Shlohmo On His New Album 'Dark Red' and Music Video Directing With HYPETRAK

Heading LA music and art collective WEDIDIT is 25-year-old producer Shlohmo, whose enigmatic releases straddle the line between dark, sluggish techno and post-modern R&B. Following from 2011’s Bad Vibes, Shlohmo’s latest output is Dark Red, a menacing 11-track LP that’s set to drop via True Panther and WEDIDIT on April 7. Ahead of the album release, our music-savvy compadres HYPETRAK recently caught up with Shlohmo in his Melrose studio to learn about the producer’s creative growth, the incorporation of a live band in his shows, and his budding role as music video director. Check out an excerpt below and read the full interview over on HYPETRAK.

When did you start working on Dark Red?
About two years ago, right after I had finished the music for Laid Out.

When did you know it was going to be a full-length album, and how was the process like?
I knew that’s what I set out to do the whole time. I had stopped working on it and started mastering at the end of last summer, so the process took about a year and a half.

What has changed in your personal life since the last release?
I grew up a lot. I made Bad Vibes when I was 19. I had finished a few more by the time I turned 21. I’m 25 now and it feels like I’ve learned some sh*t. My life is very different now, back then I had just dropped out of college and started realizing that being a musician could be my job, more than something that I did for fun.

How much of it was actually planned?
None; it’s really been a really weird f*cking snowball. It’s been really slow-scale; it started out from literally nothing. The musician life is over-glorified by others — I drive the same car I drove since high school, I go to this studio that’s covered in ash, I live in a first-floor apartment. I’m leveling up, but it’s as they make it seem.