Little River Soundsystem Brings Jazz to the Dance Floor

In the grand scope of Miami's electronic music scene, "Where Do We Go From Here" is an unusual work.

Little River Soundsystem's ten-minute track is roughly split into three parts. It begins with a piano that feels like it's straight out of Thelonious Monk's playbook. As it enters its second act, you hear the indecipherable banter from the audience in the background. Then the piano disappears, and a familiar drum and bass take over. Then, three minutes in, it all comes together. The bass rolls off the drums, making you unconsciously bop your head, and the cycle continues. Somewhere toward the end, a voice explains how jazz can be used as a conduit to find other music.

The pair behind the track are Miami producers Jamie Bolin and Duck Romero; it's set for release on Thursday, October 3, via Bolin's record label, Odd Pleasures.

DJs have been incorporating jazz into their production for decades. There's Ricardo Villalobo's "Widodo," where the scaling bass lines ultimately merge into a minimal acid-jazz track, and St Germain's "Rose Rouge," which is played everywhere, from Club Space to Berghain. Similarly, jazz artists like Sun Ra and Nala Sinephro have experimented with electronic music.

A notable difference is that Little River Soundsystem came from two different worlds to collaborate on a track that sounds deferential to both genres.

"Little River Soundsystem was meant to use the roots of jazz and blues and add those elements to the electronic music world," Bolin tells New Times.

Two years ago, Bolin saw Romero playing the piano alongside a group of percussionists at the Rhythm Portal event series at the Center for Subtropical Affairs in Little River.

"There was something about how he played," Bolin recalls. "I recorded a video because I would love to try to replicate that in a house track. I loved the groove."

Romero and Bolin serendipitously met at a party in South Beach a few days later. "We started talking about jazz, and he happened to be the same piano player from Rhythm Portal," Bolin says. "I told him I recorded him and loved how he played." Bolin invited Romero to his home studio, and the two began making tracks on the fly.

The duo's first track as Little River Soundsystem, "Not That Jazz," came out last year and was replete with jazzy bass lines, a melancholy piano, a funky synth, and reverberated cymbals. Bolin says both tracks were recorded in one take.

"It wasn't like I called Romero again and told him, 'We have to redo this,'" Bolin says.
Bolin explains that the two take a spontaneous approach — little is preplanned, and they go wherever the music takes them. Mistakes are encouraged. "You can give Romero a chord, and he can just play for an hour," Bolin adds.

"The creative process is Romero playing random notes, and I will just record. I'll obviously say, 'Let's do some happy or sentimental' –– we try to define the moods, but I'll just record." Bolin then dissects the hours of recording and fits the best moments into a ten-minute track.

Little River Soundsystem didn't want to copy and paste a jazz track into their work. Instead, they try to follow the unwritten rules of jazz of seeing where the mistakes take you and the importance of improvisation. "Our songs have multiple bass lines, whereas with house, you usually have one. Both tracks have different emotions," Bolin explains.

Growing up in Madrid, Bolin played instruments throughout his childhood and didn't discriminate against any music genre. However, when he discovered electronic music around 2017, it called to him. "Being 17 years old in Madrid and discovering something about to be big, I was in the perfect place to DJ and produce music," he adds.

In 2018, Bolin moved to Miami to study at Florida International University, balancing his school work with his work as a producer and DJ. "The pandemic came, and it was at that moment that I started Odd Pleasures," he says. "I started getting ideas, got a logo, and got in touch with a lot of artists to release music."

Beyond the record label, Bolin has also held Odd Pleasures parties at venues like Floyd and ATV Records. "I'm very interested in curating a good night," he adds. "I'm never going to stop throwing parties and inviting friends and having DJs to play."