PRETTY, HAPPY

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Elvin Estela has no use for dark, angry tunes. "That's an easy emotion," the Long Beach-based DJ told us a couple of years ago. "But when you make music that's pretty and happy, I think that's harder to do. The best songs are always really bright, with a teeny bit of sadness." Maybe he's right, because the music Estela puts out under his nom de plume Nobody sounds more blissed-out than an amorous couple languishing in a rapturous, post-coital embrace. He's been down this pretty/happy route before, particularly on 2003's PacificDrift:WesternWaterMusic, which was colored in '60s psychedelic rock flourishes. Now, with AndEverythingElse, Nobody takes some similar head-spinning tunes and gooses them hip-hop style—some scratching here, some mix-tape cuts there—literally giving a new spin on musty hippie sounds. Sure, DJ/producers like Manitoba and Tranquility Bass did the same thing years ago, but Nobody flips it into something transcendentally beautiful, starting with the breezy anticipation of flutes and organs on the first track, "The Coast Is Clear (For Fireworks)," which sounds like the heady rush of finding love—or lust—at first sight. That vibe gets cranked up on the Flaming Lips cover "What Is the Light?" and then twists into really esoteric terrain with Mia Doi Todd's evocative vocal on "You Can Know Her." Later, the album whips into a storm of bracing rock enespañolvia Xoloanxinco with "Con Un Relampago," eventually dropping into the drowsy happiness of "Siesta Con Susana"—a wonderful comedown from a lovely trip.

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