Watch John Vanderslice Play “Exposure” in Filipinotown, LA for “Neighborhoods”

The experimental songwriter performs the track from his new album ​​d E A T h ~ b U g in his backyard.
Neighborhoods

Watch John Vanderslice Play “Exposure” in Filipinotown, LA for “Neighborhoods”

The experimental songwriter performs the track from his new album ​​d E A T h ~ b U g in his backyard.

Words: FLOOD Staff

April 19, 2022

Over the years, John Vanderslice’s music has evolved from the more traditional—yet still fairly left-field—sounds of contemporaries like Chad VanGaalen into unique sonic experiments that reflect his confessed influences of JPEGMAFIA and Spirit of the Beehive. His latest LP d E A T h ~ b U g, for example, is made up of digital bleeps and bloops that roughly aligns with a younger generation of online-dwelling musicians.

Yet for his “Neighborhoods” set, Vanderslice took to his backyard in the LA neighborhood of Filipinotown to recontextualize his song “Exposure” as an acoustic number in between flyovers by omnipresent LAPD helicopters. “I love the idea of taking out a very electronic and manipulated song into my backyard,” he explains. “Just me, a 1952 J45 acoustic guitar, and the hundreds of birds that live there. My career has often been split like that: often unhinged albums and me covering an abstract and unplayable song.”

Watch him perform the track below.