B33T JU1C3

Beet Juice (sometimes written as B33T JUIC3), the one-man project of former Mosaic Foundation keyboardist Ekewem Bogmis, will release its debut EP “Alchemy” Friday night at Lot 10.

A native of Rochester, Bogmis moved to Ithaca four years to pursue his music career. He just spent a year in Korea, but returned two months ago to focus on releasing the new album.

Both on stage and in the studio, Bogmis relies on live looping to create his dense soundscapes. He’ll stack some grooves through beatboxing and percussion, lay down riffs on his guitar, and then sing his heartfelt lyrics over the sonic backdrop.

Bogmis started experimenting with looping during a studio project five years ago. “I gravitate toward dub-style music, which is super repetitive,” he said. “My buddy Paul Brown, who used to play guitar with Eddy Grant, showed me a video of Dub FX busking with loops. I thought it would be perfect for what I was trying to do, so I spent a year learning how to do it.”

He described recording the new EP as “a kind of therapy for me,” noting “sometimes I’ll write a song to get me through a situation and it will give me a basis to reflect upon. That’s how my inspiration works; it’s mostly based on very real situations—heartbreak and epiphanies of self and higher things. But I try to keep it danceable at all times regardless of the tempo.”

As for his Beet Juice stage name, “it’s a rhythmic pun, but I also used to work in a vegan juice bar,” Bogmis said. “And the beet was a big part of my experience there. I discovered I really liked them as a vegetable in liquid form.”

To learn more, visit www.sonicbids.com/band/b33t-ju1c3/. - Ithaca Journal