Straypoodle’s Weblog

The road wends and weaves through the Naples neighborhood of Long Beach, California as I approach Greyboy’s Edward Killingsworth- designed monument of a home. I pass the obligatory Lexus SUVs, Jaguars and expansively landscaped lawns of this somewhat yuppified, “cancel- the- Friday- afternoon- patient- appointments-‘cause-I-gotta-play-golf” neighborhood. I’m trying to reconcile the vague preconceptions I have of Greyboy / Andreas Stevens—a playboy of sorts, a sunshine blonde California good ole boy who probably calls his guy friends ‘braw’ instead of ‘bro’ and happens to make really slick beats between surfing sessions—with a new idea I have of a Greyboy who would live withdrawn from the sluts and the clubs in a relatively quiet California city.

As I find his address, I’m taken aback from the simple extravagance of my surroundings. A perfectly restored Dodge in that pukish ‘70s mustard color foregrounds the utter mid-century modern perfection of his house. A walkway of stone steps dotting a reflecting pool leads to a glass-walled entranceway. The adjacent patio’s furniture lines augment the smooth transitions and blocky yet airy style of the dwelling, which was not surprisingly the recipient of the Grand Prix Award in 1967 (the first award ever to be given for residential design by the American Institute of Architects).

Throughout our interview, my ability to reconcile the Andreas that is presented to me with the one I expected is thoroughly depleted. Which is a good thing—it’s not good to categorize people, or have certain expectations—you’re almost always wrong. But Andreas is an enigma. He’s got a museum quality house with every well-dusted period collectible presented in perfect display; it’s as if he’s house sitting for his grandparents. Then he’s got these rather boyish qualities—checkered navy old skool Vans, a fleet of sterling, pimped-out and rare BMX bikes. And then there’s his anti-babe-magnet qualities—his Myspace profile doesn’t boast the inevitable Cleavage Shot Girls peppering his page with comments like, “You are SO talented I LOVE your EYES you are SOooooooo hot. Cum meet me in LA tonight! XXX!!!!!!” So, he’s got the quiet settled atmosphere of a retired person, but the passion of youth. He’s got taste, right down to his diamond-studded DC Shoes pinky ring. He’s not the type to catalog Maxims and Playboys in his bathroom reading material stash. And he’s most certainly not your usual hip-hop impresario who’s been churning out good beats for nearly a decade and a half.

Andreas’s 1994 breakthrough, Freestylin’, was Ubiquity’s first release. 1994 was a ripe year for hip-hop’s renaissance: Pete Rock, Goodie Mob, Outkast, and even the Beastie Boys were moved. But if anyone had tried to marry hip-hop with avant acid jazz prior to Greyboy, they were nowhere near as successful. Many producers of that era were limited by their inability to see rhythm beyond simple categories—jazz, soul, hip-hop, pop. Greyboy, however, married all of them with polyamorous grace and ease. Freestylin’ remained a relic of that movement, later inspiring DJs like Mark Farina in his popular Mushroom Jazz series.

His next success in Greyboy Allstars drew crowds from all walks—Public Radio bespectacled types, hip-hop low-slung pants types, frat boys, and an overwhelming bevy of dreadlocked hippies. Andreas’s talent had come full circle—he had broken down the categorical pigeonholing of genres that usually drew separate crowds, and everyone from everywhere seemed to like it. From a marketing perspective (which is a wholly ironic viewpoint for hip-hop), this ability to appeal to a broad audience versus hip-hop’s usual “sector market appeal” did him well. Andreas went on to surf the first MTV-fueled hip-hop wave that tsunami-ed the remaining part of the century, doing music for everything from the movies Celtic Pride and Get Shorty to a Kelly Slater video game and Budweiser commercials. His next albums, Mastered the Art and Soul Mosaic, also met with raucous fanfare.

After my interview with Andreas, I debated what to say about him for a long while—I couldn’t reach any firm conclusions on him that would anchor a “slant” for an article. Any conclusions, that is, other than these: Greyboy is full of polarities, a truly rare breed, and he’s Mastered the Art. So I’ll let him speak for himself.

I can’t get over your house, and these furnishings. You’re pretty into design, right? Someone told me that you had a store selling furniture at some point?

I had an unofficial sort of business on the side where I dealt art and furniture from this specific period, museum-quality things to private collectors. I have a friend who owns [California Living] gallery in LA, and I sell things there and at some auction houses in the United States. It’s a really cool gallery that only sells stuff specifically from mid-’50s to very early ’60s, like ‘55 to ‘62. I furnish my house with everything from that span of time.

So what do you do to find this stuff… dumpster dive, go to thrift stores?

