For someone widely known as THE MOTHERFUCKING GASLAMP KILLER, Willie Bensussen sure makes a mellow cup of ginger and honey tea. Standing in his Mount Washington hillside kitchen looking out at the toxic yellow cloud drowning LA’s skyscrapers, “the neurotic Scorpio Jew” barks jokes and opinions at a speed and intensity that would fry Larry David’s marrow. On his fridge door hangs a picture of a caveman. “He looks like me and my friends, so we keep him up there,” quips the DJ from under a mound of hair that hasn’t been cut in three years. “He keeps us grounded.” Next to the Neanderthal, a white board bearing the names Tittney Spheres, Harrison Fart, Sigourney Beaver, Hillary Skank, Molly Ringworm and Clit Eastwood shines in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Willie reads the list out, grins manically at the louche frat boy humour, stirs his tea and bounds up to his bedroom.

Upstairs on the balcony, Sumach, the brooding dreadlocked psyche sorcerer also known as Gonjasufi, takes in the view. He’s just flown in from Vegas for a reunion with his old sparring partner and to drop off the test pressing of A Sufi And A Killer, an album that has been in the pipeline for over four years. The pair recorded it by swapping samples and sounds over email and haven’t physically seen each other in a year. With Willie becoming one of the world’s most in-demand club DJs and Sumach holding down a yoga studio and supporting his wife and three kids out in Nevada, there hasn’t been much time to hang out. Circumstances and maturing world views may have forced them to grow apart, but like many hometown friends, after a few minutes in each other’s company the pair are trading banter like it’s a daily occurrence.

“Bro, you should be growing some dope up here,” Sumach announces in his Wyld Stallyons surf-slacker tone. “This spot is tiiiight, son!”

Taking the comment as a hint, Willie produces a double pack of choc-chip hash cookies with a label on the front that states “Strictly For

Medical Use Only”. Every member of the close-knit Low End Theory/ Brainfeeder beat scene (including Flying Lotus, Ras G, Samiyam and Daddy Kev) gets weed on demand – legally. It’s all the rage in La La Land, with everyone from Dave Sitek to Snoop getting high on their doctor’s supply. Stoners just walk into a surgery, say they can’t sleep, shake a little, and walk out 20 minutes later with a licence to get as much sticky icky icky as they want. There are even a few skunk vending machines dotted around the city.

“Yo, I don’t know why but I could eat all of this and it wouldn’t affect me,” Willie says, putting on a pair of sunglasses over his prescription specs. “I get them from the craziest clinics on earth and they don’t affect me. For some reason, eating doesn’t work. Smoking does. But I’ve been abstaining. I haven’t had a smoke or a drink in a week and a half.”

“I haven’t smoked in three months. Almost,” Sumach counters, flexing his biceps and shouting ‘Woooo’ at the sky like it’s the second coming of Ric Flair. Willie puts the cookies down. “Good for you dude. Lotus made it so hard for me. I got back from Asia and said ‘I’m not smoking’, and he said, ‘I’m proud of you,’ and then smoked up this big blunt in front of me. I was like, ‘Aarrrgh shit…’ Oh wow, Sumach look at that cloud. That’s a fucking amazing cloud right there. Clooouuuuuuds…’” Sumach smiles at his wiry friend’s subtle reference to one of their tracks, “Klowds”, a psychedelic song about alienation, mind-control and religion. In it the Sin City prophet quotes chunks from the Bible while an old Indian string sample flutters delicately in the background. It’s the type of song David Koresh would have got a kick out of.

The duo then raid the wardrobe to find some clothes for the Dazed photo shoot. Willie pulls out a poncho and a wicker fan, Sumach gets a kimono and a possum hat.

After fellow producer Samiyam turns up, they all saunter up the street to a clearing that overlooks the entire city. Also admiring the view is John, a lanky white dread whom Willie knows. He’s spending this sunny Tuesday afternoon getting high and blasting Boy Better Know and some digi-dancehall out of the boot of his SUV. John has just got out of prison. He also happens to have a huge machete on him, and a pair of bolt cutters. Sumach takes an instant liking to the jungle blade. With his furry hat, tribal smock, thick locks, black bushy beard, and massive jagged knife, he looks like he’s just stepped off the set of a Roger Corman remake of GenghisKhan.

“If that wasn’t my son’s I’d give that to you right now, man,” John says as Sumach massacres the breeze.

“How old is your son, John?” Willie asks. “Nine, bro. He’s amazing. I just let him fire off some shots on my .38 special the other day.”

“Gee, what a lucky kid… Yo, Sumach, take it out of the scabbard…” “The scab-what?” “The sheath!” “My hat?” “No, the cover for the machete dude. You’re a rapper, aren’t you supposed to know words and stuff ?”

“Yeah, okay, bro.” A few minutes later Sumach gets his own back by lifting his 27-year old beatmaker into the air like a sacrificial bearded baby. John and Samiyam laugh in the background as bass booms out across the hillside.

