RamonPang is Fostering a UK Garage Scene for California
NUKG Monthly is Nathan Evans' UK garage and club music column. This edition dives into the rising California garage scene with LA artist RamonPang.
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Garage is a sound that, in LA artist, DJ and social media personality RamonPang’s words, started in the US, got rejected by the US, and is now back in the US. Across the US, certain communities have sought to reinstate that swing into the club vocabulary, with the eldiaNYC crew of gum.mp3, Swami Sound and Dazegxd on the East Coast, while in the South, the Stateside Swing series offers the classic vinyl dubplate experience, all from what feels like a nostalgic enclave of producers.
But post-NUKG revival, California has been producing its fair share of talents like Introspekt and Hans Glader, and now has enough interest Pacific-side to be a present force in Newark queer parties, EDM-leaning parties and even a handful of dedicated garage nights such as Garage Access and Club Evil. Still, with the hype cycle of UK garage sweeping the most obnoxious of American festivals from Coachella to EDC, and given America’s historic bro-ification of UK club sounds, there can be a bit of an image problem when it comes to Americans doing garage, something RamonPang is all too familiar with.
As co-chief of the Tabula Rasa Record Company alongside Jozef White and Nuno Cerqueira, RamonPang has played a part in facilitating a new West Coast sound for garage. One which exudes a love for UK bass and IDM’s glitchy and bright machine sounds, using it to echo the maximalism of the City of Angels. Where you might expect a scene to dodge that trait in favour of a smoother, sexier style, Tabula Rasa has opted to lean directly into it with a memetic angle.
This year, they have released the pragmatically-titled UK Garage from California, whose artwork is repeatedly stamped with the American pronunciation of the word “garage”, which has become a gag amongst US club heads online. Starting with the idea to “capture everything that was derogatory about Americans picking up UKG”, according to Ramon, the label asked for submissions online and whittled down from over 100 of them, settling for a tight 13 tracks.
You may have come across RamonPang on TikTok recently, as he’s quickly ascended to prominence as the key speaker for electronic music, talking about stories and projects from the likes Aphex Twin, SOPHIE, Ricardo Villalobos and Burial. He’s become a historian of sorts, but is someone who rightly sees the DJ as a historian too, which explains his dire love for Burial, as well as now California-based Todd Edwards. Whenever Ramon enters a 2step frame of mind in his music, he borrows from Todd’s ideals. Take his own contribution to the UK Garage From California comp, “Loud and Tranquil” - a mutant gumbo of virtual utopic winds, gamelan strings that would make Four Tet squeal with joy, and a Todd-style re-weaving of a Memphis rap verse.
Over the course of creating the comp, he’s gotten to think deeply about the Cali attitude that informs the music - maximalist, showy, very internet-fluent. There’s several levels to the comp, all mixed in like a shuffle playlist. You have faithful odes to original source material, like Neumonic’s dark, dubby 2step blarer ‘Grindah Groover’, or SHAKING and Cerulo’s suitably minging speed garage on ‘Trust’. Edward White’s ‘Nothing’ is like America’s answer to SP:MC and GD4YA’s introspective affairs, while edoken’s ‘hypnoglitch’ fashions a new form of bumpy garage from MPH’s taut and heavily-sidechained swing. Then there’s the unthinkable combinations that could only come from an appropriate disregard for what flies in the UK - LTMilla’s ‘Flying’ swoops through a forest of IDM textures that tickle the eardrums, and Yung Skrrt and ChadXP eloquently manage the tall order of buckling 2step and rage rap together on ‘DO BEAT’.
Speaking to RamonPang about LA’s changing club landscape, the impact of garage coming back to America, and the new compilation, it’s clear that LA - and California at large - is in the giddiest stages of a hype cycle, but a select few are also thinking about what can be built when LA’s most trendy venture elsewhere.
It’s awesome to see you repeatedly in the news lately for your TikToks, which dive into electronic music in a way that hasn’t been done too extensively before now.
Yeah, people have started calling me a journalist, which is not what I am. I’m just a DJ at heart, and knowing the origins of this stuff and how it all evolved helps me discover more about music, and has the side effect of seeping into my production and developing the taste of Tabula Rasa. Jozef White and I are from this very exploratory mid-2010s side of American electronic music, specifically maximalist trap music like RL Grime and Flosstradamus and then Flume came along and made a bridge between that and Sophie and Arca. Tabula Rasa is kind of the intersection of that.
How was recording a mix for the Avalanches’ NTS show?
It was great. We were originally thinking about doing a B2B, but they’re working on something and we didn’t have time. The Avalanches started following me around this time last year, even before I started doing the TikTok stuff. What artists like them and DJ Shadow and early Four Tet were doing, I feel like I’m doing today, this sample collage but in a contemporary hip-hop or dance music perspective.
When I was talking with Brazilian garage producers such as Chediak and Crosstalk, Skrillex was the figure who introduced them to the UK garage rhythm with his Leaving EP. Was that the case for you, being from LA?
