LA LOM on the Hotel Congress Plaza, Tuesday, September 24th

KXCI Presents! LA LOM – The Los Angeles League of Musicians, LA LOM, are an instrumental trio that blend the sounds of Cumbia Sonidera, 60’s soul ballads and classic romantic boleros that emanate from radios, backyard parties and dance clubs of Los Angeles with the twang of Peruvian Chicha and Bakersfield Country. LA LOM have recently released their debut LP on Verve Records. Los Tranquilos open the show at 8pm.

ENTER TO WIN

*CLICK FOR CONTEST RULES* The deadline to enter is through noon Friday, September 20th.  The winners of (1) pair of tickets will be selected at random (one entry per person). Ticket winners will be put on the guest list and must present ID at the venue box office on the night of the show to gain entry. Winners will be notified to the email address entered in the contest after the deadline and drawing.

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LA LOM—The Los Angeles League of Musicians, LA LOM, are an instrumental trio formed in Los Angeles in 2021. They blend the sounds of Cumbia Sonidera, 60’s soul ballads and classic romantic boleros that emanate from radios, backyard parties and dance clubs of Los Angeles with the twang of Peruvian Chicha and Bakersfield Country.

“Transcending time periods and genres allows the trio to create a sound they find to be uniquely Los Angeles“

LA Times

“Wildly transportive – there’s a strong chance you’ll find yourself daydreaming about throwing on a vinyl in a sun-soaked house in the Hollywood Hills in the 1960s…there’s never been a better time to fall into their intoxicating orbit”

Consequence

“Takes listeners through mid-century renditions of Latin genres like cumbia and bolero, with a touch of country twang and retro soul”

KCRW

“A multi-layered, sensory experience…the perfect summer night soundtrack”

Remezcla

LA LOM has released their debut album – The Los Angeles League of Musicians (Verve Records).  The 13-song collection of all original music by this exciting new trio from Los Angeles seamlessly weaves together the diverse genres and cultures of their beloved home city.  The excitement for LA LOM grows by the day, and includes an LA Times profile, interviews and performances on KCRW and WNYC, with Aquarium Drunkard, a recent appearance on Office Hours with Tim Heidecker and much more.  They’ve also announced more tour dates including their biggest-ever headline show yet in New York City, at Webster Hall on Dec 11.  Other highlights include the all-star Fool In Love Festival in Los Angeles on August 31, and the London and Paris editions of the Pitchfork Music Festival in November.  Recent performances include their Newport Folk Festival debut, Central Park Summerstage as well as playing for thousands of fans at Celebrate Brooklyn last week, on a bill with Thee Sacred Souls. 

We recorded most of the songs on our record at Studio Figueroa, a studio in LA run by Elliot Bergman, who produced our record. Elliot’s studio is filled with bells, bird calls, old organs and keyboards and tape recorders, percussion from all over the world and a ton of other crazy sound making devices. When he’s not engineering, he’ll spend hours in there creating beats, tape loops, and instrumental tracks. Throughout our process of recording, Elliot would play us tracks he had been working on. This one with the driving rhythm and the staccato flutey organ floating on top stood out to us. On a break from working on other songs, Elliot set up some microphones, then Nic and I played drums and guitar over Elliot’s track, and ultimately came up with two other sections on the fly in one pass. This became ’72 Monte Carlo. – Guitarist Zac Sokolow

Listening to LA LOM is like turning the radio dial to discover a series of stations that music obsessives could only dream of. They find inspiration in the classic Mexican Boleros and the Cumbia Sonidera woven into the very fabric of LA’s soundscape, resonating through the streets from car stereos, backyard parties, and lively dance halls. Added to this is the guitar-driven twang of Peruvian Chicha, Bakersfield Country, traditional folk music from Sicily, Turkey and beyond, plus soulful ballads from the 1950s and ’60s that they grew up listening to on LA’s oldies station, K-EARTH 101, evoking the laid-back aesthetic that defines the region.

They announced the album in June, just before hitting the road with Vampire Weekend – and the news was met with a feature with the Los Angeles Times, an interview on KCRW’s Press Play, coverage in Billboard, Variety, and praise for single “Danza De LA LOM” from Consequence – “it sounds like pure sunshine” – which is also featured on Grimy Good’s 15 Songs of the Summer list: “The rumble of its percussion and the simmer of its guitars are enough to confirm that it’ll have you swooning. Grab your lover and spend an evening lost in the song’s torridly amorous rhythms.”  They also recently shared the video for “San Fernando Rose” – inspired by classic 60s girl groups and Selena love songs. 

LA LOM is: Zac Sokolow (Guitar), Jake Faulkner (Bass), and Nicholas Baker (Drums/Percussion).  The Los Angeles League of Musicians was produced by Elliot Bergman (Cage the Elephant, Major Lazer, Wild Belle) and recorded mostly at his studio Figueroa.

LA LOM’s rise has been meteoric: millions of views for their rich-hued and self-made videos, hundreds of thousands of followers on socials, and fans that include Beck, Zane Lowe, a recent run opening for Vampire Weekend, and more.  And while LA LOM has broken out over the past year, it didn’t happen overnight. Similar to The Beatles in Hamburg, LA LOM coalesced as they cut their teeth playing extensive sets, five nights a week, at the historic Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. With buzz building around Los Angeles, they headed to the studio and began cutting singles – their first EP was released in 2022. 

The roots of LA LOM run deep. Zac Sokolow’s musical lineage spans generations, starting his creative journey performing alongside his father, a respected figure in LA’s bluegrass community, whose family relocated from Buenos Aires to LA in the 1930s.  Jake Faulkner comes from a family of Venice artists and met Zac at age 16. Zac and Jake honed their craft through years of collaboration in various bands within Southern California’s vibrant Rockabilly scene before eventually joining to form LA LOM. Nicholas Baker was steeped in Latin music from childhood by his grandmother, who hailed from a musical family in Durango, Mexico, and gained fame as a DJ on a Spanish-language radio station in Tucson, Arizona. He studied Latin percussion with renowned Nuyorican bassist and percussionist Roberto Miranda.