient and up-tempo stylings ranging from acid-house to minimal techno. Lokua’s sound is characterized by the richness and sincerity of its emotional content with even the danciest of tracks retaining a deep, cerebral sophistication. Completely immersed in the art of live P/A - often free-styling entire sets – Lokua has been rocking all walks of Chicago night-life from art shows to grimy warehouse raves and various traditional music venues including residencies at Darkroom, Subterranean, Rodan, and his three years and running weekly Heartbeats at Morseland. Lokua has released on CPKAY RCRDS (Chicago), Soft Phase (a nordic netlabel), remixed for Lucidflow, and is co-founder of the multi-faceted Moment Sound label. Oh and he makes graphic animations.