No. The stuff we’re talking about here is really scarce, so usually you’d find stuff from an original estate or collector. It has to do with how long you’ve been in the game, and how many connections you have. All this stuff’s on the expensive side, and you have to have enough money to buy it in the first place. It’s just another interest, like architecture—it’s all sort of the same art. [Retrieves laboriously compiled thick black binder stuffed with page-protected photographs, certificates, and articles]. Here’s some information about this house. These are articles and things beginning from when the house was finished in ‘57. That will give you an idea of the scope…. I bought it from this drunk woman who was the fourth owner. After I came back four times, she decided to sell the house to me. I wanted to preserve the house exactly the way it was when it was finished, even down to the furnishings. In older pictures, you’ll see that some of these furnishings were part of the original interior, but they weren’t here when I got the house.

You’ve gone and searched out all the original house furnishings?

Yeah, that stovetop control set wasn’t here [gesturing toward kitchen]. I did a lot of searching on eBay, sometimes Craigslist, sometimes other places. It took me 13 months of searching every day to find that stovetop set.

You’re pretty devoted.

Totally. For me, if I was going to restore the house, it only made sense to really do it all the way.

Go for it, huh?

I guess it was sorta personal… you know, somewhat selfish, too. I wanted to live in this house I dreamed about.

Let’s talk about music stuff. Soul Mosaic is pretty groovy, but it’s a real departure from Mastered the Art, which is flow-y and melodic. Soul Mosaic is angry.

Yeah. My albums are sort of a product of where I’m at, at the time.

You been angry lately?

Yeah… you know, yeah. Totally [laughs]. I wasn’t really angry when that record came out; I was more moody at the time. I was finishing that album while I was doing this, when I first moved to Long Beach and was neck-deep in restoring the house. It was a weird time. I do a lot of collaborating, so the albums are a product of who I collaborate with.

You collaborated with a lot of old jazz guys on Soul Mosaic…

Singers, rappers, musicians… it just depends. The only common thread with my records is that they’re all going to have that hip-hop influenced sound. The beats are going to always be funky, and there will always be a lot of sampling involved. It will never be that overproduced. I’m working on my new album now, which will probably be released in fall. It’s delayed because I just got out of the studio producing the new Greyboy Allstars album…

Your old band, right? I thought you guys broke up in ‘96.

Yeah. It was a really weird, big deal where the band decided to get back together to record another album. There was a lot of strife in the band… just people being stupid and thinking that they were the reason the band was cool, and having resentment towards me. The band dissolved and everyone went their separate ways, and then it came full circle, to the point that all the guys in the band were like, “We’re sorry we messed everything up.”

Sometimes success can mess with people’s heads. I know Greyboy Allstars were successful.

Yeah. It’s a really common thing that happens to bands when they get right on the verge of something really, really big happening. It just derails the whole program.

Didn’t you guys have some sort of hippie following?

Yeah, hippies. It was unexplainable. They have a wide appreciation for music. The band is almost all instrumental, and hippies are into instrumental music. I used to do a lot of work doing movie soundtracks for snowboard companies and stuff, and so we’d go to the mountain towns to play these gigs, and a lot of ‘em would be out in those areas. But if you like the music, I don’t really care what you look like. Every once in a while, someone would make a smartass comment about having a hippie following, but to me, it’s like, “Dude, I dare you to make a record that anyone wants to buy.” It’s like a miracle. If anyone actually goes to the store to pay money for anything that I made, that’s a huge deal. You just can’t take that lightly.

Well, there’s so much image in music. People who listen to drum ‘n’ bass dress a certain way and people who listen to hip-hop dress another way. Same goes for Phish lovers. Music that appeals to not only hippies, but also yuppies, is really rare.

Older people loved it. It wasn’t some gimmick that was aimed at some specific generation or age group. There was nothing but good that came out of that. Except when the band broke up, and that sucked. But now we’re doing it again, and everything is working out. And I’m loving being in Long Beach, because LA vanity bums me out. It stands for all the things I don’t like in the music industry. Even if you’re really smart, you can start to lose it if you live there. I get a bad energy from LA. I like nice things too, but that’s all that counts there. I like living away from it all, and I have enough interests for a couple people, so I’m never bored. I usually don’t ever want to leave, to be honest with you.

You used to play out more…?

Well, yeah, but I’m 36. I don’t want to be on the road. I’m not as into being in a nightclub any more. When you’re 26 you’re all about it, and it’s exciting and new.

Later, my friend and LA photographer savant, Marc Goldstein, snaps photos of Andreas on his spine-slatted stairwell as the Westward afternoon light streams in. Marc arbitrarily asks him, “Andreas, if you could live in anyone else’s body for six months, whose would it be?” To which he replies, after long deliberation, “Kinda like, just, me.” I laugh and mock in a self-satisfied tone, “Yeah, I’d just be myself.”

He says, “I have it pretty easy, so… I just like looking at people from the outside. I don’t really want to be anyone else.” I query, “Wouldn’t you want to be a girl? Like Pamela Anderson or something?” He laughs, “No… it’s scary. I have a twin sister…. No, maybe I would want to be a girl sometime, just to check it out.” I say, “Wouldn’t you want to know what it’s like having sex as a girl?” He laughs, “Nooooo… I like just knowing what I know.”

