dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Guru

Leave a comment

Sometimes interviews can be a bit hairy. Timezones, telephone lines, traffic and schedules can all conspire to make things difficult for all involved. Such was my interview with Guru. Instead of the 15 minute chat from a hotel room, I had a 5 minute chat about Jazzmatazz 4 with both Guru and his new partner in crime Solar as they travelled in a taxi on the way to another interview. Not the most ideal situation to ask someone you’ve been a fan of you years everything you wanted to know.

So, I concentrated on Jazzmatazz volume 4. The Jazmatazz series was launched 14 years ago as Guru (which stands for Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal) teamed up with jazz greats Lonnie Liston Smith, Branford Marsalis, Ronny Jordan, Donald Byrd and Roy Ayers to produce the one of the first fusions of jazz and hiphop. Also featured on the album was French rapper MC Solaar and N’Dea Davenport of the Brand New Heavies, and it broke new ground in the hiphop scene. It crossed boundaries and introduced jazz to hiphoppers and hiphop to jazz listeners.

However, it’s been a number of years since the last iteration. “This has been an ongoing project,” Guru states, “but I wanted to put it on the back burner for a minute, finish up some other projects from my previous works, then hook up with Solar and get things up and running.” The Solar he is referring isn’t the French MC Solaar, but a New York producer who has stepped in the hard to fill shoes of DJ Premier, Guru’s ex partner in the now defunct Gangstarr.

Unlike previous releases in the series, there aren’t as many big names from either the jazz scene or the hiphop world. “We wanted a balance with the legends and contemporary, and of course the new up and coming artists,” Guru explains. “We wanted to balance it out and give something for everybody.” This is partly because the influence of the Jazzmatazz series is so wide reaching, being if not the father of many music genres like Acid Jazz and Neo Soul, then certainly a big fatherly figure in their lives. These styles can be seen as old and stale, where as Guru says “with us, we’re the originators so we can push ourselves and do our own thing, we decide the direction, because Jazzmatazz defines itself.”

Guru has been praised so much for his lyrical flow and delivery. “It’s all about taking experiences and making them universal through my writing,” he explains. “So my repertoire as Guru I filter my experiences – whether I’m talking about my rap skills or society or the industry or romance, it’s the thing I do, and now I’ve partnered with Solar he’s pushed me to new heights. It’s the tracks he makes that influence me to do what I do, and he hit me with some of the greatest music I’ve heard so it pushed me to new heights.”

He continues to lavish praise on Solar. “This work I feel is a lot more cohesive,” Guru continues. “I’ve teamed up with one of the hottest producers from New York and he’s brought a huge musical knowledge to the Jazzmatazz odyssey and taken it further in the sonic landscape, and conceptually with the song writing. He has a lot of ideas that he brings to the table song writing wise, so allows me to concentrate on lyrics and concepts and pushes me and the other artists to do the best work they’ve ever done.”

I quickly get a chance to ask Solar one question, so I ask if he thinks it’s fair that he’s compared to DJ Premier. “As a black man coming from America fairness isn’t something we see a whole lot of,” he says. “As far as my talent is concerned I feel my talent speaks for itself. I think Premier is a genius and one of the greatest talents to ever touch a drum machine, but then there’s all these people who buy the album and come to the shows and see me do what I do, and like it.” And I guess no one can argue with that.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

The Nextmen

Leave a comment

When I last talked to Dom Betmead of the Nextmen, he told me he wasn’t really sure what inspired him to make music, apart from just listening to other music. Now they have their third album out it’s clear that what they listen to and what they play in their sets does have a big influence on them, as ‘This Was Supposed To Be The Future’ features an eclectic mix of songs that straddle genres from hiphop to reggae to soul.

“The title was just something that came into my head,” Betmead explains. “How when we were younger there was all this talk of the future, and how we’d have flying cars and jet packs and a meal in a pill and all that kind of stuff, and it just sounded like a nice concept for a record. Me and Brad (Ellis, the other half of the Nextmen) used to talk about it a lot, and about what the 1950s perception of the future might be different to now. So we gave the title to the artists and we worked together to get different interpretations of it.”

It has been a long time coming, with some songs such as Blood Fire written quite a few years ago and road tested on their numerous tours. “After the second album, ‘Get Over It’, we had some problems in terms of distribution – it wasn’t very well set up,” he says. “Once we had settled in though, we just concentrated on DJing a lot, touring around and getting mix tapes done. And although there was quite a lot of creativity going on there were a few things were weren’t sure of, mainly to do with labels, and it wasn’t until we did the ‘Blunted In The Backroom’ compilation for Antidote that we felt we were in a comfortable position with a label to move forward with our third artist album.”

