Elysia Crampton at Club Downunder

Elysia Crampton is a transgender Bolivian-American Aymara electronic artist and activist whose music is a surrealist, politically charged mix of jarring samples and influences ranging from cumbia to Southern rap/crunk to classical music. She’ll take the Club Downunder stage on November 1st for a lecture and a live performance.

Born near Los Angeles, she spent time in various locations in the United States and Mexico, eventually taking up residence in a small town in Virginia. Initially going by the moniker E+E, she became known during the late 2000s/early 2010s for her edits and remixes of pop and R&B songs, which she mainly created using a keyboard and a sampler. The first proper E+E album, Promise, appeared in 2012, with the acclaimed The Light That You Gave Me to See You following in late 2013. She dropped the E+E moniker in 2015 and began releasing music as Elysia Crampton, beginning with 7″s on Boomkat Editions and Total Stasis before the full-length American Drift, issued by FaltyDL’s Blueberry Recordings. The album received praise from publications such as Pitchfork and FACT, and was followed by the similarly acclaimed Demon City, released by Break World Records in 2016.