Check Greyboy’s Myspace or the Ubiquity Records site for more on Greyboy.

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This article originally posted in TheBlacklistMag.com, which is sadly no longer in the cyber-realm.

Internet radio has revolutionized our ability to listen to music without the pesky limitations of terrestrial radio frequencies. It’s now possible to listen to a Berlin station in Australia, a Spanish station in Antarctica, or an Iraqi station in Peru. If you live in a small burg and love polka music, for instance, there’s a good chance that your city doesn’t have a shucking and jiving polka scene. Simply choose “Polish radio” from the Multilingual Books search bar, and you’re well on your way to polka-induced bliss.

Of course for the language learner, Internet radio offers a great opportunity to hear a foreign language as it is spoken in the native country. With just a couple of clicks, you can listen to fast-talking DJs from Bulgaria to Zimbabwe.

While listening to Internet radio is a vastly improved way to access distant radio stations, broadcasting via the web has also vastly improved. A musician can stream a live set from his bedroom with software like SAM Broadcaster, a “radio station in a box” available for $200 on Spatial Audio. There is also free software available from Shoutcast, which is highlighted below.

Multilingual Books Favorites

Samurai.fm
Samurai.fm is the self-described “gateway to a new international soundscape…. Featuring the freshest sounds from the international scene as well as the finest home grown talent from Japan, [they] act as a portal for Japan to the rest of the world and the rest of the world to Japan.” What’s more, the site is a veritable smorgasbord of sonic information: there’s a shopping channel, music discussions, event galleries and party reports, artist and label profiles, a news page highlighting great music events throughout the world and live streaming, to boot.

KEXP
Although a Seattle-based radio station, KEXP features programming and streaming that is global in reach. The station was founded in 1972 as KCMU, a grassroots college broadcaster, and was later acquired by Microsoft legend Paul Allen. KEXP was the first in history to offer round-the-clock web streaming. They have since won the Webby Award for Best Radio Website (2004), and continue to pioneer new innovations in web-based streaming. KEXP features a wealth of diverse programming; everything from indie pop and punk to blues and techno are represented. What’s more, all music is available in an accessible, user-friendly interface.

Shoutcast
Shoutcast is a Winamp based directory for streaming audio from around the world. With 14,995 servers and 296,160 listeners as of August 2006, the site is a powerhouse of accessible music.

Tips

For a good Internet radio listening experience, it is best not to run heavy, mission-critical applications while streaming. Listeners should tune in using a player compatible with MP3 audio streaming.

Recommended players

* Windows users should use Winamp
* Mac users should use iTunes
* Linux/X Windows users should use XMMS

Please note that some sites will require you to download software.

This article originally appeared on the Multilingual Books site.

Seattle, while not as large as the American metropolises of New York or Los Angeles, is host to a bustling, shucking and jiving culture. With a half million residents in the metropolitan area and another 3 million in the surrounding Puget Sound, Seattle has long had a vibrant Asian and Asian-American population, and well-established communities of Scandinavians, African-Americans, Jews, Latinos and thoroughly Native Americans. The city represents the “melting-pot” that logically (and thankfully) fosters around the coastal areas of the United States.

The term “thoroughly” Native American speaks of the original settlers of Seattle, a city named for Duwamish tribe Chief Sealth. The Duwamish, part of the Salish tribe, originally settled the area and prospered from the land’s rich soil and vegetation and the plentiful fishing the surrounding waters provided. The inevitable exploration by settlers looking to establish a seaport on the Sound first took place via two battling fellows, David Denny and Doc Maynard, in 1851. Denny, a well-educated if money-seeking sort, originally staked Alki Point (now the beachy area of West Seattle) for his “territory,” but was soon overwhelmed with the muddy ooze and floods of the Sound and resettled in the area that is now Pioneer Square. Doc Maynard, a humanitarian doctor from Ohio, purchased much of the land around the Sound at the same time. He gave away legions of acres willing businessmen ready to settle the area and open shop, and in turn financed a large part of the city’s boom. Strangely, Denny is credited as the founding father of the city, through misinformed history. Much of history, the adage claims, is written by the winners (whether economic or militaristic), and settlers—Native American tribes and humanitarian sorts such as Maynard are often ignored in American history.

The economy of Seattle has had several fluctuations, but was greatly augmented by the arrival of the railroad 1893. The population of the city in 1880 had been 3533, and grew to about ten times that amount during the following Yukon gold rush. As the largest city in the Northwest, Seattle’s banking and financing industry was aptly positioned for the fortunes made there. Later lumber plundering ensured a continued economic health, along with the shipbuilding industry and the establishment of Boeing’s factory in 1916. Although the company now has regular trade disputes and the rare maligned mechanics, it was a mainstay in the Northwest economy throughout most of the remaining 1900s. Seattle’s part as an aviation metropolis helped garner it the location title for the World’s Fair of 1962, for which the Space Needle was constructed. At that time, the city hoped to foster a forward-looking modernity represented in the UFO, Jetsons-like shape of the Needle. The monument remains, now a somewhat dated-looking symbol of a timeless ideal.

