Kevin Bronson on May 3rd, 2017

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For the four years he worked on his first album as Litronix, Kevin Litrow lived overlooking a bustling Chevron station at a busy intersection in Venice Beach. “The Gas Station is a movie that never ends,” he says of the experience. “People of all kinds come to the gas station to fill up and roll out. Always coming and going. Some people are local, most are not. Some are travelers, some are hookers, some are drug dealers, drinkers, homeless, supermodels, actors, tweakers, surfers, professionals, and some are survivors. The gas station is always moving. Except for me. I stay still. I live here. I watch the never-ending movie and take notes. And this album is what I came up with.”

And quite an album “Pump the Gas” is. A loop pedal-fueled panoply of analog synth, guitar, arching vocals and particle-collision electronic beats, it pulses with the energy of its surroundings and the subversive tendencies of its experimental pop creator. Litrow, who in the past was the locus of Dance Disaster Movement and 60 Watt Kid, weaves the weirdness of the station characters into every song — not to mention a little of his own.

In the song “Hole in the Wall,” Litrow isn’t looking out his window but at his computer. “The internet is another hole we look through,” he says. “We spy on friends, lovers, people we know, don’t know, or people that we want to know. We fantasize suggestions in our minds of what these people are doing, yet we don’t really know the facts. Through social networks, we look at pictures and see where people are and what events they go to. We look through a ‘Hole In The Wall’ and no one knows … psych! Everyone knows because everyone does it. It’s just the uncomfortable truth.” It’s creepy, and a little sad, and cool too, as uncomfortable truth tends to be.

Produced with Avi Zahner-Isenberg (Avi Buffalo), Litronix’s “Pump the Gas” is out June 16.

||| Stream: “Hole in the Wall”

||| Also: Stream “Are You New Age?” and “Maggot”