edIT feature - Published in Serie B Magazine, 2008
This feature is accompanied by a mix, which is available here.
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The Game is far from over
Los Angeles. The name evokes all sorts of T.V and Hollywood induced images and fantasies. For music lovers L.A is also a powerful name, home to innovators and a breeding ground for new ideas, past, present and future. And it’s the future that concerns the work of Edward Ma, known to most as edIT. The future of hip hop to be precise and it doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard before.
After discovering DJing and production while studying at U.S.C, where he became friends with other artists to be like Aloe Blacc and Daedelus, Ma built his name on the L.A underground. As the Con Artist, he recorded, engineered and produced for a range of people, including some of his U.S.C friends like Aloe Blacc. He also became a resident at Konkrete Jungle, the L.A chapter of the legendary US drum n bass night, which was co-run by Daddy Kev, someone who Ma would work with again in the future, and Hive.
This early work would impact the rest of his career. “There was a cool little family of MCs and producers related to U.S.C and that’s how it all got started for me. Daedelus was one of the people who taught me how to spin, and through the years he’s been a great influence on my growth and progress. Konkrete Jungle was where I met Busdriver, Freestyle Fellowship, Abstract Rude… all these guys. Basically all the people who appear on my new album, the relationships were forged during that time.”
At the turn of the century, Ma was still very much an “indie hip hop and drum n bass purist” by his own admission. His musical output took a turn for the unexpected though, thanks to his roommate at the time.
“My roommate was into collecting all these weird records by people like Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin. I’d never even heard of them but I’d always walk past his room and hear the craziest electronic music.” By an unusual process of absorption, Ma found inspiration and set out to make his own version of what he was hearing. The result was ‘Crying Over Pros for No Reason’, an album released in 2004 on the UK label Planet Mu, a home for pioneering electronic music. The album birthed edIT and a hip hop sound unlike any before.
Crying fused Ma’s love of hip hop with his new found interest in the more experimental side of electronic music, resulting in a unique sound, a vision of hip hop in the future. It wasn’t just the sound that made the album so hypnotising but also the way in which it drew from Ma’s emotions. “It’s really a record about heartbreak and loss,” he admits, “it’s about all the ones that could’ve been, all the ones that’ll never be and all the ones that got away. And I think everyone has experienced that feeling before.”
Four years on, Crying sounds as fresh as it did first time round, even for Ma who admits that it’s this reason that keeps him from wanting or trying to repeat its success. But, while the album made edIT’s name, it also came with its own cross to bear. Tagged as glitch-hop, a lot of people didn’t want to see beyond the music’s sonic singularities, choosing to confine it to something else. “Glitch hop is a very bad name for what you want to call this group of music, which is just a new take on hip hop, a futuristic electronic hip hop sound. To me the album always was a hip hop album, I never really knew how to explain it to people, it was just experimental, electronic, but always hip hop.”
Ma spent the next 3 years following his debut incubating this new hip hop sound, looking for new inspirations and a new direction. “The gap was due to growth,” he admits. “I needed to take a break and reassess what I wanted to do next. It was obvious I was going to do another album, I just hadn’t figured out what it would sound like.” A key moment in figuring it out happened later in 2004, thanks to a remix for his old friend Daedelus. ‘Dumbfound’ kept elements of the first album’s sound combined with a new sensibility, more in tune to dancefloors where his debut was more introspective.
It still took 3 years for the new album to come out as Ma kept refining this new sound, a sound that he knew was now firmly aimed at the dancefloor. In 06, he made ‘Battling Go Go Yubari’, a track which gave birth to the rest of his second album, and its first single. Nearing a finished release, he started doing shows in San Francisco playing alongside Ooah, Kraddy and Boreta, with whom he would later form the Glitch Mob. Doing shows with these guys, Ma realized something crucial: his album lacked any ‘real’ bass. While his tracks were axed around the kick drum, a la Timbaland or The Neptunes, Ooah and the others made music built for sound systems, packing incredible bass. “I came back to L.A and realized I had to put the bass into my record,” he says laughing.
Finally in late 2007 ‘Certified Air Raid Material’ was released on Daddy Kev’s Alpha Pup label. The album is an all out assault on your senses, designed for huge speakers and face curling bass bins. Just as Crying was hip hop unlike anything before, Air Raid is club hip hop years ahead of its time. Unsurprisingly, the new sound shocked a lot of fans but Ma was prepared, unashamed of wanting to do something different.
“With my new album, and the stuff I do with The Glitch Mob, it’s almost like we’re on the second wind of this whole experimental, electronic hip hop thing. This time it’s a lot more dancefloor orientated. For me Air Raid is as jaw dropping as my debut, but this time it’s when the bass drops and hits you that it happens. It’s like the feeling you got when dnb was in its heyday, that ‘oh shit’ moment after the drop. It’s a different kind of excitement.”
Whether live or in the studio, this new excitement is what edIT brings: a new take on hip hop that looks back to the golden days with two feet firmly in the future, open to new possibilities. In 2008, edIT spreads his sound further with a first European and Japanese tour. Appropriately his latest single is a sequel to Dilla and Dabrye’s ‘Game Over’, which pays homage to Dilla’s influence on the new generation of producers like him who are taking hip hop into their own hands. And listening to the music, it’s clear that the game is very much far from over. In fact it’s all just starting again.
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