Our eleventh Tibi Close Friends project has just launched, and for the first time in the series, the artist isn’t a solo act - it’s a band. They’re called Levitation Room. Formed in 2012 out of East L.A., the name was born in a studio jam session, mid-trip, when the room felt like it was, well, levitating. Since then, they’ve spent the last fourteen years making music that, fittingly, does exactly that to every room they play. It started when Julian Porte, lead vocals, and Gabriel Fernandez, lead guitar, connected that first summer over a shared obsession with the intoxicating psych acts of the 1960s (The Grateful Dead, Electric Prunes) and the British Invasion groups that paved the way for them (The Kinks, The Beatles). By the end of that summer, they’d found a drummer and a bassist who shared the same name, and the rest is history.

For those who may be new here: Tibi Close Friends is a creative outlet where we link up with independent artists we believe in and make something together - a live performance, a film, a story worth telling. We document their work, share it with you, and reveal how it all came together - the why behind the what.

Levitation Room was born distinctly Chicano. The founding members grew up in East L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley, in working-class immigrant families, and the band earned its audience the old-fashioned way: in backyards, on whatever gear they could borrow, playing for crowds that started out as friend groups and grew one Facebook invite at a time. L.A. TACO published a wonderful profile of the band last fall that chronicles those early days, and my favorite detail from it is this: their first drummer showed up to his audition without owning a drum kit. He wanted in on something serious, so he said yes first and figured out the rest after. Although the lineup has grown and shifted in the years since, the Chicano roots haven’t gone anywhere. You can hear them in the songwriting itself, which slides between English and Spanish as easily as it slides between decades - equal parts 1960s haze and present-day East L.A.

And from those backyards to the world. Their 2015 single Friends has passed thirty million streams. They played the very first Psycho Fest, they’ve played Desert Daze, they’ve toured with Post Animal and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, they’ve landed on Danger Mouse’s own playlist, and outside of Los Angeles their biggest listening cities are London, Mexico City, Sydney, and Chicago. Four kids from East L.A. who started with borrowed gear now get recognized on the other side of the planet. They never chased that. They just kept playing.

So - why Levitation Room, and why now?

The honest answer is the simplest one: we genuinely love this band. The sound, the look, the creative direction, the mindset - all of it. Their music does what the best psych rock always has, it loosens your grip on the clock a little, and in this case, is accompanied by a visual world that is fully realized in a way you rarely see from an independent act. But beyond my own taste, this project marks a first for the series. We have never worked with a band before. Every Tibi Close Friends episode until now has been a solo artist, and we’ve wanted to capture what a full band brings - five people locked into one another, communicating in glances and nods, a living organism rather than a single voice - since the day we dreamt this series up. Their sound is also unlike anything we’ve produced before, which is exactly the point of the project: every episode should open a new door.

And then there’s the thing that never shows up in a press bio, the thing you only learn by standing in a room with people, real people. These are genuinely cool dudes. Incredibly talented, and completely dedicated to their craft, living a life doing exactly what they love, and it radiates off of them. They carry the energy of professionals and the candor of people who just want to have fun. That combination is rare, and once you find it, you’ll never want to leave.

Now, the how. I’ve written before about the importance of communication in bringing these projects to life - it is, above all else, the reason they succeed - and this one proved the thesis once again. I first reached out to the band through Instagram. No response. Fair enough, I guess a DM from a fashion brand’s creative lab is an easy to scroll past. So, I dug up an email address for the band and one for their manager, Ian, and reached out there too, laying out what Tibi Close Friends is and what we wanted to build with them. That email landed. And the timing was pure kismet. The band is based in East L.A., and we were already flying to Los Angeles in a couple of months to shoot with Salami Rose Joe Louis. Two TCF projects, one trip, the calendar practically making the decision for us.

We planned the shoot at their recording studio in East L.A., Savannah Studios - an insanely groovy room that just oozes history, the kind of place where you can feel every session that came before you the moment you walk through the door. Matt and I drove out from West Hollywood on a Friday afternoon. Two of us, three tripods, iPhones, a digi cam, a Polaroid camera, a DSLR, and a suitcase full of Tibi clothes. That’s it. That’s the whole production. We pulled into a parking lot full of Airstreams and a mid-2000s Mexican VW bus, met the band, tried on the clothes, set up our equipment, minimal as it was, and got to it.

We recorded three tracks off their new album, Equinox - the title track Equinox, Not Your Fool, and Touch. Being in that studio was one of those experiences where you pinch yourself and wonder if this is really what you get to do for a living. Watching them work, you understand what fourteen years of making music together can grow into - they play like people who have spent thousands of hours in a room together, because they have, and it still feels like they’re just getting started. Between takes we shot editorial images in the studio, in the parking lot, and inside Iggy’s VW bus. By the time we packed up, the sun had long since set and we were tired, exhausted really, but wholly and completely fulfilled.

Oh, and one more thing I’m particularly excited about...we changed up our title sequence and title cards for this episode, leaning fully into the band’s 60s psych rock aesthetic, and it is really, really cool. The full video is amazing, these guys are deeply intriguing and fun to watch in their element, and Matt did a wonderful job on the digital production side - taking a day of footage from a two-man crew and a trunk full of tripods and turning it into something that feels far bigger than what a shoot with no lighting rigs, no set design, and no staff would typically generate. The beauty of flying across the country with a suitcase of clothes and a friend, and coming home with something like this, is not lost on us in the slightest.

Our eleventh Tibi Close Friends project is now live. The full performance can be viewed on Tibi.com and YouTube. You can also find Levitation Room on Instagram, the digital streaming platforms, and of course on tour - where, if you get the chance, you should absolutely go see them make a room levitate in person. And go listen to Equinox, or buy the vinyl like we did, or both!

Thank you to our amazing CP Media team for making these projects real, thank you to Julian, Gabriel, Iggy, Kevin, and Glenn - the musicians, the road warriors, and now, true Tibi Close Friends - for opening up your studio, your parking lot, and Iggy’s bus to two guys you’d only ever met over email, and for reminding us why we make these in the first place. And thank you to Ian, for answering the email that started it all.