Bobbin & Weavin (Independent)

The influence of Los Angeles’s vibrant beat-music scene—think Flying Lotus and his Brainfeeder crew—looms large on Bobbin & Weavin, the excellent instrumental mix tape by the local producer (and American expat) Tight Mike. Like his SoCal counterparts, Mike is both a computer nerd and a rap obsessive, merging the chopped-up samples and gaseous ambiance of ’90s intelligent dance music with hip-hop’s insistent knock.

There are literally thousands of dudes worldwide making beats like this right now, but Bobbin & Weavin—which collects tracks made in 2009 and 2010—manages to stand apart. When Mike apes other artists, he does so uncannily well—as on “Asteroid Shit”, a spot-on imitation of FlyLo’s spangled Los Angeles–era productions. And when he tries his hand at something altogether new, the results are startling. Take “Russian Swang”, for instance, on which he takes a crackly passage of old-time swing music and turns it into the kind of explosive bass jam you might hear booming out the back of a beach-bound low-rider. If this is what Mike was up to in 2009, underground stardom might be just around the corner.