Something I noticed with the album is that, although some tunes sound like typical cut-ups the Nextmen are famous for, there’s also some very good songwriting on the album, making the album feel coherent and whole. “I’m really happy you spotted that!” exclaims Betmead. “We were songwriting quite a long time before this album, but I was never confident enough to put it forward, and all of a sudden that changed. I was working with singers like Brigette Amofah and Zarif (both whom feature on the album) and we were just writing stuff and not necessarily putting it in a place; some of it worked towards their individual artist stuff and some of it came our way for the Nextmen.”

Another two excellent songs feature Dallas from Fat Freddy’s Drop, and the Nextmen have been friends with the band for a number of years now. The tune the Drop was originally an acoustic record recorded with Dallas. “It was the first song he ever wrote”, Betmead explains, “and I came up with the guitar for it, and we re-developed that track to the one that’s on the album.” The other song, Did No Wrong, came together over a few pints and was done in a couple of days. “When you’re working with exceptional talent like that things do tend to happen quite quickly,” he smiles.

As the Nextmen are usually so sample based, yet on this album there seems to be much more composition, I had to find out if the album was done with a band, or just expertly engineered. “I think the idea of just using samples to make a record now days is just impossible to do,” agrees Betmead. “If you’re thinking of selling any serious amount, you’re bound to get in trouble unless you do it properly. I’m a guitarist by trade, and we recorded ourselves playing keys and guitar and treated those recordings as if they were samples. So we sampled ourselves, but in doing that it allowed us to go anywhere musically – we’re not limited by the notes or the keys the sample was originally in because we can play what we want”.

The union with Antidote not only led to the excellent Trojan catalogue mix ‘Blunted in the Backroom’ but also afforded the Nextmen a lot more control over their music. “Sanctuary, who owns Antidote, also own the entire back catalogue of Trojan, so we suddenly had access to all this amazing reggae music that was totally clearable whether we wanted to put it on a mix tape or sample it; it was something we could do properly and clear all the samples. To be honest it was just a dream to have all that stuff to work with,” he grins.

Julian Cram

This Was Supposed To Be The Future is out now through Antidote.

dB Magazine, Interview, Writing

Audiofly

Leave a comment

Audiofly are Luca Saporito and Anthony Middleton, two hotshot DJ/Producers making big waves in the dance scene with their forward thinking music and lively DJ sets. Their music is described as ‘deadly Techno meets Electronic House’ and as ‘a powerful and original style of music’. Relatively new to the scene as Audiofly, the duo’s enthusiasm for the music and scene in general is infectious.

Anthony Middleton met Luca Saporito in early 2000 when he was trying an experiment in surround sound. “I was trying to introduce it into a club environment and it didn’t really work out,” Middleton confesses. He had little budget, but Saporito agreed to work as a DJ in the club anyway. “We found that we had really good fun together and a really good energy so it was a logical thing to do a remix (Live Love) which worked really well.”

Live Love, released in 2004, was picked up by big name DJs such as Steve Lawler, DJ Ralf, Victor Calderone & Danny Tenaglia, bringing them world wide acclaim and attention. Their own tunes Release Yourself, Rockin It and Do You Hear? were picked up by labels such as Low Pressings, Deleted Records, Fantastic House and Jackit Records. Middleton describes his sound as “very driving, having elements of techno and house, and it’s incredibly percussive which break down into melodies. It’s high energy without being hard.”

But they don’t just stick to house, offering a wide variety of sounds from all over the place. “We always get our inspiration from what we hear on the weekends,” Middleton smiles. “We’re constantly moving our sound because we’re constantly out there and listening. For example, we’ve taken elements from the minimal fad – the beats are very simple and yet incredibly powerful, and we’ve taken that kind of philosophy for our beats but added the melodic Audio Fly sound. And hearing the fresher, younger DJs on the scene also influences us. They’re excited about the music and are pushing where the old pros tend to sit back a little bit.”

In addition to rocking clubs with their productions, they have quite a reputation as DJs. Unlike many of their contemporaries, who tend to play ‘mini-sets” of 3 or 4 tunes in a row, their DJ style is as a duo – one will play a record, then the next will play another. “We tried early on to do three and three, but we found we dynamically bounce off of each other. We’re not competitive – Luca will play a track and I’ll know just the track to play after that,” he says. “We tried one off us DJing off CDJs and the other ‘live’ on Ableton, but we felt like we lost some of our energy. The guy looking at the computer is constantly looking at it and we lost our dynamic.”

