I'm A Genius

I'm A Genius is a Los Angeles band that makes music on a circle. The band combines live instruments (piano, guitar, drums, synth, etc) and live vocals with pre-recorded speech samples.

What is music on a circle?

Imagine the face of a clock with the second hand ticking away in a circular sweep. Now imagine that you attach a sound at the 2 o'clock position, so that whenever the second hand passes this point, that particular sound occurs. This type of clocklike movement is the foundation of the band's circular music.

Whenever you play a sound, it isn't swallowed up into the past (like in traditional linear time) occurring again only if you physically re-play it. Instead the sound comes back at a specified point in the future. Because the musical canvas itself is circular, the sound automatically will play as the circle continually spirals past the specified point.

Now, attaching a single sound at a specific clock position is the simplest type of circular operation. Once a sound is attached, it then becomes a layer that other sweeps of the circle can play against. You can attach other sounds at the same or different points of the clock. In the extreme, you can have a complex series of circles that add up in a richly harmonic way.

The band uses these circular loops to layer different instruments and speech samples against one another. The end result is a new sort approach that blends live looping with a modern deejay influence.