In the 1980s, Microsoft arrived in the area, and developed as the world’s leader in software, albeit monopolistically. The grunge proliferation and later Internet boom created a dreamlike atmosphere in the city. RealNetworks, Amazon, and Adobe populated the Employment Opportunities sections of newspapers with wanted ads. Seattle-based Starbucks replicated itself exponentially on a tidal wave of too-sweet “corporate” coffee to jolt the technologically inclined into their 12-hour workdays. Cranes towered above downtown areas at all times, constructing a seemingly endless set of skyline-fracturing high rises. Charming brick artist lofts that rented for $200 per month were reduced to rubble to make way for condominium complexes selling for $400,000 per unit. Code-writing teenage geeks founded companies that went public on the New York Stock Exchange at $2 per share and skyrocketed to $60 apiece in one month. Information technologists were made millionaires in months from stock options. Some retired at thirty; other aggressively invested folk saw their wealth decimated in the same ratio it grew, were laid off, and remained on Unemployment for years.

While the Internet boom and bust were a manic time of too much wealth and then too much poverty, they did help revolutionize the culture of Seattle. The limitations of the finite world were kept at bay, if only briefly, and allowed dreamers to indulge. The staid American work tradition of “business” attire was cast aside, and three-piece suits were retired in favor of ratty T-shirts and Levis. Tradition was scorned for new invention. It is perhaps for this reason that Seattleites insist on pridefully wearing jeans and Teva sandals with white tube socks to restaurants with $200 prix fixe menus.

Seattle is revolutionary in more ways than simple tradition spurning, if ratty, attire. The city boasts the largest population of educated folk of any American city, and international companies seeded in the fertile brain-soil of the populace have prospered. When viewed in light of other American cities, Seattle’s politics are also revolutionary, as residents are devoted liberals. The democratic vote in King County neared twice the republican vote for the 2004 election. The WTO riots in 2000 garnered press coverage internationally. Finally, Americans opposed to unchecked power were given media coverage, although much of that coverage showed police in riot gear, tear gas, and running protesters. Punk group Anti-Flag wrote in the song “Seattle Was a Riot,” “They tried to pin it on us / But we didn’t show up, with gas and billy clubs / An unarmed mass of thousands, just trying to be heard / But there are no world leaders, that want to hear our words.”

Movements abound in Seattle, it seems. The American music industry was revolutionized by the whole grunge thing as Big Money corporations pushing bloodless rock suddenly had hot garage-bred labels as competition on billboard charts. This is apropos, as grunge was a movement couched in the unorthodox. Labels grew quickly, and satellite industries like music production and CD duplication supported the clamor.

Seattle’s Rich History of Rhythm

Jazz
Seattle’s storied jazz scene began in 1916, and was fostered through the alcohol Prohibition era of the 1920s. The Central District area of the city around Jackson Street proliferated with speakeasies, bootleg liquor, and jazz performers. Musicians Buddy Catlett, Patti Bown, Wyatt Ruther and Jimmy Rowles all got their start in the hotbed of 1940s Seattle. Ray Charles arrived in the mid ‘40s and, at age 16, began working with Quincy Jones, then 14. While the city’s jazz was often surpassed by that of New York’s in the national media, and misrepresented wholly in most of the local media due to prejudice, it remained a sweltering scene for many years.

This is especially remarkable when viewed in light of the political environment at the time, as lawmakers sought to force jazz clubs underground by strict governance. Paul de Barros speaks of this era in Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle: “As if national Prohibition itself were not enough, the city passed additional ordinances against dancing, imposed taxes on cabarets, and tried to enforce irrational regulation of entertainment of all kinds. Confusing prudence with intolerance, vice with artistic expression, these measures slowed the cultural progress of the region. A residue of that intolerance still exists, in the control exercised by the State Liquor Board over nightclubs.” This intolerance is also strangely replicated in Seattle’s electronic music arena today, as lawmakers have made it difficult for the musically inclined to gather peacefully, lawfully and with required permits.

In any case, jazz remained somewhat unhindered by the lawmakers’ lack of liberty, due to dirty policemen accepting quiet cash “contributions” from club owners. In 1969, when all that came to an end, Seattle grew much quieter. The quiet period was short-lived, however, as rock soon arrived.

Rock
Like jazz, when rock was introduced to Seattle, the conservatives arched their eyebrows. The discerning 1960s parent feared that the chaotic basslines of rock could lead to sex, drugs, and even more rock ‘n’ roll tendencies in their children. Were they right? Perhaps. The particular brand of Seattle garage rock was raw and untempered, with tonal inconsistencies, wild riffs, and staggered drum beats. The Wailers and the controversial “Louie, Louie” saga launched the city’s rock status into the national psyche, and the song plagued fraternity parties in the following decades. Seattle’s The Ventures produced an international hit here, and several local underground artists enjoyed cult status, but remained underground. Jimi Hendrix was one artist who will never remain underground, however, and there’s not much to say about his Seattle-bred rock psychedelia of the 1960s that hasn’t been said.