However, it’s a different situation in the studio. “The last thing you need is two people twiddling the controls, resetting things and changing things,” laughs Middleton. “I’m the more engineering of the two of us, although we’re both perfectly capable I’m much faster because I’ve been doing it a longer time!”

This is the first time the duo has been to Australia to perform. “Everyone in my family has been there except me,” laments Middleton, “and I hear really, really good things about it. Luca’s been there on holiday, last year. Luca went to Australia and I went to Slovenia!” he laughs. “He was in the sunshine and I was in minus 10 degrees,” so Middleton is looking forward to coming, even if it is in our winter.

Audiofly play We Love Sounds at HQ on Fri 1 June alongside James Zabiela, Nic Fanciulli, D.Ramirez, Alan Braxe, Kris Menace, Audiofly, Riton, KOS, , Bang Gang DJ’s, Mobin Master and more

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Shapeshifter

Leave a comment

In Adelaide you can’t throw a stone without hitting someone who’s either a drum and bass MC or DJ. So it was a strange one of the most innovative dnb groups in the world, Shapeshifter, didn’t tour on the Adelaide leg of the Big Day Out, particularly when they rocked here so well a few years ago. “We did some shows in New Zealand but we would have much rather have done them in Adelaide and Perth,” says Sam Trevethick, they keyboardist, guitarist and percussionist of the New Zealand five piece. “It just didn’t happen and I don’t really know why, but it’s a shame because we were really looking forward to it.”

New Zealand’s drum and bass scene is a little younger than Adelaide’s, but like us, their reputation, and in particular Christchurch’s reputation as a party place has spread amongst the international dnb community. It was from this Shapeshifter were born. “When we started 8 years ago no one was really doing it like us,” Trevethick explains. “There was Roni Size and Rapresent, but not much else. The reason we wanted to do it was to get our energy out. We wanted to play some really heavy music with really interesting sounds and high energy, and that was drum and bass for us at that time. There were lots of dnb DJs coming through Christchurch at the time – Bailey, Brian G, Grooverider, Ed Rush & Optical and it was a really healthy scene back then with big gigs and we were quite influenced by that to start off with.”

The dnb scene is New Zealand is still going strong, but because of Shapeshifter’s heavy touring schedule Trevethick admits he’s no longer really considered part of the scene. “I’m not in New Zealand as much and although I DJ drum and bass, I wouldn’t really say we’re part of the scene,” he says.

“But it is a really healthy scene,” he continues. “It’s been diluted by other scenes, but that’s a good thing, and you hear about all these different artists being signed to international record labels and it’s a really good thing because 5 or 10 years ago it just wasn’t happening. The first New Zealand signing was Concord Dawn or Bulletproof (a few years ago) and was massive. There’s now a lot more people doing the music and getting signed which is really good because it pushes people to progress their sound. The whole music scene in New Zealand is pretty friendly towards each other. There’s collaborations left right and centre and it’s all one big family. It’s not hard to get involved with other people.”

Like the Hilltop Hoods, Shapeshifter recently collaborated with the Auckland Philharmonic orchestra. “It all really started at the beginning of 2005 when a radio station in New Zealand asked us to play at a festival they have in the park, and someone suggested we do a few with the Auckland Philharmonic orchestra. Arranger Victoria Kelly was imported in to do the arrangement of our tracks,” he explains. “We had one hours practice before the gig and we played and it was just an amazing experience. It was raining and everything was going to shit,” he laughs “but there were 3000 people, us and an orchestra and it was amazing.”

They wanted to repeat that with better production, and not outside where it’s raining and toured with more shows featuring not only the Auckland Philharmonic but also the Wellington Vector Symphonia and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra “We lead the orchestra by using our music as the basis, but we didn’t want it to be the band on stage, we wanted it to be 30 musicians on stage making one sound.”

“It was very tricky because we’re a live band and we’re very loud,” Trevethick explains of some of the difficulties. “We all tend to get loud on stage and vibe off of that. The very first show we did in Auckland town hall we tried to turn the band down a bit but the crowd was so incredibly loud you couldn’t hear any of it. But we learned from that.”

