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California Sounds: Julia Holter premieres a new work, Otis Redding hits the Strip and Newman Wolf makes beats about punks in the Valley

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Julia Holter, “Vinny’s Triumph,” from the soundtrack to “Bleed for This” (Milan). Over the last five years the Los Angeles composer and avant-pop singer Julia Holter has moved from issuing vinyl-only compositions based on ancient Greek plays and musique concrete-inspired mixtapes to becoming an interdisciplinary force composing concept albums and music for dance, performance pieces and parties.

For her next act, the young artist has scored the music for the new boxing film, “Bleed for This,” the true story of pugilist Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza. Holter’s hardly an obvious choice for such a project; her music is often delicate and seldom bombastic.

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The soundtrack comes out Friday and features half a dozen Holter-composed miniatures to go with licensed tracks including Billy Squier’s “Emotions in Motion,” George Michael’s “Monkey” and a few tracks from Chicago songwriter Willis Earl Beal. Holter adapted one Beal’s songs, “Not Gonna Fight Again,” for the film.

Other Holter pieces in the score are little more than melodic cues, but she packs a lot of information into tiny spaces. The grandest of them is the film’s coda. Called “Vinny’s Triumph,” the track blends synths, strings and, to close, a grand saxophone solo. The Times is premiering the track above.

Newman Wolf, “Computer” (Body High). The first video from Newman Wolf’s debut album roams Los Angeles through the lens of either a stalker or a private detective shooting photos of unknown others. Composed as a black and white slideshow, the electronic producer’s “Computer” hums with electric energy as images flash — lovers kissing in a car; homeless people surviving on the streets; beaches, bowling alleys and Pokemon — along with the rhythm.

Wolf’s first album arrives via the great Los Angeles dance label Body High, best known for its work in supporting DJDS and its two producers, Jerome LOL and Samo Sound Boy. Wolf, in fact, hooked up with DJDS after he repaired some of their synth gear at his day job.

Like DJDS, Wolf’s beat-based work mixes various styles of shimmering electronic dance music in service of a conceptually unified full-length album. Where DJDS’ work has focused on urban isolation and the thrill of communal release, “Please Keep Talking” is linked by more suburban themes.

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According to Samo Sound Boy’s release notes, Wolf’s record concerns “a punk from the San Fernando Valley” and “the problem of being a smart kid in the suburbs and living next to a mall when you’re looking for a good record store.”

Otis Redding, “Ole Man Trouble,” from “Otis Redding Live at the Whisky A Go Go: The Complete Recordings” (Stax). Fifty years ago, the soul singer Otis Redding set up camp at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip for six sets of maximum R&B over three straight nights. Not yet a star, Redding was working to cross over from the Southern soul circuit into the musical mainstream and did so through a series of landmark performances.

Some of the recordings from those gigs have been previously issued by Stax or Atlantic, but the newly released set “Otis Redding Live at the Whisky A Go Go: The Complete Recordings” documents every moment of each night. You can hear Redding and his 10-piece (!) soul band rip through a host of covers — “A Hard Day’s Night” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” included — and would-be classics “Pain in My Heart,” “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and “These Arms of Mine.”

Recorded with the best technology of the day, the tapes have been cleaned up and sound incredible. Redding and the band’s version of “Ole Man Trouble” merges electric blues and R&B with a hard-pounding enthusiasm.

It was a busy moment for pop music in the city. Three months earlier, Brian Wilson had started recording “Good Vibrations” just down on Santa Monica Boulevard and was working daily to perfect it. While Redding was blowing minds, a few doors away at a club called the London Fog the Doors were in the middle of an extended residency.

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“This is a thing you can’t keep still to,” Redding says while introducing his take on the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” You can almost hear the crowd and the go-go dancers shimmying in agreement.

There’s a lot of terrible music out there. For tips on the stuff that’s not, follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit


UPDATES:

1:11 p.m. This article was updated with a label-sanctioned Soundcloud embed of “I Can’t Turn You Loose.” It replaced an older YouTube embed of “Ole Man Trouble.”

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