Blank Blue

By the time Los Angeles producer Nobody resolved to create a follow-up to his 2003 Ubiquity album Pacific Drift: Western Water Music, Vol. 1—this time spotlighting a lone vocalist—he had already secured his place as a fixture in left-field hip-hop. He contacted Niki Randa, a coworker from their shared shifts at a Long Beach record store that began in 2001, and invited her to lay vocals across several beats he had assembled. The resulting track, “Sonic What?!,” delighted them enough to commit to a full-scale project. They recruited help from an array of associates to expand and refine their sound, and they performed regularly at Nobody’s Low End Theory nights at the Airliner club. Operating as Blank Blue, the duo issued Western Water Music, Vol. II—its title inspired by jazzman Gary Bartz’s Harlem Bush Music—on Ubiquity in May 2008. The concept album portrayed an apocalyptic earthquake that submerged the entire state of California.