If it sounds complicated, it is. Falty’s proclivities, which are now expanding to include afrobeat influences, thanks to obsessive Fela Kuti consumption, break down genre bounds to let everything flow together. “I’m definitely in a conscious, hyper-aware state when I’m making music,” he says. “I’m thinking a lot about sound—not so much where it’s going to land, or if people are going to like it, or if it’s going to be released, or what kind of music it is. When I’m making music it’s like I can almost hear the whole song in my head. And I have to get it out of my head and onto the computer.” It sounds like transcendental meditation, but Falty’s wide open range has left some wily journos in a pickle, wondering what to call it, thus sparking the perpetual tug-of-war between music writers trying to describe what they’re hearing and producers wanting not to be boxed in. “I think I got sort of labeled as making dubstep, which I didn’t think was accurate but I didn’t really mind that much,” he says. “Wonderful journalists will come up with something new and fresh, but once that conversation starts about what something is, it’s sort of over the moment it starts.” Dance fans have seen it a million times, most recently in dubstep’s inevitable transition to “brostep” and the complicated issue of whether “future garage”—another term Falty DL’s been pegged with—is in fact “future” if it’s being made in the present. And isn’t garage just garage anyway? Music journalists need useful, communicative terms, but in genres that evolve practically nightly and with countless producers trying to push the narrative, how does a guy like Falty DL, who truly traverses styles, keep himself interested? Story: Julianne Escobedo Shepherd For nearly five years, Falty DL has been quietly releasing excellently fine-tuned electronic music from his apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. There, he hunkers down with the focus of a perfectionist with an ear for voluminous melody. Though his heart is in New York, planted firmly in hip-hop, his sound usually ventures across the globe, mining British club beats from sources like Aphex Twin and 2-step. It lends an itinerant vibe to carefully produced tracks like “Open Space,” a mind-bender from his latest album, You Stand Uncertain, that parlays tubular bells into impeccable jungle and a classic house bridge overlaid on a clamoring breakbeat.
“I have this insatiable hunger to make music,” he says. “I also just sort of feel like there are tons of producers who make amazing music, but I don’t think anyone can say they’ve heard anything entirely new in a number of years. Sure, dubstep was very different and cool, but it also sounded a little bit like grime, and a little bit like slowed down jungle. There’s nothing that’s just totally foreign and alien that I hear on a day-to-day basis. So I feel like I’m searching for that sound. I don’t even think I’m gonna make it, but I just get sort of bored with everything I hear, so I want to just keep making more and more and more.” A solution we can all agree on. faltydl.tumblr.com To watch a video interview with Falty DL, check out scionav.com