January 24, 2014

Friday night live at Transistor: Cos and Sev Seveer and Beyond Luck. Sound by Jon Monteverde. 

Cos and Sev Seveer, based in Chicago, represent Push Beats collective, a group of producers and emcees with a weekly Monday residency at Rodan lounge. A seasoned student of music theory and son of the late, great multi-instrumentalist Mario Rivera, Cos has jazz and the thick soundscapes of Latin music present in his DNA. Cos and Sev's live performance is held together by Cos' imagination at the keyboard. As a newer member of Push Beats, Sev Seveer is determined to make an impact with his constantly evolving production. His goal has been to be free of the influence of rules and learn to produce warm, gritty music on anything that creates sound. His live setup includes the Roland SP404, Korg Kaoss Pad, analog microsynths and MPC2000XL. Sev cites Cos as his first true mentor of music, but the duo's ability to play as peers and learn from each other's style is the fuel to their chemistry. Upon being brought together by fun, live-improvised jams, a love for jazz music and raw, dirty, space-age beats, the two decided to take that fun to the stage.

Beyond Luck, the Chicago-rooted collective consisting of DJ Moppy, Radius, Keter Darker & Lailah Reich, openly define their "style" as Beyond Genre Music, expressing their common love for jazz, house, prog rock, hip-hop, dub/reggae. The group's production setup includes but is not limited to Moppy on Technics 1200s and effects, Radius on the MPC1000 and Korg Kaoss pads, and Keter Darker & Lailah on vocals.

Says Radius: "Our sets are live, electronic, improvised production sets, plus vocals: free cosmic beat jazz. Keter Darker comes with a fire and flavor of a Gil Scott-Heron & Amiri Baraka with Afro-futuristic elements, and Lailah sings adding layers like a wind or brass instrument would. Live looping, sampling, scratching, drum programming, synths, etc, from DJ Moppy and me."