Like the Hard Road Restrung, their orchestral album will be made into an album and made available before the end of the year. Their latest album ‘Soulstice’ has won them critical acclaim in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and Trevethick is looking forward to playing it in Adelaide. “We’ll be playing lots of stuff off the new album which we didn’t even play on the big day out tour, plus a few new versions of interpretations we’ve made. I doubt that we’ll be playing any songs that we played last time. I think we’ve always been guilty of throwing away more songs than we actually make,” he laughs.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Sneaky Sound System

Leave a comment

Sneaky Sound System, the Bondi trio of MC Double D (Daimon Downey), Miss Connie (Connie Mitchell) and Black Angus (Angus McDonald) are riding a wave of success at the moment. Just a few short years after forming, the band has had Top 40 chart success, toured with Jamiroquai, Robbie Williams and Scissor Sisters, been nominated for two Aria’s (Best Dance Release and Breakthrough Artist), and come second in an international song writing competition judged by the likes of Robert Smith of The Cure, Peter Hook of New Order, Tom Waits, and Frank Black of the Pixies just to name a few.

Staring out after McDonald lost his job at a publishing house and a fortuitous meeting with Downey at a Cowboys & Indian costume party at Fox Studios, the duo began a very successful club night in Bondi called Sneaky Sundays which runs to this day. With all their success, McDonald does lament not being at the club as much as he would like. “In the last six months we’ve probably only there half the time,” he says. “We have Ajax (voted Australia’s no 1 DJ in 2007 inthemix DJ poll) as a resident there and another guy Johnny Powell and we have a few regular guests we have when we’re not there, but it is becoming harder to run the night”.

This is because they’ve been touring with the Scissor Sisters, and more recently on their own sell out tour to promote their new single. I was surprised to hear their tours aren’t as debauched as you would think. “On a long tour you don’t party too much because there’s too much work to do. Touring is very well organised. You’re on sensible hours and there’s always food and accommodation – everything’s sorted. It’s a very civilised way of doing it and it sure beats trucking around the country doing 3 DJ gigs a night,” McDonald laughs.

Part of Sneaky Sound System’s rise to fame seems to be their sense of fun and a “do it yourself” attitude. They formed their own label after figuring out the majors weren’t too supportive and they could do more on their own. “When we approached the labels the deals they were offering were so shit we worked out our sums and though “shit, we should just do this ourselves – we can afford it!”.

Likewise with their clever film clip to Pictures, which is a string of digital photographs edited together to make a story. Conceived after looking at the digital shots of a photo shoot and noticing the stop animation feel of it, the band had a few meetings with production companies, “but every time we finished the meeting we walked out thinking it was so basic we could do it ourselves,” McDonald says. “So we got a friend of ours to take the photographs and another to do the editing and that’s all we needed.”

Yet the band has a greater depth to it than most dance bands, as evidenced by being nominated for two Arias mere months after releasing their tunes. This greatly surprised the band. “We were just not in that commercial landscape at the time (of the Arias) and our songs had only come out a month before the cut off. It didn’t even cross our minds, but to be nominated twice was a real surprise. Obviously next year we’re going to be so disappointed if we don’t get nominated,” he chuckles.

Similarly with the song Pictures winning second place in the Dance/Electronica category of the recent International Songwriting Competition. “We didn’t take it too seriously because it’s not really what we’re in it for. Someone had sent our management an email asking them to send some songs, and Pictures made it to the final and another song made it to the semi final as well. It was a bit of a surprise we came second.”

So what makes Sneaky Sound System the band of the moment? They don’t have the support of a major label pushing for radio play, and their do it yourself attitude doesn’t quite gel with what we know of the Arias, and dance music isn’t really in vogue outside of the dance music scene. “The most important part is the song writing process,” McDonald says. “If the song doesn’t stack up it doesn’t matter what production techniques you apply it won’t work. We really make sure the song will work on like an acoustic guitar or piano and then we decide what production values we should apply to it.”

“I think,” he adds “DJing around clubs and at festivals both here and abroad we started to get the feel of how to work crowds. We had been working on the record for two or three years and were really working at refining it to a stage that we were happy with it. The addition of Connie gave it that finishing touch and it’s that perfect balance of the classic pop song and electronic dance music.”

Sneaky Sound System play the Dom Polsky Centre on Fri 19 May.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Groove Armada

Leave a comment

Fresh from rocking the V-Festivals around Australia, Tom Findlay and Andy Cato of Groove Armada are stoked to be on the road once again. “It’s been a great tour, we’ve had some really magic gigs actually. The Sydney V-Festival gig was probably the best we’ve ever done,” beams Tom Findlay. “A couple of people left us and joined Faithless, which was a bit of a body blow, so we made some little changes. It’s all rather boring actually,” he laughingly says of the specifics, “but we started rearranging things and now it all makes sense and now feel we’re in the form of our lives.”