What makes the odd couple’s tomfoolery so interesting to watch is that their Bill & Ted bromance is so removed from the darkness that resonates throughout A Sufi And A Killer. Unleashed this month on Warp Records, the album is one of the most original and brilliant, often disturbing pieces of music to appear on the label since Aphex Twin’s Come To Daddy EP. Sumach may know how to rap from years spent battling back in San Diego, but his debut sounds nothing like a hip hop album. It’s more like a hallucinogenic desert showdown between Turkish psyche-pop legend Selda, Devendra Banhart, Madlib, Bad Brains, and Walter Carlos.

And apart from the sheer diversity of samples contained within its 19 tracks, A Sufi And A Killer bears little resemblance to the bass heavy, glitchy “LA beat scene” with which Willie is so synonymous. In truth, it bears little resemblance to anything, apart from a paranoid acid meltdown or a stretch in solitary confinement with El Topo on loop in the corner. New York blog Electrodrone recently tweeted that it’s like “being skull fucked by rabid visions of a manic depressive in the Mojave Desert”, while Warp’s biographer held their hands up and stated “nothing written here will sufficiently communicate the extraordinary depth and strangeness of Gonjasufi’s music”. In other words, it’s a trip. But if you can handle it, you’ll discover that, along with producers Flying Lotus and Mainframe, they’ve created a modern, shadowy classic.

After returning the machete and bidding John adieu, Willie and Sumach discuss the impending global apocalypse of 2012 over a fat veggie burrito. Sumach plans on stockpiling water when he gets back to Las Vegas. Willie just says, “I’m ready” and leaves it at that. They then walk back to the hillside lookout, grab a seat in the backyard and talk jointly on record, for the first time, about their troubled minds, mysterious alter egos, and how A Sufi And A Killer came cackling into this world.

Sumach, what was your first impression of Willie?

Sumach (GONJASUFI): We met in about 2000 and I didn’t like him at first. I was real aggressive during that time in my life, I was like ‘don’t even come over here with that shit. I don’t even wanna know bro.’ I didn’t really like too many people at the time but I knew he was talented. He then helped me get a record into a store and I felt the love. Then in 2002 he played me some of his stuff and I really liked it. Both of us had the same type of ear.

Willie (THE GASLAMP KILLER): We were moving around so we were moving around, so it was all done via email. He just told me to do anything that I thought sounded like he would be good on it. I started hearing my record collection in a new way. Instead of trying to loop up the records with the big drums and the big beats, I started thinking, ‘Oh man I could use the mellow, beautiful, voltaic, ambient, Indian, traditional music and he would sound great over it’. He opened up my view of sampling. So I started sampling everything, countless records. There’s still many things that I’ve sent him that he either has or hasn’t sang on or rapped over that I haven’t even heard.

The album is full of paranoia and heart break. Sumach, where was your head at while writing it?

Sumach: During that time 9/11 had just hit and I was living in San Diego going through the Gaslamp (area of the city) and I was dealing with a lot of Marines who were just calling me Bin Laden every single day. That shit was pissing me of, you know. I was dealing with a lot of ignorance and having to use self control. I remember walking down the street and they go ‘Bin Laden’ and I’d turn around ready to take all 15 of those cats on. But I couldn’t, so I’d end up having to deal with a lot of that bad energy. That was the hardest part man, but I’m so grateful for that, because without that, I wouldn’t have all this.

That damaged aspect of your personality comes through your voice, which is fragile but also quite scary.

Willie: He’s like a Wizard, he can make his voice sound like whatever he wants at that moment. It’s a vocal style of a Wizard, the vocal style of a Sorcerer. Some sort of fricken’ half bird, half man. He can mimic the calls of any bird. He can just sound like many people, he always has this Gonjasufi grin; even if it’s soft and serene it’s still damaged. There’s still a lot of emotion in his voice, he doesn’t tried to sound, he’s just very emotional.

How does he compare to other people you’ve worked with?

Willie: There really is no comparison. It’s totally different. Sumach has his own aura and energy. His beats are demented and he doesn’t sound like anyone. It’s like Thom York has his own thing, nobody can sound like Thom York. You can tell it’s not a classically trained voice and that he’s probably damaging his vocal cords, but that’s just part of the magic. It’s pain and it’s real and it’s not and it doesn’t come from anywhere. He never wrote down any lyrics for that record. I don’t think he’s ever written down any lyrics. He just takes his feelings and translates it into words and it becomes songs, it’s crazy, it makes no sense.

Sumach: That’s it. That’s what I grew up around. And for years I was quiet and didn’t say anything because I was scared of shit. On my first raps, I wrote a lot, when I heard Jay-Z what he was talking about, I stopped writing my raps down and started putting them in my head more. If you hear my singing, then you hear the raps then you could say ‘Well how can he be singing then be rapping about this?’ It’s a balance; the singing is more of a worship, a prayer. With rap it’s like ‘nah, sorry bro.’

Willie: No forgiveness.

