His new album Speedstar is coming on August 20th via Bar/None Records.
A new album is in the works from LA's Justus Proffit. A veteran of the cities DIY scene, his sophomore album Speedstar comes on the heels of a collaborative EP with Jay Som, and his fantastic debut LA's Got Me Down.
Lead single "Burning the Ground" is a smoldering slice of jangle pop, written after a hike in the Pacific Northwest, the song reflects on the fires that ravaged California, overwhelmed at the thought that one day they might all be gone.
On the single he writes -
"Burning the ground is about destruction, I wrote it while I was up in Washington. I was hiking in the middle of the woods and this was during the fires last year. I was thinking about how the trees were all going to burn down someday, this song is about impermanence."
His new album Speedstar is coming on August 20th via Bar/None Records.
If you were attending shows in a pre-pandemic Los Angeles, it's likely that at some point you ended up at Topspace, the underground arts and living quarters helmed by Justus Proffit. The cavernous Inglewood location follows a move from the fashion district, where the venue was housed in the nondescript market towers. Attendees ascended a service elevator and navigated stark concrete halls, following the obscure din of echoing drums and muffled vocals before entering what doubled as a stage and occasionally, a bedroom - mattresses flipped against the wall to make room for the tightly packed audience.
It's a lifestyle embedded in Proffit's DNA, growing up in a family of musicians where amplifiers and equipment dotted the living room like spare furniture. House shows were a regular occurrence, filling their backyard with mohawks and leather jackets who made good use of the halfpipe on hand. His dad's record collection included bands like Devo, TSOL, and The Dead Milkmen, while his mom, an artist in her own right, turned him on to songwriters like Robert Smith and Black Francis. Several times a week he'd end up at the iconic Showcase Theatre, where the tail end of the gutter punk scene was unraveling. "I like the story, the raw details'', he explains, remembering nights that sound like a scene from The Decline of Western Civilization.
By 13 he was drumming in a band with his brother and sister, and at 16, touring the States in a slew of hardcore and punk groups. A solo career was never his intention, but when his own band abruptly broke up, Proffit figured he'd make good use of the studio time they had booked, performing every instrument on a brief but impressive collection of songs. The happy accident proved fruitful, leading to a collaborative EP with breakout bedroom-pop artist Melina Duterte (Jay Som), a friendship with lo-fi pioneer R. Stevie Moore, and a record deal with the venerable indie label Bar/None (Yo La Tengo, Of Montreal, Alex Chilton).
His rapidly expanding universe fed right back into the venue, packing every month with a breakneck schedule of shows at Topspace, and before long Proffit ended up in the hospital with a torn esophagus. Setback aside, he still managed to release one of 2019's most underrated albums, LA's Got Me Down, a deceptively bright record that chronicled years of struggle in an unforgiving city. With his health in mind, things started to shift down at home, but it was the slow crawl of an unprecedented virus that brought things to a grinding halt.
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