POW Premiere: D Tiberio – “Want U” (featuring Natasha Agrama)

Fans of D Tiberio, Nosaj Thing, Natasha Agrama, the LA beat scene and/or bus/train/plane schedules rejoice, for I bring you good tidings!  To clarify for the uninitiated, D Tiberio, the East LA electronic musician/DJ/skateboarder, today announced that he’s getting ready to drop his sophomore LP, 4136, this Sept. 20 on TIMETABLE, the wooz-inducing label run by none other than Nosaj Thing, another Los Angeles co-conspirator in the syrupy sounds produced in those environs.

This is “Want U,” featuring the sultry vocals of Natasha Agrama, which also happens to be the debut track from the album.  Over skittering percussion and a low key synth run, Tiberio and Agrama paint the equivalent of an updated version of Sade’s “The Sweetest Taboo.”  Agrama’s vocals build before folding over themselves, and the result feels like desert rain.  D describes the track as, “A hypnotic take on something between two-step and footwork.”

Regarding the album in its entirety, “It took about 3 years to write this album. I deleted the album two times in a row after I thought I was finished. I was going through some life shit and trying to make music whenever I found moments of ease. A couple of the tracks made it through from the first draft, and the rest I wrote in the last six months of its completion.

“All the tracks started as little zones that I could hang with for a while. Just these loops that felt right with me for whatever mood I was in or that I could smoke to. They were spaces that gave me some solace when it was hard to make sense of a lot of things.

“I gathered sounds from the neighborhood where I live and grew up in and collaged them into the tracks. Dogs, low flying helicopters, sonideros and new wave in the near distance on weekends. There is tension and distress here, but there is beauty to be found in the hard work and resourcefulness of the people. I’m the 4th generation of my family here, and everything is a memory for me.

“The album isn’t directly about the neighborhood, but it informs my experience here what music is for me.”

Set your digital reminder of choice for Sept. 20.