The noirish notion of “fantastic LA” may have commenced when Jim Morrison sang of bloody red sunsets for The Doors’ “Peace Frog.” But that wild wonder of dusky ambience and fiery atmosphere haunts much of the music of Los Angeles in the present — particularly its small, studio-based jazz scenes surrounding Sam First’s LAX terminal spaces, Carlos Niño’s freeform collage-like environments and the radiant hang suite of Flying Lotus and Kamasi Washington’s design, long before the saxophonist brought 100 musicians and epic compositions to the new LA County Museum of Art.
Lucy’s Meat Market, the studio run by Colorfield label head and producer Pete Min, holds the warmth of the sun and the wonkiness of spacey, noisy LA nu-jazz as its signature sound. The vibe so appeals to another son of the county, drummer-composer Joey Waronker, that he and Min became friends. Across three years they crafted the dizzily decorous tones of King King with buddy-collaborators as diffuse as guitarist Jeff Parker, saxophonist Nicole McCabe and Waronker’s fellow drummer Mark Guiliana, gravitating to a cut-and-paste aesthetic similar to the late Teo Macero’s treatments of Miles Davis’s jams.
“I love that you think that this album breathes the scent of Los Angeles, as I romanticize that all the time,” says Waronker from Cardiff, Wales, hours before kicking off his new gig drumming for the 2025 Oasis world tour with Liam and Noel Gallagher. Waronker politely refrained from taking Oasis questions, preferring to discuss this new album with Min. “It’s a fantasy for sure,” he says. “The world I live in is more, for lack of a better way of putting it, an alt-pop world. That Pete had access to this burgeoning new jazz scene in LA and made me a part of it is a huge thrill.”
The Eno Influence
Min, a New Yorker who has lived in LA for 20 years, had to search the City of Angels for his place within it. “It’s literally a big, expansive place and takes time to get things going because it is so vast. A lot of stuff happens behind closed doors and you don’t know what to look for.”
Once those doors opened for Min (“within the last eight years for me”), an LA jazz scene filled with open-ended nights at ETA (and Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose) and the Kamasi-Flying Lotus phenomenon at the top of the 2000s became second nature. “This is before Kamasi was Kamasi, and everybody was just doing their thing,” Min recalls.
For all talk of Los Angeles, Min sees what he does as closer to the work and demeanor of a Brian Eno, making risky music through the elements of chance and randomness — possibly, not unlike how the British producer worked with the No Wave scene of Downtown Manhattan and ensembles birthed by Arto Lindsay, Lydia Lunch and the late saxophonist James Chance for the No New York compilation.
“For Eno, music is never what someone tells you it’s supposed to be,” says Min. “My ethos for the label is to bring [musicians] in, and get off the treadmill. Let’s start on an instrument that isn’t the one you’re used to playing. Let’s get you excited about making new music and searching. Out of that searching comes this music.”
Waronker adds that Eno’s work as a producer and spirit guide for musicians was to create a piece of art. “If a pop song happened as a result of that, so be it,” says the drummer. “It’s something genreless. Same thing with Pete. If he put chords on something I do, great. If it stays experimental, weird and angular, that’s cool too.”
Nothing Is Precious
Waronker came into the process of King King, in part, from something expansive beyond drumming: his work providing music and scoring elements for films such as Star Maps, documentaries like Lost in La Mancha and television series such as Alias and Malcolm in the Middle.
“Personally, across the last couple of years, I’ve definitely wanted to play more jazz and be more experimental,” says Waronker, who met Min while jamming with his guitarist friend (and acclaimed Colorfield recording artist) Anthony Wilson. (Collodion is Wilson’s 2023 Colorfield release, made with Min in a similarly open-ended way.) “When Pete contacted me about collaborating with him on this project, I was absolutely ‘yes,’ as it sounded like a blast,” the drummer adds.
More so than most Colorfield releases, King King is about Min the active participant, the co-leader: in addition to writing and producing he plays guitar, piano, synthesizer and drum machine, and acts as the album’s filmic editor.
“On this album, I felt as if I could give the tracks more form, so I just kinda did it without telling Joey,” he confides. “Nothing is precious in my world. If I spend time doing something and the other person doesn’t like it, then hey, I had to give it a try. But Joey was amenable to what was happening. […] And that describes the process: me calling Joey, getting together over me having some crazy Buchla sound or him having some rhythm. We did that ten times, and we had a record.” JT