The underground paradigm of Seattle rock continued on through the post-garage and grunge scenes. Grunge music, as it is known today, got its start in the late ‘80s and continued through the ‘90s, and many Seattle groups became internationally known through a brief but massive worldwide fascination with the dirty rock that shared the same tendency to thick riffs and signature drums with garage rock. Sub Pop, who signed Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, and L7, was known for its gourmet curation. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains all hailed from the Jet City (so titled due to Boeing). Jello Biafra, the legendary singer of Dead Kennedys, gave Seattle cred when he organized No WTO Combo’s Live from the Battle in Seattle, giving voice to the aforementioned WTO riot fiasco. Grunge’s message of rebellion against mainstream and corporate culture resounded across a wide audience, though the scene was exhausted quickly. Perhaps it had always been something of an anti-scene, anyway. Some define the end of the era as the death of Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994, while others claim it ended with the breakup of Soundgarden in 1997.

Other Stuff

Other genres like hip-hop and electronic music have recently enjoyed a burgeoning, if relatively underground, following. Hip-hop artist Sir Mix-Alot hailed from the city, after all. “My Posse’s on Broadway” refers to Broadway Avenue, a main haul in the Capitol Hill former grunge area. The Stuck / Under the Needle record labels have fared well, representing artists like Boom Bap Project produced by Vitamin D, who also worked with Gift of Gab of Blackalicious. Several well-known electronic music producers and bands live here, such as Imputor? king Plastiq Phantom (Darrin Wiener), United States of Electronica, L’Usine, Matt Corwine, (Viva Recordings label owner) Jon Lemmon, Donald Glaude, DJ Dan, Jacob London and Lawnchair Generals. The success of the Decibel Festival, Seattle’s first Northwest electronic music fest, has also catapulted the city into national (if not international) recognition among the laptop-loving set.

This article was written for attendees of the Seattle Red Bull Music Academy in 2005.

Sailing mad voyages of hip-hop piracy among a sea of less able producers, Waajeed and Platinum Pied Pipers are taking the hip-hop world like bandits. The pirate theme is well deserved: New York’s legendary Tiombe Lockhart has called Waajeed “Pirate King” and “the swashbuckler of funk.” The New York producer’s been plundering and pillaging hip-hop as we know it to arrive at pure, unprecedented treasure.

Waajeed is something of an ingénue in the hip-hop world. He only began producing in 2000, but his beats for Platinum Pied Pipers have the ring of classic producers such as Pete Rock. Hailed as an instant classic sound by Flavorpill, The Platinum Pied Pipers’ Triple P garnered instant fanfare—a rare feat for a fledgling release on Waajeed’s underground label, Bling 47. Waajeed’s history with music is long, though: he began DJing at just 14, mining his parent’s massive vinyl collection for new gold. He met Jay Dee (J. Dilla, RIP) in Detroit around the same time, and was privy to the burgeoning hip-hop scene of the ‘80s. He won a scholarship to art school for painting, but quit school to tour through Europe as a DJ for Slum Village. Upon his return to the United States, he decided to put down his brushes for another set of tools—production equipment.

Platinum Pied Pipers’ Triple P is Waajeed and Saadiq, and boasts cameo appearances by Jay Dee, MC Ta-Raach, UK-based Spacek and SA-RA Creative Partners. It’s pure buried treasure that’s been unearthed by the group’s new approach to soul. Waajeed and I caught up to discuss the radness of the raw, how a painting is like a track, and what really put the funky in Funkadelic.

Tell me about how you guys met. You’re both from Detroit, right?

Yeah, we met sixteen, maybe seventeen years ago. At the time, we had just entered high school, and I was getting into music. There was this kid in my art class who was like, “my brother’s a producer, and he’s really talented. You should come by and grab some beats from him.” The next day he brought me his cassette tape. We made some beats together… with only turntables, a little drum machine, and cassette tapes.

You had a pretty spare setup there. But sometimes that can be for the best. The less software and fancy equipment used, the better.

Absolutely.

So what about Detroit? You are originally from there, but now live in New York. You have a big following in New York, but in an interview I read with you, you were saying a Detroit record shop only ordered eight of your records, and you sold 125 copies at one show in New York. What’s up with Detroit?

I think it’s… I don’t know. I think the grass is always greener on the other side. Wherever you’re not from, that’s where motherfuckers get into you. Like if I was born in New York, people here wouldn’t give a fuck about me. Yeah, that Detroit thing… in interviews I’m always get asked, ‘explain your Detroit sound. You have a Detroit sound, Detroit this, Detroit that.’ It really pisses me off.

I think people equate you with Detroit because you have a raw sound. I don’t think you sound ‘Detroit’ in any way. I think people tend to pigeonhole, which sucks. It’s a really unchallenged way of looking at music.

