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California Sounds: New music from Syd and BANANA -- and a memorial mixtape from Peanut Butter Wolf

Syd tha Kyd fronts the neo-soul band the Internet on the second day of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio in 2014. She just announced her debut album as, simply, Syd.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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Syd, “All About Me” (Columbia)

Like Sade, Cher and Trina before her, the artist born Sydney Bennett has opted to drop all but her first name to issue her first solo track. Best known for her work first as part of the Odd Future collective and then with her group the Internet, the artist also known as Syd tha Kyd dropped the song as a teaser for her upcoming album “Fin,” out Feb. 3.

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With the Internet, Syd and collaborator Matt Martians craft simmering music that tends to meander, as though too laid-back to commit to something so rigid as structure. “All About Me,” which is produced by Internet guitarist Steve Lacy, is less slippery.

Featuring a beat so minimal that the addition of a sibilant high-hat midway through arrives like an explosion, the track showcases Syd’s increasing confidence as both a rapper and a singer. She mixes vocal melody and lyricism with a deft, slithering fluidity, but with enough repetition to conquer the subconscious as an ear-worm.

Syd, who was Odd Future’s DJ during its wild ascent, produces much of “Fin,” augmented by tracks from hotshot producers Melo X (Beyoncé’s “Lemonade”), Hit Boy (Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Drake) and others.

Peanut Butter Wolf, “RIP 2016” mixtape (Stones Throw)

It’s no secret that the body count was high in 2016 among musicians. David Bowie, Prince, Maurice White, Leonard Cohen, Phife Dawg, Sharon Jones, Juan Gabriel, Vanity, Keith Emerson, Blowfly, Paul Bley and dozens more passed away last year.

As a memorial, the crate-digging L.A. DJ Peanut Butter Wolf has alighted his own funeral pyre, in the form of a mixtape that blends work from those artists and more. Called simply “RIP 2016,” the three-part mix is available through Stones Throw’s Soundcloud page, and is a wonder from start to finish.

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To call it a mixtape may be a stretch, because the DJ seems less interested in impressing the cool kids with beat-matched looped maneuvers than he is honoring the music of the fallen. But any collection that can dexterously fade from prog rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer to Japanese new age innovator Tomita to the smooth soul of Billy Paul without causing whiplash is noteworthy.

Elsewhere in the mix he moves into throbbing beats and dance rhythms, dropping the post-punk band Suicide, George Michael and Wham’s early synth-pop, Jamaican ska innovator Prince Buster and more. Combined, it’s a well-carved gravestone for a cemetery’s worth of greats.

BANANA, “Live” (Leaving). A fascinating band led by multi-instrumentalist Josiah Steinbrick, this all-caps outfit in fact makes relatively lowercase, and beguiling, instrumental music.

“Live” was recorded as such in collaboration with artists including Stella Mozgawa (best known as Warpaint’s drummer) on bass, marimba and percussion; Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers, PJ Harvey, Sparks and more) on marimba and synthesizer; multi-instrumentalist Cate Le Bon and others.

The band first gathered to back Le Bon for a tour in support of her “Crab Day” album, and reconvened in Los Angeles for a performance on online music hub and DJ collective Dublab.

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Fans of the marimba, in fact, should rejoice, as the wooden percussion instrument plays a central role on “Live,” as does the vibraphone. Consisting of four semi-improvised pieces titled after the first four letters of the alphabet, “Live” was composed, says Steinbrick in release notes, as a way to capture “the sound of musicians I feel very connected to playing freely around composed pieces under my direction — exploring themes and theories of naturalism and modalism through repetition.”

The result feels like a salve to the tyranny of Western scales, rhythms and structures, at various points recalling Balinese gamelan music, the British experimental folk group Penguin Cafe Orchestra and composer Steve Reich’s labyrinthine “Music for 18 Musicians.”

For tips, records, snapshots and stories on Los Angeles music culture, follow Randall Roberts on Twitter and Instagram: @liledit. Email: randall.roberts@latimes.com.

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