In 2023, Williams, who had picked up beat-making as a hobby during the pandemic, sought to deepen his understanding of the form and his long-standing attachment to innovators such as Dilla. He found a group of producers hosting events on the Lower East Side, and told them of his aspirations—to shoot within their makeshift network, and to learn more about making beats. They welcomed him in, and the resulting series is imbued with the comfort and maneuverability of an insider.
Most of Williams’s photography is portrait-based, and there is a bit of portraiture mixed into “Straight Loops, Light & Soul,” but the majority of these pictures are concerned with atmosphere. They bob through live events where beats are being played for an audience—a Dilla fund-raiser, producer showcases and meetups, the Lo-Fi Festival in Brooklyn. “You have fifteen minutes to find some expression in someone’s performance,” Williams told me. “Once I noticed that, it became just as much about the people who were around the room, engaging with the music.” Pictures of producers setting up in bars, dispensaries, art galleries, and co-working spaces also capture the soul emanating from samplers and the effect this has on repurposed dens. There are closeups of stank-faces, daps, acrylic nails turning knobs. Hands, lots of hands—outstretched, passing cords, clutching mikes, slipping vinyl out of sleeves, scratching records, tapping pads, scrawling signatures onto posters. Some images evoke the space through which sound travels. Others catch performers and spectators in moments of rapturous enlightenment, in the thrall of a locked-in groove.
