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LOST MIDAS: GOLDEN BOY

Lost Midas is making moves with his psychedelic electronics

Jason Trikakis has only been producing since 2011, having played drums in bands for many years previous. “Those experiences left me somewhat jaded, and music production seemed like an interesting alternative,” he tells DJ Mag. “I’d been writing songs my whole life, and producing gave me the tools to create my own music without having to rely upon other people. It was incredibly liberating.”

He talks about how he had to stay relatively sober when he was a drummer, always being the first to arrive at a gig and the last to leave, and having to stay on-point. “For a while it was great, but I became restless behind the kit, and wanted to explore expressing myself in different ways,” he says.

He was making a decent living playing and teaching music in Boston, but felt that he was treading water and moved to Los Angeles. He soon discovered the discography of Flying Lotus’s LA-based Brainfeeder Records, and loved the way it experimented — taking risks and exploring new sounds. “They were kind of the gateway to all sorts of new electronic music I previously didn’t know existed,” he says.

Jason took on the name Lost Midas for his solo productions, following an incident with his former band. “We played covers at a dive bar in Boston called the Green Dragon, and between one of our songs, a drunk patron requested we play a song by Paul Simon,” he recounts. “My lead singer, likely more drunk than the patron, thought he said ‘Lost Midas’ and said on the mic, ‘Who the hell is Lost Midas?’ The rest of us in the band heard the guy say ‘Paul Simon’, and thought it hilarious our singer heard ‘Lost Midas’.”

He started posting tracks on his SoundCloud, and soon Jasmine from Tru Thoughts was in touch — and promptly signed him. His first release, the ‘Memory Flux EP’, is helmed by diffuse alt.hip-hop piece ‘Love Undone’ featuring ethereal vox from Taylor O’Donnell. Fractured icy chillscape ‘Broken Peace Is’ and a playfully mothmatic Machinedrum-esque ‘Dream Kiss’ complete the release, and there’s plenty more where they came from.