Darius Giurar, a producer inspired by the Los Angeles beat scene, crafts a heady hybrid of IDM and left-field hip-hop credited to the alias Gypsy Mamba. The Southern California resident's tracks are alternately cluttered and skeletal, laced with alternately booming and fidgety beats, melodic bleeps, and lancing electronic FX. When he was a youngster, Giurar played a few instruments in church, but his fate was sealed later on, when a cousin gave him a laptop. He eventually developed an individual sound, one with perceptible commonalities with the works of Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke, among others. Giurar's growing reputation enabled him to play some of the club nights -- such as the long-running L.A. weekly Low End Theory -- that had fueled his creativity. Concise small-label releases such as Return of the Gypsy (TwerkOut, 2013) and Cigs 'n' Soda (Smog, 2014) led up to a deal with Alpha Pup, where he released the albums Da Feenux (2015) and Magnetic Syndromes (2017). ~ Andy Kellman