Commencing life as an eight person monster hiphop crew, set up to challenge the dominance of the Americans in the DMCs, then whittled down to just three amazing performers, The Scratch Perverts now epitomise all that is good about dance music. They’ve grown and matured from the hiphop scene, playing a diverse and clever range of music that encourages people to listen to stuff they wouldn’t normally listen to, and which prohibits the group from being pigeonholed into any other category than “simply superb”.
Tony Vegas, the man who originally kicked off the Scratch Perverts isn’t afraid to speak his mind. When I mention the fact that some people choose to criticise them for playing stuff other than hiphop in the begining, he shoots off into a massive, well though out rant that has us both chuckling throughout. “People always want you to be the person they want you to be,” he begins philosophically. “It’s a fact of being a performer to a certain extent. If the Red Hot Chilli Peppers played in Australia tomorrow night and just performed stuff off their yet to be released new album, people would be like “what the fuck! I wanted you to do Under the Bridge” and so on. People want you to be who they want you to be, and personally I have no interest in that. You’re there to show them who you are and who you know yourself to be.”
“People can interpret how you perform however they choose to, but if any of those who’ve criticised us for playing stuff other than hiphop can tell us that the hiphop scene is so good that we shouldn’t play stuff other than hiphop, I’ll gladly listen to them. But as far as I’m concerned the whole hiphop scene is on its arse, and has been for ages; it’s shit!” he chuckles. “Yeah ok Kanye West’s new album is going to come out and it’s going to be good, yeah definitely no doubt,” he concedes “but where is everything else? There’s just not good stuff coming out anymore and it’s not 1989 anymore.”
“We play music that affects us emotionally and we like as a crew,” he states. “Hiphop was never about one particular ‘thing’, it was always about interpretation of music, and that’s what I still consider it to be. I’ve been into hiphop since the early 80s and I’m old in that game and I’m pretty sure in my opinion of what hiphop is meant to be. It’s not about a guy with a microphone rapping over a fucking Scott Storch beat; it was never meant to be that and was meant to be more than that. If people’s interpretation of it is simply that then they’re welcome to it, but I don’t think it’s really fair for people to, in a bitchy way, challenge other people’s interpretation of music. I think it’s just a bit weak to be honest.”
With that out of the way, we discuss the fortunes of the group. “The DJing thing for us seems to get bigger all the time. It’s really good to be busy, especially at home as we’re doing two to three shows a week, though we try to not do more than that,” Vegas says. “We’ve been in the studio a little, and are working out a clothing range with Maharishi to represent the brand we see our name being. But we’re mostly focused in the studio. We hibernate and look at our monitors for 12 hours a day and gradually go mad,” he chuckles.
The Scratch Perverts are known for combining hiphop and drum and bass, so I asked Vegas if they had anything special planned for Australia in the way of tricks. “If people think us playing drum and bass is a headfuck then they should wait to see us play in Australia,” he says mysteriously. After a bit of prodding, he explains a little of what we can expect. “We’re going to work out a few trick things to include,” he mentions casually. “We play a little dubstep now, so we start with that and move into hiphop. We’re influenced by the French scene at the moment, Diplo, Justice, Switch and those kinds of guys, and we think the stuff in the middle will really surprise a lot of people. I don’t think anyone making music at the moment can ignore Justice and the quality of their production. You can’t but help to be influenced by that and if people want to ignore it they’re being childish,” he rants again. But to all those who love dnb, don’t fret. “We end up with drum and bass and so you’ll hear 180bpms a minute, and end up bleeding,” he laughs.
Scratch Perverts play Parklife alongside Adam Freeland, Justice, Digitalism, Stereo MCs and more, held at the Botanic Gardens on Sun 23 Sept.