Right here’s one other mammoth effort to boost funds for these impacted by the fires raging in Los Angeles. The LA-based experimental label Leaving Data has launched a compilation at this time referred to as Staying: Leaving Data Help To Artists Impacted By The Los Angeles Wildfires. It includes a whopping 98 tracks, together with beforehand unreleased music from André 3000, Julia Holter, Baths & Rachika Nayar, Sweatson Klank, Steve Roach, Reggie Watts, and Carlos Niño & Buddies, plus an unavailable monitor by Laraaji. Different artists on the comp embrace Samantha Urbani, Emily Sprague, Nite Jewel, Hundred Waters, Cole Pulice, Daedelus, Spencer Zahn, Extra Eaze, Lael Neal, MatthewDavid, and lots of extra.
The comp shouldn’t be streaming (to listen to it, you gotta purchase it), however we do get a public preview through “Dried Apricot,” the Baths x Rachika Nayar collab, and Laraaji’s “Joyous Dance ’82.” Hear these songs beneath, the place you too can discover a assertion from Leaving.
Right here’s that assertion:
Every thing has modified, and it’s altering nonetheless. The early days of 2025 (an already baleful yr, vis-a-vis America’s darkening political horizon) have wrought heretofore unimaginable destruction within the land we now name Los Angeles. The wildfires that started on the morning of Tuesday, January seventh—and that are nonetheless raging—are, in scope and depth, not like some other catastrophe, pure or artifical, within the metropolis’s residing reminiscence. 1000’s of properties destroyed. Twenty 4 lives misplaced on the time of writing (that quantity will virtually definitely rise), and innumerable lives without end altered. The devastation arrived abruptly, and has persevered over the course of a punishing and surreal week.
We rise within the morning after not sleeping. We test the air high quality. We test the fires’ progress on the identical app we’ve all put in (the Metropolis’s alert system retains misfiring). We add one other picture to the go bag. We surprise what the fuck the phrase “8% containment truly means,” or what distinguishes “prepared” from “set” when the evacuation warnings are fired off inside mere minutes of each other. And what occurs when warnings flip to orders. We evacuate. If now we have time, we stroll by means of our properties, recording every room, narrating all our possessions, for “insurance coverage functions.” If we don’t have time we simply go. We arrive someplace…protected…safer? We exhale. One other alert. We evacuate once more. Hadn’t even unzipped the go bag. We textual content. We name. They’re not answering. They’re most likely superb however why aren’t they answering. In all probability the identical cause you’re not answering. There’s no time and you may’t suppose. Your telephone is exploding. Family and mates are watching the information. “How shut are you?” You might be too shut. You might be shut even when you’re not shut as a result of the fires hold beginning.” Kenneth.” “Sundown.” The winds hold shifting. The automobiles are all parked within the street and all of the keys are gone. It is sort of a nightmare. You may’t get away. It’s right here and it’s all over the place. And for all too many this agonizing cycle retains on repeating after the unthinkable has already occurred: The lack of dwelling.
The unfoldingness of this occasion is difficult to articulate. Having skilled unprecedented rainfall the earlier winter, and unprecedentedly dry circumstances within the months since, the area is, at current, uniquely weak to catastrophic fires. The Eaton and Palisades Fires, already estimated to be the 2 most damaging fires within the Metropolis’s historical past, are slowly being contained, however the Santa Ana winds are anticipated to return. With them, extra concern and uncertainty. We pray for rain in a determined and historic manner.
Everyone seems to be exhausted, enraged (the standard suspects are at finest shrugging and at worst stitching division; the profiteers are already salivating), to various levels shocked by loss and sick with grief, and nonetheless, someway, mustering the braveness and vitality to behave collectively, to contribute, nevertheless they may, in the direction of the preservation of life.
We’re caught between (propelled by?) devastation and motion. The impulse to easily break down, and the information that there’s super work to be accomplished, now and sooner or later. To protect what stays, and to regain what we’ve misplaced.
The people and communities affected on this second are quite a few and diverse, however it’s the case that Los Angeles’s musical group has been completely upended. The Palisades fireplace, with its attain into older elements of Malibu and Topanga Canyon, and the Eaton fireplace, in its digital erasure of Altadena, have affected a few of the solely areas in Los Angeles the place working musicians may stay with a modicum of consolation—Although, as we’re all too conscious on this second, precarity has all the time been a part of the discount right here.
A quick phrase on Altadena specifically: Lately, Altadena has develop into a wealthy and vibrant hub for artists of all types. Nestled beneath the San Gabriel mountains, the area’s demography shifted within the latter half of the 20 th century—due largely to a historical past of redlining, that follow’s authorized cessation, and subsequent white flight—to develop into a thriving Black enclave inside Los Angeles. Former residents embrace at least Octavia Butler (whose Parable of the Sower rings now as terribly prophetic) and Sydney Poitier. That Altadena has remained one of many few areas inside Los Angeles the place dwelling possession is possible for working households and artists of all stripes isn’t any coincidence. Numerous generational properties and historic Black-owned companies have been destroyed. Among the many numerous establishments confirmed to have been misplaced on the time of writing are Madlib’s property, the Theosophical Society’s archives, and the altar of kitsch and wholesomeness that was The Bunny Museum.
Leaving Data specifically has deep roots in Altadena. Label founder MatthewDavid minimize his tooth printing J playing cards at a house operation within the neighborhood, and numerous Leaving artists reside within the space. Many of those artists have both definitively misplaced their properties, or are at the moment ready to be taught their destiny. The trail to rebuilding (how lengthy it should take, what it should value, whether or not it’s even possible) stays terribly unclear.
However, within the spirit of doing what we will, and doing what we do finest, Leaving has pulled out all of the proverbial stops to launch a profit compilation consisting of affiliated artists and supporters far and vast (lots of whom have certainly misplaced all the things). Searching for to complement the quite a few GoFundMes and the profound, usually harrowing acts of mutual help which are at the moment buoying restoration efforts, and in lieu of donating to a 3rd occasion group, all proceeds will likely be donated on to impacted people. 50% will likely be meticulously, manually allotted to Los Angeles artists and music colleagues in want, as equitably as attainable. We will likely be referencing current music group help spreadsheets / paperwork already circulating, alongside a succinct inside listing of these affected in our instant group. The opposite 50% of funds will likely be allotted to displaced Black households and group impacted by the fires, once more, as equitably as attainable (ie https://gofund.me/3f23de7d).
Private and collective therapeutic, ecological recuperation, non secular transcendence, radical communality — these issues are woven into Leaving’s roster and catalog. By no means within the label’s historical past has it been so referred to as upon to have fun and implement these ideas. Although we might not even know what “hope” constitutes but, we all know we’ve bought it someplace. We all know it’s in solidarity, and we all know it’s within the music.
-Emmett Shoemaker for Leaving Data, January 13, 2025, ~10:30pm
Staying: Leaving Data Help To Artists Impacted By The Los Angeles Wildfires is out now. Buy it and/or peruse the tracklist right here.