Electronic Music Reimagined

After releasing his sixth studio album, Better Days Ahead, electronic music artist Aaron Velasquez, better known as Flamingosis, is, for the first time ever, accompanied by a live band on the road and performing at Santa Barbara’s beloved SOhO Music Club. Armed with a sax of his own, Valasquez pushes his already genre-bending electronic music even further with the help of Bodega Groove Collective, an ensemble composed of percussionist Nico Jimenez, keyboardist Ian Gilly, guitarist Drew Birch, and trumpeter Nate Miller.

“It’s more than just an electronic DJ set now. It’s incorporated with live instrumentation.” Valasquez said. “It’s not something that I’m used to but it’s been a lot of fun.”

Growing up in a household with a diverse CD and record collection — everything from Earth, Wind & Fire to Britney Spears, Velasquez learned to appreciate all types of music from a young age. With a special fondness for soul, for his public school music requirement, Velasquez picked up the saxophone in third grade. But his introduction to electronic music production wasn’t until a class during sophomore year of high school required him to learn Garageband. 

“I was messing around with loops and the plugins in that program and that sparked my interest. So then I got into other programs like Abelton and Traktor Pro,” Velasquez said. 

Throughout high school, mixing remained more of a personal hobby for Velasquez but once he got to college at Franklin & Marshall, he began DJing at parties and other events around campus. As he got more comfortable on the drum pad, he even booked some gigs at a small venue downtown from the campus called the Chameleon Club before moving to Brooklyn and pursuing music full time.

Slowly branching out and introducing more eclectic samples and collaborations with each album, Better Days Ahead ranges from groovy club tracks like Feel Yourself with Marc Rebillet to jazzier ballads like the title track. The album centers around the themes of perseverance and self-improvement, inspired by Velasquez’s personal journey.

“It sounds cheesy, but I did take a good look in the mirror and I realized that I wasn’t the best version of myself,” Velasquez said. “Mentally, physically, and emotionally, the last three years, I’ve made those adjustments and I think I’m definitely a better version of myself now than I was back then.”

With instrumentation and beats at the forefront of most of the songs, “the way [Velasquez] titled all the tracks tells a story and there’s snippets of lyrics that drive the point forward,” he said. 

In addition to his own experience, for one of the album’s singles Anime Elegy, Velasquez drew inspiration from one of his favorite characters Guts from the anime show Berserk. “He’s had probably the hardest, most traumatic life, but no matter how hard things get for him, he just keeps persevering,” Velasquez said. “I’m dealing with some heavy stuff behind the scenes and I have to figure out a way to deal with it and move forward and be better.”

A lot of the sonic inspiration on the album comes from the music that Velasquez ended up sampling. “Obscure funk artists” like 9th Creation, Little Beaver and Spats made their ways from Velasquez’s headphones to the mixing table. 

If Velasquez knows there’s a song he wants to sample, he’ll start arranging the instrumentals and electronic drums around that, otherwise, “the process just sort of depends,” he said. The elements he considers are sampling, live band instrumentals, lyrics, and electronic drums but the order in which he layers them varies based on what the song is asking for.
At the show, Velasquez is excited to see the fans and show and share the adapted live versions of his new stuff and his most popular tracks. For more information about Flamingosis, visit flamingosis.com and to purchase tickets for the show on May 29 at SOhO, visit sohosb.com.