Groove Armada’s success has come at some cost; record companies screwed them over, and some friendships had been shaken up. After the release of ‘Groove Armada, the Best of’ album a few years ago, both Findlay and Cato thought to call it a day. “Bands normally retire once they have a best of,” he mentions. But Groove Armada didn’t call it a day, and are back with a new album ‘Soundboy Rock’, and they’ve pulled no punches. “Now that we’re back we’ve got a second chance and don’t really care about it as much, you know?” Findlay chuckles. “We’re not going to have sleepless nights about it, we’re just going to get out there and do what we really believe in.”

Their uncompromising first single is Get Down, a grime number that signals a fresh direction for the duo. “The singer is a woman named Stush who’s actually on the road with us now, and she’s great,” Findlay says. “She’s from Croydon in South London and she’s probably never left South London let alone the UK, and she’s having a ball out here – amazed and slightly shocked by it all I think,” he chuckles. “We wanted to give a dance number a grimey sound, and we wanted to give our down tempo numbers a bit of bliss, you know? It’s been about not making any compromises and really going for it.”

“Both Andy and I went off and did our separate things and neither were very successful,” Findlay laughs, “but we enjoyed doing them and it reminded both of us how hard we worked to get Groove Armada to the point we go it to, and it refreshed everything. And Andy moved to Spain, so we’re not in each other’s faces so much anymore.”

The tension between the two abated, and the guys found some common ground to work with. “I think the older you get the better you get at managing conflict, and as long as it doesn’t get poisonous I think a bit of tension can be a good thing. There is a bit of competitiveness that drives us on,” he admits frankly. “With me in London and Andy in Barcelona we were effectively writing the album separately, there was definitely a sense on one-upmanship and that’s not a bad thing. It pushes things on. But we are good friends, and we united for two months at the end of the album, united for a common cause. That’s what this album is; it’s got that edge, but at the end we come together to make it happen.”

A couple of things that sadly didn’t happen were a team up with the Stone Roses’ Ian Brown and the Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennant. “We were really keen to work with Ian Brown this time, he’s kind of a mate and a nice guy, but we didn’t quite make that happen which is a bit of a shame,” Findlay laments. “And I’d quite like to have Neil Tennant on a track, I think it would be quite funny,” he smirks, adding that both collaborations may still happen.

Groove Armada’s Soundboy Rock is out on May 5 through Sony records.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Questlove

Leave a comment

At The Roots concert in May last year, rapper Nas dramatically declared that hiphop is dead, and used that statement for the name of his album released later that year. Understandably, people got a little irritated at this statement, and whilst not causing too much of a controversy here with the Hilltop Hoods topping the ARIA charts, fired up magazines and blogs all over the USA, with people passionately arguing for the positive and negative.

Chatting to ?uestlove from the Roots, I had to ask his opinion, because, after all, they did give Nas the pulpit to preach from. “I feel hiphop culture is alive and kicking” ?uestlove, aka Amhir Thompson, begins measuredly, “however there are definitely hardly any outlets on a national level that will sustain such a culture. Because of the lack of variety in the media outlets, it’s really hard to maintain a solid foundation to support that culture.”

This may be a little hard to believe living in Australia, where we get MTV and Hollywood shows showing rap culture to be strong and vibrant, with SUVs driving with bass booming out of them as booty girls shake their ass to it. But it’s really only one side of American hiphop –the commercial and disposable that big record labels pay big bucks to put into these shows and play on the radio. Thoughtful, intelligent hiphop like The Roots isn’t really represented, and although they’re Grammy winners with 20 years experience, many people still see them as new kids in the hiphop game.

“What’s goin’ on is there’s a lack of diversity. To give you an example we’re in our 20th year of existence and we’re recording our 10th album right now, and there are still people out there who think Game theory is only our third album or that we’re just a new group. And that’s because there’s a lack of outlets to push our music,” Thompson explains. “But the government has done something interesting in the last month,” he adds. “A lot of independent labels have been complaining they haven’t had their fair share on the American airwaves, because there is a specific protocol one must go through to get on the radio, but now the FCC is forcing the biggest radio owners to play 20% of independent radio play so that everybody gets their fair share. It’s going to be very interesting to see how that plays out though.”

Plus, isn’t the internet the big saviour of indie music? Isn’t Myspace the beginning of the end of Clear Channel and payola and such business? Not entirely, according to Thompson. “Half of American’s still don’t know how to operate a computer, education levels are very, very low here, and we’re not competing as we should be. I’m sure there are kids right now in Japan who know how to operate a computer at the age of 3. But unless you come from a privileged background you might not get that luxury until you’re forced to use a computer at a job. To me that’s a big obstacle. To me we are being received in every arena except television and radio. We still have presence in the press and projects online, but when half the Americans don’t own a computer that becomes problematic.”

