Tag: Wajatta Don't Let Get You Down

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Wajatta (Reggie Watts and John Tejada) Team Up with March Adstrum on a Euphoric House Banger

Deriving their name as an amalgamation of its members’ last names, Wajatta (pronounced wa-HA-ta) is an electronic music duo that features acclaimed comedian/musician Reggie Watts and electronic music artist, producer and DJ John Tejada.

Watts first burst into the scene as the co-host of IFC’s groundbreaking variety series Comedy Bang! Bang! As a solo performer, he has honed a unique style that blurs the lines between music and comedy that’s heavily reliant on improvisation — most notably, the multi-layered music tracks built on the fly with looped beatboxed rhythms and soulful vocals. The acclaimed comedian and musician has done a TED Talk, multiple comedy specials for both Comedy Central and Netflix, and recorded Reggie Watts Live at Third Man Records at the invitation of Jack White.

Famously, Watts was the bandleader for CBS’s The Late Late Show With James Corden.

Tejada has been at the forefront of the West Coast techno scene since 1994, prolifically releasing a series of acclaimed albums, singles and EPs through labels like Kompakt, Poker Flat, Cocoon, PlugResearch, and his own label, Palette Recordings.

Tejada also is one-half of electronic duo Optometry with March Adstrum. The pair released their debut EP After-Image earlier this year.

With the release of 2018’s Casual High Technology and 2020’s Don’t Let Get You Down, which was released through Flying Lotus‘ Briainfeeder, the duo established a sound that they describe broadly as “electronic dance music with its roots in Detroit techno, Chicago house, ’70s funk and New York hip-hop.” 

2021’s Do You Even Care Anymore EP encompassed an evolution of the duo’s sound and approach. “It has developed into something a bit deeper,” Tejada said in press notes. ““While our process and Reggie’s vocal improvisation work is still the same when we record, there’s just something new that we settled into this time. The music and the lyrics got a bit deeper.”

The duo’s newest EP Waiting For The Get Down is slated for Thursday release through their longtime label home Brainfeeder. The EP’s latest single “Again And Again” feat. March Adstrum is a sultry and euphoric house-inspired banger built around a pulsating and punchy 4/4 beat, glistening and arpeggiated synths and Watts’ soulful delivery inviting the listener to a much-needed good time, to celebrate existence, get lost in a hypnotic groove and dance.

“‘Again And Again’ came out of me bringing a sketch of it to one of our live shows and just playing it in the set to see how Reggie would respond,” Tejada explains. “This is a fairly normal way of starting tracks, just to be in the moment and to try something that Reggie has never heard before. That moment created a great vibe and was perhaps the highlight of the whole show, so we quickly got it recorded and dialed in the rest.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Wajatta (Reggie Watts and John Tejada) Release a Playful, 8-Bit Visual for Upbeat, House Music Anthem “Do You Even Care Anymore?”

Deriving their name as an amalgamation of its members’ last names, Wajatta (pronounced wa-HA-ta) is an electronic music duo that features acclaimed comedian/musician Reggie Watts and electronic music artist, producer and DJ John Tejada. With the release of 2018’s Casual High Technology and last year’s Don’t Let Get You Down, which was released through Flying Lotus‘ Briainfeeder Records, the duo established a sound that they describe broadly as “electronic dance music with its roots in Detroit techno, Chicago house, ’70s funk and New York hip-hop.”

The duo’s latest effort, the Do You Even Care Anymore EP is slated for a Friday release, and the EP’s material reportedly encompasses the next evolution of the duo’s sound. “It has developed into something a bit deeper,” Wajatta’s John Tejada says. “While our process and Reggie’s vocal improvisation work is still the same when we record, there’s just something new that we settled into this time. The music and the lyrics got a bit deeper.”

The EP’s latest single, title track “Do You Even Care Anymore” is centered around a classic, Larry Levan-like production featuring a bop jazz bass line, which reminds me of the sampled bass line in Black Sheep‘s “The Choice Is Yours,” tweeter and woofer rattling beats, twinkling bursts of synths, and a mischievous horn line sample. Reggie Watts contributes a soulful jazz standard influenced croon singing lyrics that poke and prod the listener into waking up from the mundanity of their lives, and start fully enjoying the only life they will ever know.

Directed by Mike Manor and featuring backgrounds by Waneella, the recently released video features Wajatta in an 8 bit universe rocking out for passerby and clubgoers. During the video, we see the 8 bit Reggie Watts being a warm and comforting presence encouraging all to live in the moment.

“We have all these man made constructs which mask us from intensely sobering existential dread,” Mike Manor explains. ““It’s like by default we’re all on the Titanic waiting to feel alive only when we hit the iceberg. I look at the song as a call to enjoy our lives mundanely as our true selves and to make it easier on each other by not being such judgemental d*ckheads all the time.”