Laser Rot Bio
When San Diego producer Laser Rot dropped his first official EP release in 2015, he was a little surprised, and completely thrilled, to watch as his funky house release “Freak the Funk” climb the Beatport Top 100 House Music charts: topping out at #13. Since then, he’s had several releases in the top 100 House charts and continues to bring the funk in every aspect of his music.
Laser Rot was born and raised as Josh McCann in Columbus, Ohio, a not so small town in the Midwest. It was there in Columbus, during the 90’s when the U.S. underground rave culture was booming that Josh discovered and fell in love with electronic dance music. This interest grew into an obsession for the music, and along with that came his influences of funk and disco, 90’s RnB, soul and hip hop.
With years of piano lessons in his pocket Josh began his musical journey composing and producing his own music in 2001, keeping it a secret from all but a few of his closest friends. It would be almost 12 yrs. later until he felt comfortable enough sharing his music to a larger audience.
Up until that time he was just trying to find his “voice”. He dabbled in many genres from hip hop to drum and bass, trance, and progressive house before focusing on the sound he has today.
With years of piano lessons in his pocket Josh began his musical journey composing and producing his own music in 2001, keeping it a secret from all but a few of his closest friends. It would be almost 12 yrs. later until he felt comfortable enough sharing his music to a larger audience. Up until that time he was just trying to find his “voice”. He dabbled in many genres from hip hop to drum and bass, trance, and progressive house before focusing on the sound he has today.
“I’m a perfectionist, and so I’m never 100% happy the songs I release. It’s a struggle to tell myself enough is enough. Otherwise, I would be tweaking this or that until I’m dead,” says Josh.
Not only does Laser Rot have a passion for composing and producing, but he really loves to collaborate. His sixth release CoFunktion was meant to be entirely collaborative although scheduling problems made it so that only five of the seven songs on the album were collaborations. He brought on close friends, as well as collaborating with three complete strangers from two other continents.
Josh talks about his love for collaborating, “When you collaborate with other people it’s like small look into their mind, a tiny bit of insight into their way of thinking, and creativity. They bring with them, their culture, their influences, their experiences, and everything else that makes them who they are. And because of those differences you can work on something together and come up with something neither one of you would have come up with on your own. Not in a million years. I just think that’s pretty cool. “
n recent years, Laser Rot has spent a good deal of time working on what he calls orchestral hybrids, which he describes as a blend of orchestral elements and other genres. And while he has yet to release any of this music, he says that it might happen someday.
In September 2019, Josh was diagnosed with testicular cancer and was promptly treated with surgery, and surveillance, along with a quick recovery. In December of 2020 just as the worldwide pandemic was rearing its ugly head Josh received news that the cancer had returned metastasized in his lymph nodes. He began intensive chemotherapy treatments in early January 2021. In early March of the same year, due to complications from the cancer Josh suffered from blood clots on both sides of his pelvis going to his legs as well as clots in his left ankle. The clots had cut off the oxygen supply to his left foot causing extensive damage. It would be 2 moths before he could even somewhat walk again, and the rest of the year still healing. As of this writing in January 2021, Josh says that he still has not completely healed and is not yet able to walk normally.
Despite the health issues and going through them amidst a global pandemic Laser Rot still managed to put out six releases and 38 songs, that included a whopping 30-song album ‘FunkTonic’ which contained two hours of feelgood funky music.
It's difficult to compare Laser Rot’s flavor of funky dance music some insight is gained from Pandora internet radio. Pandora places Laser Rot’s tunes next to acts such as Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, Modjo, Chromeo, GRiZ, Booka Shade, Justice, Gorillaz, Terrence Parker, RJD2, and All Good Funk Alliance, to name a few.