But Thompson is also critical of music critics. “Critical acclaim is important to me because that is how we have been able to survive. The only logical reason for a band that has never gone platinum to be on its 10th record in the USA especially with how disposable the business is now, any amount of critical acclaim we make is important.” But last year their 9th album, Game Theory, which saw the Roots at their most darkest, political and thoughtful, failed to make an impact. “I’m very passionate about my product, and just felt we had been overlooked. And actually they told me ‘yeah, we kind of forgot you released a record this year’,” he laughs. “But it just amazes me that a lot of the hiphop they do acclaim seems like a tokenism. They’ll allow one Lupe Fiasco record, but nobody else. But meanwhile The Shins, TV On The Radio, Bloc Party, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah! and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs can make a great record and all those groups will be included, but with hiphop there’s only room for one or two entries on a critics list.”

The Roots as yet untitled 10th album, which Thompson hopes to get out later this year, could be the one to wow the critics and the masses. Now on Def Jam with Jay Z at the head of the label, they could have that cross over hit that will legitimise them in the eyes of the radio and TV execs, not that neither their fans nor they particularly care. And could there be a collaboration with Jay Z in the future? After all, Thompson did produce Jay-Z’s Unplugged album. “We’re in the middle of it right now, so there’s still nothing definite about who we’re working with,” he says, coyly.

The Roots play Thebbie Theatre on Fri 12 Apr.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Digital Primate

Leave a comment

Techno is a funny term. Many use it in place of “dance music” as a general descriptive term when talking with people who don’t know much about music. However, ‘Techno’ as a term has a very distinct meaning in the dance music industry, and when used in a press release I automatically have a sound in my head and pretty much know what I’m in for. So imagine my surprise when I fire up Digital Primates MySpace webpage and am instantly assaulted by a phat bass and dub breaks on the tune “I Don’t Give a Fuck”. Instantly all assumption had to be thrown out the window. Yes, this was “techno”, but Digital Primate, aka Christopher Coe wasn’t precious about the techno sound, which is quite refreshing for someone in the techno scene. The term “techno nazi” didn’t arise because people “goosestep” dance, after all.

“We’re driving down to Phillip Island for the Pyramid Rock Festival”, Coe apologises. “The traffic last year was so bad I heard there were 8 hour delays getting onto the island, but apparently this year they’ve done a whole load of stuff to work it better.” I can imagine him crossing his fingers as he’s speeding along talking to me, hands free of course.

I ask him about the set up of his show. “These gigs are basically me DJing with the girls doing live vocals. I’ve got Demilition B-Girl and Queen K who are based out of Melbourne and they perform the songs they did on the album Siege Mentality, plus some which haven’t appeared anywhere. And they’re also amazing breakdancers,” he begins, and almost instantly we are attacked by aliens. Well, that’s what it sounded like. I’ve sent the audio to NASA to have it analysed.

A few hurried phone calls and a truck stop later, we’re chatting again, this time without interruption. “I’ve always been into reggae,” Coe states when I ask about his influences. “And as most electronic DJs would attest, reggae is probably where they first listened to music. I always thought reggae producers, and dub producers especially, were the start of electronic music, in the way they used technology in the studios to produce new sounds and so on. I just feel it fits naturally with me.”

“It’s also the swing to it. My favourite techno is techno with a swing, and Ragga and Dancehall is about as swingy as you can get!” he snickers “Even though I’m a white Irish guy, coming from the UK and hearing that sound, being in that scene, it’s natural… I feel as though I’m black on the inside,” he laughs again. “And I don’t see a real demarcation between reggae, dancehall, electronica,” he continues. “If you look at people like the Orb, Massive Attack, they all had reggae and dub influences in their music.”

Also instrumental in the sound of his new album is the infamous producer, the Mad Professor. You can hear the reverence as he talks about “Mad”, as Coe affectionately refers to him. “The greatest thing about working with Mad is the incredible sense of musical history he brought. One day he goes ‘yeah, you need some bass on this tune’ and next thing I know he’s on the phone saying ‘Hey Robbie, would you like to come in’ and I’m saying ‘that’s not Robbie Shakespeare’ (as in Sly & Robbie) and he’s like ‘yeah’. And I’ve fallen to my knees, my legs can’t hold me any more because I’m so excited.”