I don’t feel like I was introduced to it in the most ‘proper’ way. I got deep into 90s and contemporary UKG around 2016/17, from when I started digging into Four Tet’s DJ sets around the time. That’s when I discovered Boiler Room was a thing, so my first exposure to actual UKG was through Boiler Room, with the really famous DJ EZ clip. From that point, I started digging into MJ Cole and all that stuff. That’s what UKG was to me, this really thin, swingy minimal kind of thing. When artists like Sammy Virji and MPH started getting on my radar around 2018 or so, it felt, not in a derogatory way, EDMified. It’s got a modern kick and punch that I wasn’t used to, but all my friends who were deeper into the genre were really getting into it.
Then, obviously, the Fred Again-ification happened in 2022, but my perspective was so different from everybody’s at the time, because I had heard garage from DJ EZ and Ben UFO sets.
I like the term ‘EDMified’ and feel like the logical endpoint is salute or camoufly, which use garage swing mixed with EDM’s maximalism and the tight loop of French touch. I’ve got a theory of this ‘hyper garage’.
I’ve been thinking about this as well, because there’s been UKG going on in Japan, which feels like it’s influenced more by the salutes and the camouflys, but I can also see it being the melodic stabs of Sammy Virji. I feel like in the States and specifically the West Coast, the way we’ve maximalised UKG hasn’t been too much on the melodic side. They use UKG to make these huge bassy things, utilising the swing and their super technical side to make the bass as loud as possible. I’ve always found that really interesting, because garage was always about the swing. Now it’s taken on a whole different form, and I still think it falls under the umbrella.
With this compilation, we tried to capture everything that was derogatory about Americans picking up UKG, and picked up everything that was as far away from my original perception of it as possible. We wanted to pick things that were more loud and less swingy, but it’s still in there. It was an interesting exercise.
The California garage sound is definitely, not meaning to offend here, but overproduced…
100 percent! A lot of it is really, really overproduced which is kind of the fun of it sometimes.
Why do you think California arrived at that sound? Is it part of the culture there?
I live in Los Angeles, and have been raised here since I was a very young child. LA is a very interesting city because you can kind of choose your own adventure because it’s so large. You can go to any type of place you want, and I think that translates into the nightlife. Around 2018/19, I started seeing a few parties that were UKG-focused. I know that these were the same people who discovered it through the DJ EZ set, and now that it’s a viable commercial option, they can actually throw a UKG party in Los Angeles and people will come through and listen to garage all night.
That maximalism is what people are used to over here. There are more minimal nights, but those are either smaller or more associated with house music. Within the city, and within my age group, it’s people who are very excited and very energetic. I could be wrong on my assessment, but when I see UK people dancing to UKG, it’s sounds that you grew up with, and the interplay between swing and groove that makes you excited. Over here, in California, what makes us go crazy is the sounds and the sportsmanship of it - who can overdo other people? Not just in a sense of making the hardest beat, but also could be in terms of melody or making a loop as maximal as possible? Festivals like Portola in San Francisco have added to that.
Even people who aren’t the most ravey ravers I know now get excited for Interplanetary Criminal and stuff. This UK rhythm is now in their consciousness, and for people who don’t know how to dance to the more minimal and swingy stuff, the more maximalist stuff pushes them into it.
I get what you mean, you’re still getting into this rhythm, which is really weird to say as a Brit. We’re usually the ones getting into a rhythm. I feel like there’s an element of Anglophilia, of people being obsessed with British culture.
Yeah, we have a funny relationship with UK bass music. It’s way too vast for me to get into it. I remember when I was just getting into Overmono, and thinking, ‘wow, the music over there is so much slicker and cooler compared to the super-maximalist Excision we have over here’.
There are other scenes in the US, such as the East Coast which is helmed by eldiaNYC, and Chicago garage helmed by Kiefer Ian. Swami Sound in New York and Kiefer Ian from Chicago, they often fix the drum patterns to make a hybrid of drill’s drums, which makes sense given their location. I wondered if Cali garage has a similar incorporation into their drum patterns?
The closest thing I can think of, in my very small observation, I think the West Coast have always had a bit of electro in us. From The Egyptian Lover to modern electro on Kendrick Lamar’s GNX album. It’s the very sharp transience, the more quantised drums but still in a kind-of breaky rhythm. I’m seeing the electro sound a lot more over here, and if I were to stretch it, what I see in this California garage scene is a more straight, 808, hi-hat type of beat, which isn’t everywhere. But I see it moving in that direction. I love electro a lot, and it feels very West Coast when I hear it, so I’m happy to see it.
I feel like the tracks on this compilation don’t really have a lot of variation of that rhythm. A lot of the stuff that comes out of California tends to lean more towards future garage. Instead of the drums being as hard-hitting as possible, some people will apply the same precision of mixing into a Ross From Friends or Floating Points 2step kind of thing. We’re taking this thing that’s very melodic and applying this rigidity to very organic sounds, which makes it really interesting and actually kind-of futuristic.
Garage is really fun. Especially in the Bay Area, they’re all playing it. They’re playing it at the Newark queer parties, the EDM parties, even the most low-key underground warehouse parties. It’s taken hold in California in a new way. It’s not uncommon for me to go to any DJ night and have UKG of any style played out. I would have never imagined that in 2016, when everyone was on the bass house and tech house waves.
