The vinyl is in and the first few copies have been shipped out!!!
Here is a free promo track from the album:

You can also see Lokua’s Violence Jack video below.

Preview other tracks and order your copy directly from us HERE

You can also order it from Groove Distribution in the US and Clone Distribution in Europe

“Belle” by Lokua (featured on the Water-Rock album available for free download at Soft Phase net-label)
Video by Chuck Przybyl (more at 10KLux)

Download ZIP from archive.org or Moment Sound or Dedicated Records

It has been almost a year and a half since the release of “Trails” most which Lokua spent honing his craft in a suburban basement on the outskirts of Chicago and performing more than weekly in various Chicago venues. At this point, there does not exist a corner of electronic music Lokua has not yet made his own and the release is a reflection of this. A great variety of styles are brought together with a strong and coherent narrative structure and a unique “Lokua sound”.
This is a horrifically dark, enigmatic and twisted side of Lokua. Yet the sublime, and at times tender, finesse makes one wish that the sun never shone and we were eternally trapped in the subterranean dungeon of his sick nightmare. Many daemons have been unleashed over the past few years and quite a few extra-terrestrial spirits summoned in order to channel the energy towards a greater musical good that starts out as a soundtrack to your life and slowly becomes life itself.

Lokua on Myspace

go to release on archive.org

The following cast is a combination of two live sets by Lokua performed at Morseland on Chicago’s North Side for the Weekly series Heartbeats. The first half of the cast (00:00-22:24) took place on March 25 and phases from grass-roots-hip hop to electro jazz-funk to space-krunk. The second half (22:25-49:34) actually took place on an earlier date (March 18) and is highly improvisational, stylistically ranging from ambient-experimental to a minimal tech-house sort of sound.

These sets have also been featured on Solipsistic Nation along with an interview and two extra studio tracks.

For your ambient listening pleasure, Moment Sound’s own Lokua has made another contribution to the net-audio community w/ his second release “Water Rock” available for free download at Soft Phase net-label.

UPCOMING:

11/11
Je July, Beautiful City, Mux Mool

11/18
Mathias Matthew, Slow-Children

11/25
Millipede, Candle Nine, Protman, IPA-Ghost, video by MACHINIST

12/02
M50, Slow-Children

12/09
C. Tomorrow, more TBA

PAST GUESTS:

The Primeridian
The Sound Conspiracy
Lazerhawks
Scottfree
Drunken Monkeee
Black Daylight
Tomorrow Kings
Radius
Dojo VS Twitch
The Abominable Twitch
DJ Kana
Elevation AKA Dee Jay Uncle EL
Tall Black Guy
M50
Slow Children
Curious J
DJ Editkut
Freezerburn
Makers Of Sense
Franco De Leon
Slant
Bijou
Walter Vandell Harris
Tevo T. Howard
1773
DJ Trew
J Slikk
IL Legit
Garo
Slava
Ross Kelly
Waveplant
The Great Mundane
Murry The Magnificent
Leo 123
Kenny Keys
Gera
K-rAd
Dreamlogcc
Gravity Max
DJ Moppy
Kollage
Raj Mahal
DJ Flash
Mexicans With Guns
Je July
Chicago Sewer
We Are Aliens
Gee Cee
Resinator
0+1=Everything
Mark Hardy (Ottoman Vampire)
DJ Chip Chop
Noleian
Sibilant
Beautiful City
Mux Mool

Here is a two part mix of classic hip hop instrumentals featuring some of my biggest inspirations like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, RZA, Large Professor, J-Dilla, Molemen, Diamond D, etc. Most tracks are from the mid to late 90s but there quite a few from the late 80s and 00s. I apologize for not providing a track-list but if you want to know what’s what, email me (lokua@momentsound.com) with the time the track occurs and I will do my best to honor your request.

Yet another blast from the past live set, this time accompanied by an in depth (and up-to-date) interview…

Slow Children: What was the sky like when you were young?

Lokua: The sky was a visual soundtrack for imagination. Even now i still go to the park and lay down and pretend that I’m hanging from the universe’s ceiling looking down on the sky, something like reverse gravity, the sky is a bottomless pit. Before I had thought about things like an ever-expanding universe or infinity it was all right there in front of me. I didn’t need to think to experience wonder, just had to look.

SC: Bubble helmet ah? …And what about colors?

L: Yellow is me. As a child i had a yellow cup, a yellow blanket, only wanted to eat yellow foods like queso fundido, oatmeal, mac-n-cheese. Maybe it has something to do w/ being born on LSD w/ jaundice. I’m pretty good at yielding the right of way. Yellow is me. Red is my grandma. She looooves red. Cardinals, strawberries. Used to can tomatoes every year. Unfortunately she’s received more red sweaters for Christmas than she could ever wear but hey, that’s what you get for having a thing for red. Red and yellow make orange, so for me orange is symbolic of our love for each other, a child and an elder, able to exchange so much w/ so little effort. The rest of my color associations are a little strange so I’ll just stop here.

