A sedated, zonked out little EP of hung-over low-fi disco, this CDR from L.A. artist and performer Nite Jewel, shimmers in a haze of early autumn Southland sunshine. A layer of hiss will almost certainly get removed and bit more bottom and crispness discovered once these tracks are mastered for the Glass Candy split 12′ coming out later this month on the Italians Do It Better label, but these are deliberately degenerated tracks. Nite Jewel’s Ramona Gonzalez uses the natural compression of an 8-track tape recorder to create a willfully muddy low-fi pop. It’s the fetishization of tape and vintage synths as a means to unlock the obsessive innovation of Outsider Art.

Recently, L.A. has been bubbling up with a whole crop of bedroom pop bands. No Age and Abe Vigoda’s Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock era sonics, Jeremy Jay’s introverted crooner melodrama and Haunted Graffiti’s Dr. Demento homemade psychedelia have all broken through to remind us there is an L.A. beyond the Sunset strip. Certainly there might be something of Laurel Canyon or the too cool for school hedonism of the Germs in it, but really, this is another Los Angeles entirely. Self-sufficient, insular, hipster, nerdy and self-reflective to the point of mythology, this scene of interlocking scenes has followed the path of gentrification and grown wildly in the last decade. 

This image of L.A. fits well with the easy-going lilt of Nite Jewel’s unhurried DIY ethos. Evoking the decidedly blotto feeling of being up for days this is a strobe lit inner party; a lost weekend of decadent self-absorption. The reductive shallow beats are echos from last night’s party; the vaporous looped layers of vocals and synths congeal and run like less than fresh make-up exposed when the lights come on. It’s a world seen from behind sunglasses captured well in the video for stand out track, Artificial Intelligence.