Louis Cole was born in Los Angeles to a family with musical roots.[2][3] His father plays jazz piano, while his mother played bass. Cole started drumming when he was 8.[3][4] He graduated in jazz studies at the USC Thornton School of Music in 2009.[2][5]
Career
After graduating from USC in 2009, Cole was encouraged by his friend Jack Conte to put music videos on YouTube, including one called "Bank Account", which showcased a split-screen of him playing keyboards, drums, and singing.[6][2] This video catapulted him into the public awareness, as it was posted on social media by various celebrities and musicians such as John Mayer, Charlie Day, and Björk.[3][4]
After doing several other short songs and uploading them to YouTube, Cole wanted to focus more on writing longer material.[3] He co-founded Knower with another jazz studies graduate, Genevieve Artadi.[7] In 2010, he released both his self-titled solo album and the debut album for Knower.[2][5] After releasing his second solo album, he focused more on Knower, producing three other albums. In the meantime, Cole co-wrote "Padded Cell" for Seal's 2015 album 7, and together with Artadi, got featured on Snarky Puppy's Family Dinner – Volume 2. In 2017, he co-wrote two songs for Thundercat's album Drunk.[2] This led to signing a contract with Flying Lotus' label Brainfeeder and releasing his third solo album through the label in 2018.[6][2][3] The album featured appearances by Artadi, Thundercat, Dennis Hamm and Brad Mehldau.[2] Cole also appeared on Thundercat's 2020 Grammy Award winning album It Is What It Is, performing on a song called "I Love Louis Cole", which was dedicated to him.[8][9]
In 2020, Cole wrote an exclusive song for Grand Theft Auto Online called "Planet X", which was added to the FlyLo FM radio station through The Cayo Perico Heist update.[10][11] Knower's song "Fuck the Makeup, Skip the Shower" was previously featured on the same radio station.[12] "Planet X" was later included in Cole's fourth studio album Quality Over Opinion, which was released on October 14, 2022 via Brainfeeder.[13] Another single from the album, "Let it Happen", was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals in 2023, and the album as a whole was nominated for Best Alternative Jazz Album the following year.[14]
Cole is a classically trained jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist who plays drums, keyboards, guitar and bass, sings, and produces his material.[16][3][15] His work contains elements from a diverse range of music genres such as jazz, funk, pop, avant-garde, electronic, lo-fi (early) and grindcore (with Clown Core).[3][5][1] Cole is a "bedroom" musician who does not like working in a professional recording studio.[17] He practices drums for four hours a day, and writes music for seven hours a day. Cole feels his mission is to write his own favorite music, and he "never [tries] to make [his] music accessible to anyone."[3] He is known for using strange and counterintuitive chord progressions.[6] His lyrics often include humor and vulgarity, and his music features home-made videos. Cole is more creative during the early hours of the day, and documents this phenomenon on his song, "The Weird Part of the Night".[3]
"That music really dug its way deep into my developing brain. There are a lot of imaginative chord changes, pretty melodies, heavy funk grooves, modulations, insane synth trumpet hits and really cool sounds in those games. I still, to this day, strive to include those kinds of things in my music."
Cole is best friends with Thundercat, who has called him "one of Los Angeles's greatest musicians".[18][8] Flying Lotus has also expressed admiration for Cole on Twitter, calling him "super inspirational" during the writing of his album Flamagra.[19]
Reception
Bob Mintzer has described Cole as "the paradigm for today's musician".[5] Will Schube of Passion of the Weiss has compared Cole's "auteur approach" to that of another Los Angeles musician, Ariel Pink.[17] Emma Roller of The Brick House Cooperative has described Cole as "a dopey yet cerebral jazz composer and percussionist who whaps out brain-meltingly complex beats with Terminator-like precision".[8]