SC: Very interesting answer. Lets now talk about music a little bit. Lets start with it’s connection to colors. What’s the value of color in your music?

L: I could go on for days taking about musicolor and the history of the world as it relates to the 808 cowbell but more importantly, if a rhubarb wasn’t a rhubarb, would it still be a rhubarb?

SC: I think that rhubarb means something just as long as you think it means something… talking about meaning….what in your music comes first: meaning that you put into the song or the song which you fill with meaning later? How do you control the ground of your music? Consciously or more automatically/unconsciously? Do you have a concept first and then execution or you go straight into unknown and let it happen the way it will happen? I think all of these questions are kind of variations of one so you can answer them all together or separately starting with the last or with the first…I mean that you can answer them however you want.

L: I often approach song writing w/ what mood I’m in. When a good friend of mine passed I thought of honoring his memory w/ a soulful beat, something w/ a lot of swing and bump like 90’s DJ Premier or the Molemen from Chicago because that’s what HE loved. The song ended up being highly energetic because hey, I’m not all that into mourning. He loved to hear me freestyle so I made something I could free to. At the opposite end I approach music as an experimentalist, a student, learning from experience. In that case I am reactionary. I start w/ a sound and proceed from there according to my liking (”Oooh, this windchime sample sounds CRAZY w/ this wacked out filter LFO!” dorky stuff). At other times I start from a programmer’s stance and create according to mathematics and derive motivic equations from a root idea, thought becomes like a calculator. The experimental and mathematical approaches are always at hand, yet the emotional has to be dealt w/ from sincerity, an embracing of now. If I’m happy it’s a little harder to write a gut-wrenching tear-jerking opus, something just sounds fake to me, meditation is useful in the case that I just HAVE to convey a certain mood. Interpretation is a lot of fun as well. A simple word is all that’s needed, say CAT. Literally a “prrrr” sound is a good start and creating that “prrr” is where the fun comes in. The qualities of a cat can be expressed w/ musical and technical metaphors as well. Cats are sharp (like a snare drum), mysterious (like wind chimes), independent and precise (arrhythmic vs structured), able to chill then jump up in a moment (abrupt change in harmony or melody or tempo etc.). The hardest thing for me is balancing these approaches, which I believe yields the most effective music, though I do love just diving into one w/ all of my might.

SC: I like that “embracing of now”. Do you think you have a particular sound, stuff that you can group when you hear your tracks? For me it was a problem to define your sound at first. By sound I mean for example Rhythm & Sound, they make tracks in a very similar way, rather then let’s say…. its actually pretty hard to come up with the name that does not have its own sound… well anyway, that’s what I at first thought about your music…. and still think sometimes… i guess you know how to surprise and experiment haha… so do you think you have and know Lokua sound? (let me know if i was not clear with this one).

L: Hip Hop.

SC: That was I guess super straight to the point…..and what is hip-hop? Tell me — an uneducated white man from Moscow.

L: “Healthy Independent People Helping Other People”. I’m a child of the 80s, they say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, for me Hip Hop was that village. I honestly don’t think I would have ever ended up making music if it wasn’t for hip hop. And no matter how out there I can get in my musical journey, hip hop as a sound, culture, feeling, will always be the foundation from which i started. I didn’t need to study music theory to kick a beat-box. Not sure if that answers your question. In the words of KRS-1 “rap is something you do, hip hop is something you live”. Put an 808-Apache hybrid over that.

SC: I never knew what it stands for…. now i know it + know what it means to you… great…. I know that we already left all due dates behind so i will maybe ask one or two more questions and then we send it before Slava castrated us or fed us to the wolves….what will be a good question to ask?

L: What would be a good question to ask?
Um…well damn, thats like asking myself a question! hmmm. i don’t know, guess i’m not that creative;) shit…you’re the interviewer! i mean interviewing myself? i’d rather fill out a myspace survey. who’s the last person you called? deaf child.

download zip file of the release

Lokua (Joshua Keckner) is a master of melody, texture and mood. Many are yet to experience this musician’s full scope of ability. Lokua’s earlier works consist largely of down-tempo instrumental hip-hop. Recent works branch out to include a large scope of electronic genres with a significant amount of dance material. 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.

A Chicago native, Lokua has fully embraced and embodied his environment. His sound is deeply rooted in the city’s music and social history and his countless live performances are imbued with contemporary yet authentic and raw Chicago culture. With a back catalog of tracks hovering in the thousands (including a number of conceptually-complete albums) and new ones being produced daily, we can look forward to a great variety of music releases in the near (as well as distant) future.

links: Lokua’s myspace contact: lokua *At* momentsound *Dot* com

cover art by ac.jazz

Here is a bunch of beats I made waaay back in the day mixed by Oneword, a producer/dj currently situated in Portland. He makes music of his own that you can check out @ www.myspace.com/theoneword.

peace,
-Lokua