While the popular view of Los Angeles revolves around palm trees and permanent sunshine, Moe Espinosa focuses on the city's darker side. As a core member of the Droid Behavior crew, Espinosa, best known as Drumcell, is constantly trawling the city for vacant warehouses that can work as techno clubs—namely for Droid's Interface parties. His core musical practice, however, is much more reclusive. Most of the time, he's locked away, logging countless hours on the analog synthesizers he ardently collects.In addition to Drumcell, which has formed a strong alliance with European techno institutions like CLR and Dystopian, Espinosa recently launched an ambient project called Hypoxia. Here, he eschews Drumcell's pounding 909 pulse, but the music remains rooted in the sprawl of LA's warehouse district, sounding like an ominous score for a forgotten noir flick. With Hypoxia, Espinosa uses the Buchla Music Easel to build tracks inspired by the soundtracks of John Carpenter and Goblin. We met Espinosa last fall when we were in town filming Real Scenes: Los Angeles, and he was cutting Hypoxia dubplates for a New Year's set at Berghain's rarely-opened Elektroakustischer Salon. He later stopped by RA's LA offices at NeueHouse to deliver a live improvisation called "Vacant Echo."

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