Buried Treasure

In late 2021, when a handful of Vancouver producers were trading late folders and half-finished stems, somebody passed around a batch of unsigned files marked L.T. Drifta. Soft drums. Patient bass. Loops that sounded like they’d been lifted from an uncle’s jazz shelf and left to breathe. The three of them obsessed about its virtues for days. “Drifta is my hero,” one of them said. “He’s what’s right about this music. He can make whole compositions with twelve seconds of something dusty. It’s like having a sugar packet, maybe one egg, and a little bit of flour, and making a delicious cake.”

On the luminous run of private links circulating that winter, L.T. Drifta — based in Vancouver — takes his musical philosophy into his own hands. “A lot of people call this stuff dead,” he says of the project. “But if you bring it in a house form, maybe some young cats who never listen to that stuff will peep it.” To supplement his trademark sampler workflow, Drifta builds whole rooms alone: keys, bass, drums, the soft static between them. The eccentricities of the producer go beyond his multiple musical personalities. His idea of a fun afternoon is a long walk through the rain and then staring into the tanks at the Vancouver Aquarium. Today, Drifta is looking bewilderedly into glass populated by jellyfish, octopuses, and sea anemones. “That’s why I don’t go in the ocean,” he says.

Instead, the workaholic finds his own buried treasure in jazz and soul records procured from family elders. He then cranks out unpolished but brilliant production for friends, guests, and whoever else ends up in the room. Much of Drifta’s music — he makes a night’s worth every few days or so — is created solely for the late enjoyment of himself and his crew. One of those not-intended-to-be-released projects still floats around under a pitched-up alias: a furry, unidentified folder with a voice that sounds like a house track talking to itself in helium.

“A lot of people ain’t gonna feel my music for at least ten years, ’cause they’re used to what the radio plays,” Drifta says while watching giant spider crabs snap their claws at each other. With friends in high places, he’ll definitely be able to keep his head above water.