“And the other thing was he is so amazing as an engineer and a producer. He’d mix a track in half an hour, and I’d say ‘don’t we need to spend two days mixing this?’ and he’d be like ‘Tune mixed man, next!’” Coe laughs. “I was really freaked out by this but I’d take the 3 or 4 tunes he mixed in a day and listen to them and think ‘oh fuck! These are great mixes!’ That freaked me out for the first two days because I had never worked with someone so quickly and who was so not precious about their work. He’s all about capturing the vibe, and if you haven’t caught it in 3 or 4 takes of a mix he just moves on.”

The album is also steeped with political messages. Macromantics talks about turning off the television. Queen K talks about the objectification of women in hiphop. Karmelody (who is also the Mad Professor’s son) sings about South London. And of course, the outstanding My Bush Would Make A Better President is probably the least sophisticated political statement on the album. “I think too many people shy away from politics, and fuck that I say!” exclaims Coe.

“Life is politics, and of course it’s important to forget about it all and have a good time, but that in itself is a political statement. My decision with this album was to take a step outside of what I normally do, which is the techno stuff; work with vocal artists because it’s easier to literally say things, it adds to the creative possibilities, and also increases your chances of acceptability; and to make some political statements I felt strongly about. I think as artists we have a responsibility to say what we feel, and if it’s political then don’t be afraid to show it.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

MC Frontalot

Leave a comment

It seems that throughout the latter 20th Century all disenfranchised youth have fought the power with music. They changed not only the musical landscape, but social and cultural ones too. In the 30s we had the Afro American with Jazz and Blues, the 50s it was time for white kids with their Rock and Roll. In the 60s it was Protest music and the hippies, whilst the 70s had Hiphop for the Afro-Americans and Heavy Metal for the English. The 80s Punk and 90s Grunge and Dance seems to include everyone. Each group influenced the other, they weren’t ever socially exclusive. But there’s a group missing from this cacophony of social rebels. There’s one group that was excluded, although they’ve had the greatest impact on music, particularly modern music, which the world has ever seen. They are, of course, the nerds.

Yes, Nerds. You may dismiss my claim, but without nerds there would be no amplifiers. There would be no samplers or computers. There would be no internet. These tools are essential to making modern music, and it’s all because of geeky kids with glasses, pocket protectors and slide rules. But now the nerds do have a form of expression, and it’s on the rise. It’s called Nerdcore, and one of its principle players is Damian Hess, aka MC Frontalot.

Nerdcore was coined by Hess at the turn of the 21st Century. “At first it felt silly,” Hess says of the term “and now I feel lucky to have coined it. It turned out to be the type of phrase that a group of people could latch on to and repeat and take part in somehow.” Its popularity can be seen through the simultaneous growth of the internet. Participating in Song Fight! (www.songfight.org) Hess gained fame. Song fight! is a website that posts a title online, and artists compete for fame (no prizes are offered) by writing a song with that title.

Although Hess has only posted 7 songs, his popularity blitzed all other contenders. His song, ‘Yellow Lasers’, about finding love at a Star Wars convention, garnered him more fame than he could imagine. “The first night I heard about song fight was the night “Yellow Lasers” was due the next morning, so I stayed up late and I made that song. Somebody emailed it to Penny Arcade (one of the webs’ most popular webcomic with over a million hits per day) and they started talking about it in their news post, then they decided I was their official rapper. I emailed them and said I’d write their theme song for them.”

Not only did MC Frontalot write the Penny Arcade theme song, he was invited to play at the Penny Arcade Expo, a massive gathering of nerds now attracting over 70,000 people per year. That’s as big as our Big Day Out! He’s toured the USA and has now had a film made about the experience called ‘Nerdcore Rising’. “The film makers (Negin Farsad and Kimmy Gatewood) are these two lovely women from New York. They’re both stand up comedians and they heard about nerdcore hiphop and thought that it would make a good topic. To me it sounded very silly, but they were very serious about it and have been getting a lot of attention for the whole nerdcore scene.” The film features the likes of Weird Al Yankovic, MC Lars, Jello Biafra, the Daily Show crew and more talking about the nerdcore phenomenon.

As to the longevity of nerdcore, Hess believes “the logical thing for nerdcore would be for it to peak and suddenly disappear and just be a cute little fad that had a couple of articles written about it, but who knows? I keep thinking that every year and keep getting surprised by it continuing to have legs. Certainly there’s endless staying power for being a nerd; it is part of the human condition,” he laughs, “but in terms of prominence and being on view in public, it doesn’t seem logical. People would certainly think it was funny to make nerds cool for a little while and then go back shunning us as they have always done.”