It’s the easiest way. It sums it up. To name a sound for a city is silly. And if I had a ‘Detroit’ sound, maybe there’d be more records of mine for sale there… the ‘Detroit’ sound is just ghetto tech.

Let’s talk about your paintings. Is there somewhere online where you sell your stuff?

Not really. I wish there was more time in the day.

I’m sure you’re busy DJing, producing, owning a record label, getting married…

The DJ thing is crazy. I’ve been DJing more than I’ve been producing lately. There’s so much to do and so little time. I wish I had more time to paint, or even draw. I miss it, but making a track is, to some degree, the same thing. With painting, you lay a foundation, and build on it. Add a few things and take a few things away. It’s the same process.

Yeah, it’s just a layering of textures to arrive at overall meaning and balance. Production is all about balance, too.

I agree. That’s part of what’s wrong with popular music these days, especially hip-hop. Because it’s so keyboard-based and doesn’t have any texture to it… every piece of art has to have some sort of texture to it in order to gel. I was just in Dubai, and got back a couple days ago. The whole scene was fresh, but there was no texture to it. That’s part of why I don’t like lots of hip-hop. There’s no texture to it.

I’m always pissed that these silly rappers are so successful. I don’t understand that at all. Lots of mass-popular hip-hop doesn’t say anything, besides ‘booty is great.’

I know. It’s like, what is anyone going to take away from this situation, besides seeing lots of T and A all damn day.

So let’s talk about your history a little bit. Let me get this straight—you got a scholarship for art school, and then quit to go on tour. After your return, you dropped painting and started making beats. Right?

Yeah, I was so into the music, I had to devote my time. I had always been involved with music, and DJing…

How old were you when you started DJing?

I was about 14. I started with my parent’s record collection—they were really into music in the ‘70s, and big party freaks. They had tons and tons of vinyl.

What kind of music were they into?

My dad was into jazz, and heavily into funk… Funkadelic and all sorts of stuff. I really didn’t get Funkadelic until the last ten years…

It’s kind of an acquired taste.

Yeah. You really have to understand what the fuck they’re talking about to even care. So I inherited my parent’s record collection. I have so many… right now I’m trying to alphabetize them. It’s hard to keep track of all this music.

I’ve read in articles before about how production came pretty easily to you, because it’s a form of expression, kind of like painting. You learn to operate whatever vehicle of expression, and the rest comes easily. Do you agree?

Absolutely. Music gives you another approach. I was hanging out with DJ Spinna a couple days ago, and he’s one of these record, record, record guys. Like he will know the name, producer, cover art…

The label, what year it came out, what pressing it is…

Yeah. Aw, man, he’s one of these record genius guys. He was explaining that your ear is so unique to you. Everyone hears a record differently… I hear a record in a completely different way than anyone else. That’s your benefit; you can approach it differently; chop it up, think about music in a nontraditional way because of being trained as an artist.

That’s the special thing about it… it’s a unique experience. Everyone hears music differently, and the way you create beats is only yours, because only you can hear music that way, and have that particular thing to say.

Yeah. Everyone who’s a great producer has preserved an experience… they’re bringing something unique.

Check Waajeed at Bling 47.

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Ah, novelty, wherefore art thou? William Threlfall has moved beyond the usual lackluster and well-traveled 4/4 margins with Love Crisis. Threlfall builds his sound with micro-sampling instead of culling full loops, a production style that thankfully tends toward polyrythmic complexity. Cowbells and big band instrumentation augment hi-hat hand claps while the beats ride on an undertow of strapping bass. Meanwhile, cut-up slippity-slappity soul is fed through the sonic sieve. Rolling melodics are interspersed throughout, creating (gasp!) novelty within the soul-house sound.

This review originally appeared in XLR8R on October 24, 2003.

Stewart Walker’s departure from his usual isolation-induced compositions may be a function of his recent Discord collaboration with Geoff White. While Walker’s past releases have resounded with a divergence from others, Live Extracts finds him working within his older, tech-derived frameworks in new ways. Walker lets loose: the truly live sound of the album lends more to booty-whomp than a desire to pore over the meaning of the conceptual title. A tendency towards polyrhythmic overlays streams an amorphous eventfulness through each beat sequence. Walker now bears the mark of collaboration, while remaining just as sacrosanct in his creation.

This review originally appeared in XLR8R on July 4, 2003.

RJD2: friendly android cyber-bot or Definitive Jux sample-swapping producer? RJ’s deft mastering, despite his limited studio resources, place his skills among the caliber of the inhuman android, but the emotion evoked through his music is altogether human. Deadringer reworked dusty ’70s samples into a sort of Frankenstein of disparate parts that somehow remained sonically sweet. As a follow-up, the two-CD The Horror is all remixes of that debut. A new “Final Frontier” garners a more listenable rap than its Deadringer counterpart, and “Bus Stop Bitties” finds the Motown era’s soul food even bass-ier and tastier. The second CD features live performance footage as well as an interactive photo gallery. The Horror is superlatively inhuman in its quality, much like RJD2’s production skills.