Sumach: That’s it.

Willie: No remorse.

Sumach: Buried in the ground and it’s you or me. And it’s not me, bro.

Did it take a long time to kind of to be open with yourself to actually become this singer?

Sumach: Yeah, it did. It took yoga for me. Some of those songs on that album I sound soft as soft, bro. Even when I was mixing it down I was like I don’t know if I want to put this out bro, but then I realised that this is my hardest stuff. Cause most people won’t get into that soft spot.

So, how do Gaslamp Killer and Gonjasufi differ to Willie and Sumach?

Willie: They differ by stage presence; sometimes we’re as crazy as we are on stage, as we are in person but we don’t have to be. I’ll speak for myself, I’m just a normal person, I just wanna be relaxed and mellow and happy. I try to enjoy my life but on stage it’s much more of a release of aggression of the pain and the passion and the frustration. And it’s just the persona is, much more alive on stage. It’s being poked and prodded by the audience and when I’m just relaxed with my friends I’m not being poked or prodded. I’m just having fun and just having fun and relaxing,

Sumach: It’s complicated man. Gonjasufi is, I would say, the higher self role. Sumach is who I am and who I’ve got to deal with it.

Some of the songs are over 4 years old. Do you still like them?

Willie: After we made them, we never really listened to them again really. I stopped listening to the songs a long time ago, until he sent me the mixes and the first draft of the master. It got me super excited because it brought me back to those times and got me very, very hyped for all this to be happening. All of my friends that have been asking my to hear it, forgot. They kept asking me but I just kept saying ‘no’. I never gave it to anyone. It was just between him and I and nobody knew about it, nobody heard it, everybody just kind of swept it up with the rug and now it’s about to flip, flip the rug over and show it’s teeth. It’s exciting.

Sumach: The music can speak for itself, I don’t want people to be kind to me; it’s not about me. I want people to be lead back to themselves if they haven’t found themselves yet.

It seems you have quite a tempestuous relationship, does that help the music and the artistry to come out?

Sumach: We deal with emotions differently. When I’m up, he’s down and when I’m down, he’s up. We both counter balance each other,. I’m just honoured and fortunate to have him still by my side because I’ve put him through a lot. I’m not an easy cat to deal with, I’m very aggressive; but when I’m around him I’m very passive. He teaches me to chill, because he’s aggressive too as everybody knows. 

Willie: There’s never been a better time for this, as we both needed to work through whatever we’re doing on our own and together. Now were both in a good place, balanced, a more balanced zone.

It’s quite a psychedelic record isn’t it?

Sumach: Yeah, we were on it man. I would tell him, I don’t care, just send it.

Willie: I definitely do but this other worldly, channelling thing he does is other worldly. He’s a savage and I think the psychedelic aspect, California definitely has a lot to do with, who we are musically. I think it’s much broader than that. Lord knows I like some good old California psychedelic music.

Did drugs have a lot to do with it?

Sumach: From the past, yeah. But during the recording of it I was sober, I hadn’t a smoke, I hadn’t had any magic mushrooms. If you can’t do it without the drugs then your not a musician, man. But stoners will like it, yeah. And anybody who isn’t a stoner.

Willie: I think it’s too crazy to listen to on drugs, I don’t think it’s safe for someone who’s in a vulnerable position. What he’s saying brings too much personal colour to your mind. It’s scary, sometimes even if you don’t know some of the stories behind the music. I know some of the stories about it and I wouldn’t want to hear them on psychedelics. We’ve both had our experiences like many people in California and we’re all stimulated by each other and the culture and drugs are a part of that. Southern Californian vibes for sure, go to the beach, go the ocean. Feel connected with mother earth, in ways you can only find either at serious meditation or psychedelics. I’ve never hit that serious mediation, but I definitely know what it’s like to take a hand full of Acid and I know what it’s like to take a hand full of shrooms.

Sumach: I’ve never done Acid. I’ve never done a handful of shrooms but I’ve hit a meditative state which felt like some psychedelic state.

How do you think your different environments have affected you musically?

Willie: This guy put batteries in his recorder and recorded some of these songs in the middle of the desert, in his Jeep. Then he recorded in the middle of the desert on to tape.

Sumach: It was like the desert crying out for the Ocean. That’s what all that was; all I wanted was to get back into the Ocean man. Every time I would come to California I would get gallons of Ocean water and drive it back to Vegas and pour it on the ground and just wonder when was the last time salt water from the Ocean pacific, touched this ground.

Do you think this album surprise and confuse a lot of people?

Sumach: It should. It better.

Willie: I’m not worried about whether it surprises people or not, but I think there is going to be a lot of haters coming at me. The whole point of the record was that there were no rules. Sumach has a story to tell and he has a message of how he wishes the world would be, how he wishes everyone to think and what he wants. It’s a beautiful thing, you know. We are not that concerned about what that does for people. I just think it needs to be heard and his message needs to be spread.

© TIM NOAKES 2010