Yiddish Lazerbass

Math Rosen is a Montreal musician who plays, among other things, lazer bass. Lazer bass isn't an instrument, it's a varient of hip-hop that's heavy on bass and futuristic in tone. The genre name was coined by New Yorker blogger Sasha Frere-Jones. She was specifically describing a mix by Montreal DJ collective Megasoid and more broadly a group of musicians "bounded on the left side by the dyad of Los Angeles and San Francisco, sliced in half by Montreal, and ends on the right side in Glasgow, Scotland."

I don't have much info on Math Rosen other than that he's a Montreal DJ. I've got no idea why he thought to do a Yiddish Lazerbass, but I dig it. I also got no idea what that light/button table is that he's fiddling with. I'm assuming it's a control device for some kind of sequencer, but it's a new one on me. I shot him an email last night and will let y'all know if he get's back to me. Update: My buddy Hasidic Musician from Blog in Dm set me straight (as he often does). It's a monome 128, "a reconfigurable grid of sixty-four backlit buttons" tied to a sequencer app. Gorgeous.

Yiddish Lazerbass from Math Rosen on Vimeo.

Hat tip to the @yiddishkayt twitter feed & website for pointing me to Rosen. "Yiddishkayt strives to ensure the survival of the endangered thousand-year legacy of Yiddish language, culture and history."