This review originally appeared in XLR8R on May 30, 2004.

At a hastily planned 1997 rave in a low-scale sports arena in Bloomington, Illinois, Chicago DJs Colette, Heather, and Dayhota found themselves obligated to rock a disinterested crowd drawn by cheap Xeroxed flyers. Working against the odds, Colette spun a thick house set and sang her own lyrics over the mix, her voice resonating one second, then swelling, full and throaty the next. Of the meager 100 attendees, a majority had gravitated to the dim corners of the warehouse in search of back massages. A sense of futility dominated the air as Colette continued, invoking the listeners with strains of “Rise up, Rise,” her head thrown back and eyes closed, to an oblivious crowd.

Three years later, on a packed Saturday night at Chicago’s well-established Metro club, SuperJane is in control. Dayhota contorts a loop into constrained tech-step acrobatics, creating a beat pendulum that swings wider and wider into final release. The thick silver rings on her index fingers catch light and glint at intervals, accentuating her dexterity as she tweaks the bass knob with each break. She hops and struts behind the turntables, looking sultry and satisfied.

As hundreds of dancers swarm to the hardwood floors, Dayhota drops a tune with a strapping bassline and an abandon that translates into limb kinetics in the crowd: arms flail and toes everywhere are smashed as rhythm consumes all present. Despite the sweaty and crowded conditions, everyone is dancing. No back massages are taking place in the corners of this club.

It’s refreshing to see appreciation, finally, for the artistry that is SuperJane. At the above mentioned sports arena gathering, there may have been 100 tweaked-out clubbers searching for Ecstasy pills rather than good beats. Here, listeners have gathered in search of one thing: aural sex.

The support evinced at the Metro is consistent with SuperJane’s growing global popularity. In recent months, the crew has been featured in multiple magazines (Spin, Time Out, URB, BPM), and their productions mixes are surfacing on several music labels (Seasons, Afterhours, Shroom, Classic, and Nordic Trax). So who are these four in-demand DJs?

Dayhota, Colette, Heather and Lady D have been involved in the Chicago music scene for numerous years, and their partnership grew out of both mutual appreciation for each other’s style and a solid foundation of friendship. SuperJane’s members met at raves and clubs in the mid-1990s and became intimate through their home city’s infamous 2418 North Avenue and Aberdeen loft parties, where they spun records alongside such producers as Gene Farris, Mark Farina, Freak, J-Dub, Diz, and DJ Sneak.

“We all became close in 1995, through those loft parties and clubs and shared musical taste,” recalls Dayhota. “Colette got turntables that year and we started practicing together. Our partnership naturally evolved.” Indeed, the group has spun as a collective at raves and clubs throughout the nation and plans on touring Europe next year. The SuperJane 2000 tour graced several clubs in cities ranging from Seattle to Detroit, and the next tour will eventually hit London and Paris. Although they share a common affiliation, the crew is far from homogenous. Dayhota spins barefoot, Colette simultaneously sings and spins, Lady D is both a record executive and mother, and Heather regularly spins in the international circuit. Together, these personalities and their quirks comprise a charismatic, colorful, and capable collective that reaches beyond novelty of their gender.

“SuperJane is an attempt to re-educate people about forgetting the whole mystique of being a female DJ. When SuperJane began, we were trying to mirror the approach of most parties going on, but with female promoters and female DJs instead of males. I’ve never really thought of myself as a woman DJ, but just as a DJ that happens to be a woman. I’m hoping people will be receptive to that.”

It seems that the music world has been nothing but receptive to DJ Heather Robinson’s authentic and discerning Chicago approach. Robinson’s been spinning for over 10 years, experience that affords her the ability to mix tracks seamlessly and effortlessly, one of the numerous skills required for DJ success in Chicago: “The number of DJs per capita there is high, regardless of gender,” she notes. “There’s a very high talent pool, and being in that environment requires you to fine-tune your style if you want to spin anywhere.”

Robinson’s talents have launched her on countless adventures, including appearances in clubs nationally and internationally. She has traveled with Mark Farina as a member of the San Francisco Sessions tour. In Europe, she’s spun in clubs such as London’s Bar Rhumba and at parties like Berlin’s Love Parade.

Like the other members of SuperJane, Robinson keeps a busy schedule. When she isn’t touring across the world, she works on music projects like her mix CD, Tangerine, released last year on Afterhours. “Even though I travel a lot,” she notes, “I try to make time for music.”

“When I first started spinning, there was a lot of recognition because I was a girl. Early on, I recognized that as a woman, being a DJ was both a help and a hindrance.”

