A while back I wrote a post about my friend L5D playing live in his parents basement.  To recap, L5D is my friend Colin Swenson.  I’ve known him my whole life, but even if I didn’t know him, I would still dig his music.  L5D is a moniker he made music as for a long time.  Now he goes as Omnii.  Think broken tapes, half-functioning equipment, sun drenched home movies, Boards of Canada, and microphones hanging from trees…that kind of thing.  Ever since I posted his old L5D music, we’ve been reconnecting on the music front, which has been amazing.  He recently sent me three old L5D albums, and they are all fucking great.

Before we go any further though, if you are in Minnesota, he’s playing a show as Dollar Store Keyboard (a brand new project) at The Rock in Maplewood on January 22nd at 9 pm.  Click here for more info.

(1) L5D – Neppodosia EP.

6 tracks, all great.  These are the songs he played live that night in his parents basement.  They are gloriously broken, sounding like J Dilla tracks that have been dubbed 400x on a boombox by someone’s little brother until the tape has broken down into a new world entirely.  He calls this his “favorite moment in L5D history”.

(2) L5D – Partehtpacse.

Read it backwards.  This first song is brilliant, I love how it builds on its own and then starts decomposing until only a shred of itself is left.  Thats my favorite part actually.  At the end of the track, through all the chaos and noise, you can hear snatches of the original samples.  Awesome.  Click here to download the entire album.

I also cut together a little “nothing” video to one of the tracks on the album.  Nothing huge, but I think it works on some weird level.

(3) L5D – Peace EP.

Higher production values on this one, making it “colder” than the more analog stuff, but also thicker, more complex.  According to Colin, it “goes well with percocet”.  And I agree.  Darker, druggier, crazier.  This track comes together around the 2 minute mark.  Makes me feel like running into traffic…in a good way?  Seriously.

After all of these releases, he went to an island in Norway to make his next (and final) album as L5D.  Stay tuned for that, and go to that show damn you.