“Maybe the world did change a tiny little bit after the dotcom boom and maybe now technology doesn’t seem quite as that thing for kids with glasses,” he continues. “Notice that two of the most loved zombie film directors of every nerd I ever knew have gone from these obscure filmmakers loved by weirdos to Hollywood A-List directors – Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. They’re two of the highest paid directors in Hollywood and maybe that is emblematic of something that is happening. But if I have to put bets on it I have to keep betting that it’s all going to crash down around us – it’s the only logical conclusion,” he chuckles again.

MC Frontalot’s next album ‘Secrets From The Future’ is due out in April, and Nerdcore Rising will be seen in independent movie theatres soon.

dB Magazine, Event, Interview, Writing

Enchanted 06 – MPK & Devious

Leave a comment

Since 1998, the Enchanted Forest rave parties have been an eagerly awaited event for thousands of people around South Australia. The excitement of secret venues, fabulous line ups and fantastic production values that has seen it be awarded party of the year time and time again. DJ Devious aka Chad Bergman and DJ MPK aka Daniel Michael are the promoters behind Enchanted Forest, and this year sees a bit of a change from the usual format of an all night rave at a ‘secret location’ in the middle of nowhere, which has been the par for the course over the last 8 years. This year the party will be held at the Royal Adelaide Showgrounds in Wayville, starting at midday and progressing until 11pm.

“There are a lot of reasons we chose to do a day party”, Michael says. “Night Parties were good at the time we started, but we always try and find the best venues and they’re becoming harder to find. The Showgrounds are safe, have good parking, no dust but lots of grass, public transport and decent, reliable power for sound.” “And good toilets. Everyone hates portaloos,” Bergman chimes in. “And we can put on a lot more acts during the day,” continues Michael. “We’ve been to a few interstate parties, and culturally they’re no different to what we’ve been doing here, and they have successful day parties all the time.”

“We’ve got a totally blacked out room for people who like the dark”, he smirks, “and they can always wear sunglasses,” adds Bergman, chuckling. “We’ve heard of people booking hotel rooms who are planning on going to go to Enchanted, then one of the after parties, and that’s a lot safer than having that long, horrible drive at 5 or 6am. I do get worried about what can happen on the roads at that time of the morning,” Michael adds. “I think three quarters of the people are going to like the idea, and maybe a quarter won’t, but what’s important is that people will be enjoying themselves.”

Enchanted has had its fair share of controversy, mainly because of the decision in 2003 to begin pill testing after suggestion from Dr Caldicott of the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It was a safety issue that the promoters felt strongly about, they were being briefed by a doctor, “and who are we to argue with a trained professional!” exclaims Michael. Other parties had pill testing, and the police generally turned a blind eye to it, until 2004 when the Advertiser had a slow news day and ran an “expose” and the dangers of raves and drugs. The police then had to take an interest “but they were just doing the job, I guess” Michael points out democratically.

He saves his anger for the press. “They’d ring me up for an interview at 6pm, and then the same people would ring up with the same questions at 7am the next morning. I’d be working all night DJing, and they would wonder why I’d be grumpy and refuse to answer their questions!” But furthermore Michael and Bergman had facts on their side. No one has ever died at Enchanted. Reports from previous Enchanted’s from police and first aid, who they get together with after every party, were quite minimal. “A Royal Adelaide Hospital report from a few years earlier showed that people were twice as likely to end up at hospital during a test match than during our raves!” the previously jovial Bergman says seriously. “Cricket is more dangerous!”

But both Michael and Bergman wish to steer away from controversy. “What’s important is people enjoying themselves in a safe environment, not what some middle age conservative journalist who has never been to a rave thinks.” To facilitate that fun, this year sees Peter Coomb join the ranks of DJs and MCs. An odd choice, perhaps, but Michael is correct when he says many ravers grew up with Coombs, and know his music as well as the latest from Pendulum or Keven Energy. “It’s so people will have a laugh,” he smiles. “I saw him at O’Ball and Shutzenfest and he rocked it. Absolutely rocked it!”

Even though the planning of Enchanter begins as soon as another is over, Michael and Bergman take it one party at a time. Though this is a day party essentially in the city, they don’t rule out having another ‘secret venue’ party in the future, and it’s certainly not the death of outdoor parties. “We’ve got Ultraworld in the Outback early next year,” they grin, although they hasten to add with a chuckle “good venues don’t grow on trees”.

Enchanted kicks off at the Adelaide Showgrounds on Sat 9 Dec and features a stellar line up including Peter Coomb, Pendulum, Tomcraft, Kosheen, Steve Hill, Keven Energy, Goldie, Jon B, Chicken Lips, CJ Boland and heaps more!