So says Darlene Jackson (a.k.a. DJ Lady D), a woman who manages to come across unhindered and carefree despite the dance music media’s representation of her gender. In fact, there are several variables that could quell Jackson’s carefree attitude. The mother of a two-year-old child, Jackson juggles careers as both touring DJ and a full-time career as A & R representative for three labels managed by Strictly Hype Records (SHR).

With all this to do, when does she find time to relax? “I don’t think about it,” she says. “Between a record career, DJ career, and caring for my child, I keep really busy, so there’s not much time for myself. I find that I enjoy traveling to spin… I get on a plane to go somewhere and relax there, and that’s mostly the time I have to myself.”

Jackson’s recording career alone has been demanding. In the last year, she’s worked on several singles, including the wonderful “Champagne Lady” for Afterhours and a spoken word piece on the Body Music Label titled “Rhythm and Poetry Featuring Lady D.” Her full-length CD, Naked Kaleidoscope, was also released last year on Afterhours.

Jackson seems to enjoy this busy schedule. “I need a lot of change, a lot to keep me busy,” she explains. This desire for change seems to be a pattern in her life—she graduated college with a biology major and went on to medical school with the goal of becoming a podiatrist. After a brief attempt at the graduate life, she decided, finally, to take a break. “I realized I just didn’t want to be in school any more, so I worked all around Chicago… as an aerobics instructor, freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune, retail salesperson, and I even worked the skybox [at United Center] where the Bulls [play].”

Jackson’s odyssey from medical school to motherhood and DJ success has sharpened her resolve. “Although I need a lot of change, I feel I’ve gotten to the point where I’m driven towards one goal,” she says. “I’m resentful that Europe has a liberal radio where there is a place for dance music, and America doesn’t. [My desire to] overcome that is what drives me to get my music out there.”

“We get a lot of press about being women. We want to be known as DJs, not women. It will take awhile to get past the media’s hype about women DJs,” explains Shannon Ialongo, known in DJ circles as Dayhota.

It seems Ialongo has obviously transcended the. She is now locally and internationally respected both for her Chicago style of tech-house, and her residencies in Chicago hotspots like Mad Bar, Karma, Smart Bar and Crobar, among others. Remarkably, Ialongo will be traveling to Macedonia later this year to spin, a unique privilege previously afforded to very few DJs in the world.

Ialongo’s uniqueness is not necessarily specific to DJing: she’s something of a Jane-of-all-trades, with interests ranging from music production and physics to writing and graphic design. “I’m a full-blown Aquarius,” she says of her multitude of interests. “If Lady D is the sensible SuperJane, and Colette is the go-getter, and Heather is the intellectual, then I am the dreamer of SuperJane. I have so much energy and I’m interested in so much that it’s hard for me to sleep at night.”
What, then, does she plan on doing with her insomniac hours in the future? “I plan to have a CD out (titled Kisses and Music Never Lie) on the Music 101 label this summer,” Ialongo says. She’ll also work on a compilation CD with the rest of the SuperJane crew slated for release later this year. Ialongo’s also looking to hit the studio: “I plan on producing some music that is a bit mellower than what I spin. I’m an emotional romanticist, and the music I produce is always a reflection of that. It’s not as hard [as the music I play out].”

And what about that barefoot spinning? Ialongo often begins a set wearing thick black platform stacks and slips them off half an hour later. “Well, when I first started spinning, feeling the bass through the floorboards with my bare feet helped me match beats. I’m really a hippie at heart, and I love to feel comfortable, like I’m at home.”

“As SuperJane, we wanted to take away the novelty of an all-girl lineup,” explains DJ Colette Marino. “We all feel the same about music, and that’s what ties us four DJs together—that and hard work to get where we want to be.”

Marino’s work ethic has proven integral to SuperJane’s success. She became a student of music at nine years old and got involved in the Chicago dance music scene in the early ‘90s. This led to working with DJ Lego and singing freestyle over his DJ sets. Soon thereafter, Marino began working with DJ Sneak and nightclub promoters Deeper Than Blue. Her involvement in the music scene eventually segued to spinning. Marino borrowed an old set of DJ Sneak’s turntables and buried herself in music, practicing singing and spinning at the same time. She’s since partnered up with several labels over the last five years to release singles and a CD, In the Sun, for Chicago’s Afterhours label.

Marino is still managing to maintain a fast-paced lifestyle. She’s recently moved from Chicago to Los Angeles and lives with her boyfriend and fellow producer Angel Alanis. Marino is now on the road two to three times a week to spin. “I usually travel from Thursday to Sunday, and then I generally work in the studio Monday through Wednesday.” Despite this busy schedule, she’s managed to work on a new track for the A-Squared label that is remixed by KC, a.k.a. Kevin Cunningham.

Although the music life manages to keep Marino quite busy, she plans on taking on an even larger workload: starting her own record label. “I feel that if you’re making music, it’s easier sometimes to just do things on your own, especially with the exposure of the Internet. I wanted to take the initiative to start my own label. I’m ready to start my own thing,” says Marino. It seems that she has.

This cover story featured in XLR8R Issue 49.