What are some of the key garage nights in California?
My friends in San Francisco who run a night called Garage Access, and another in LA called Club Evil.
I remember going to Sammy Virji’s LA debut in 2023, and the openers were Introspekt and Hans Glader. The crowd liked those, but when Sammy Virji walked on, in this 500 capacity club, it was fangirls screaming. People are losing their minds, I’ve never seen anything like it.
What other factors went into the curation of this compilation?
For this one, it was very specific. When I listen to a compilation, I want to hear one thing focused and done by a lot of people. We reached out for submissions, and received about 100 submissions which we knocked down to this 12. There were a lot of young people, aged around 18 years old. They were probably getting into it because of Fred Again coming over to the US and stuff, but their sound is so mature, like on old-school Joy Orbison.
In my eyes, the releases on Tabula Rasa are very IDM-influenced, even when it’s not directly IDM music. Equally, though likely down to your curation, this side of US garage is quite IDM-influenced and has a very techy sound design.
I think the other advantage of being in LA is that it’s a big mixing pot. Everything is here in terms of club nights, and those sounds trickle down granularly. Look at Skrillex, who is influenced by IDM. I think it’s a perception of IDM, as well, because there’s not a lot of dance genres we associate with these beautiful luscious pads, sine waves combined with interesting sound design, so when it shows up, that’s what the influence entails.
Which track from the compilation was most surprising to hear?
There’s so many I love. One I will say is the SHAKING and Cerulo one, “Trust”. They’re both straight-up LA boys and I see them all the time at the debaucherous EDM parties.
Another one that was really cool to see was that Yung Skrrt submitted one. He’s from Atlanta, and reached out to us, and I was really surprised because I know him from his livestreams, but he’s just a polymath like that.
That track, “DO BEAT”, is like a fusion of 2step and rage rap beats.
And it’s also a bit electro - the transience is so sharp on that one.
Another good one is the Neumonic track, “Grindah Groover”. That’s the most straight ahead UK garage track on here, but so solid and perfectly produced. I think Neumonic is going to have a humungous year this year.
The last one I’ll gush about is this one from mdhvn and Tony Quattro, ‘what u want me do’. mdhvn I’ve met at Scenario, the successor to the Low End Theory, where people like Flying Lotus and Tyler, the Creator and other LA beats guys had their come-up. They’re very into beats and experimental music and put out this UKG song. It’s chopped up like an LA beat and has the 2step beat.
I wanted to talk about your Experimental UKG mix, and the balance of pushing odd ideas in UK garage but keeping it club-functional. As a style, how hard is UK garage to get that balance right in your opinion?
The advantage of that mix is that it’s on YouTube, so I can listen to it at home. It’s not like I have to consider DJing tracks that are the most punchy or keeping the groove going. But I find the hard part is probably keeping the swing of things. When I listen to ‘IDM’ tracks in the 90s and 00s, a lot of it is breakbeat or some version of acid techno, and it just had extra elements on top of it, like a lush pad or some experimental noises. I feel like applying that to garage is basically almost the same thing. For example, one track in that mix is “Sensory Overdraw” by Piezo, and the drums on this track are dry and thin and 2steppy, and what he does with it that makes it experimental for me, is that the synths don’t resolve in the cleanest way. They kind of bounce and granulate in the same way an Aphex Twin track does. And the sound effects are so much more ear-piercing. The core of the track is still that 2step groove, but everything else around it is a little bit fucked-up.
What are your thoughts on the state of UKG at large right now?
Big picture? I think it’s in a good place. Like I said before, anything that opens more rhythms up to more people… especially live. It kind of sucks when you’re into a dance genre and nowhere around you plays it. It’s one thing to listen to house and techno at home, but a different thing to listen to it at the club, whether it’s the maximalist garage or the traditional garage in a dank warehouse. Experiencing that physically is an essential part of the mix. The fact that it’s in more places now has to be a good thing for us Americans. For the pride of people in the UK, I don’t really care about all y’all!
Where do you see it going next stylistically?
I’d love to see more electro influence in garage, and on a personal level, I’d love to see Californians developing their own style more. I’d love to see a Californian garage label. There’s so many good ones in the UK, and to have one here, pressing vinyl in the States, would make it a cool thing. It clearly has died down from the Beatles-level Fred Again thing, but in the last year or so, it’s really found its niche and its ride-or-dies.
Do you see traditional garage growing in the future, or do you think it’ll be a year-long trend cycle?
I think the year-long trends are only really for the maximalist genres, and always the genres that make the most money, like EDM or tech-house. Now in the 2020s, DJs are playing dubstep drops and then four-to-the-floor speed garage drops which is so funny to me. For the traditional stuff, what I like about it, and I notice this when I talk to older DJs, is that it keeps younger people interested. As long as that sound is still around and people are still becoming aware of it, when those older DJs cycle out, it allows newer DJs to come in dedicate enough space to that sound. That’s what keeps a dance music genre alive in Los Angeles, unfortunately. It has to be a regular party that can bring in enough people and bring in this expensive bar fee.