Despite dubstep’s rise in popularity and consequent rise in numbers, from artists to DJs and labels, there is still only a core number of labels which are of real, regular interest to me. DMZ and Hyperdub are two, and Paul Rose’s Hotflush is another. And even though Hotflush has been one of the busiest labels release-wise, it still regularly comes up with surprisingly refreshing music.
And so, it was a pleasure to be able to catch up with Paul Rose, aka Scuba, recently after I’d first interviewed him (briefly) for my dubstep piece in Serie B back in 2006. And it was Serie B who asked for a round two, this time concentrating on the man and his forthcoming album. The article appears in Serie B issue 21, out now and available in Spain, South America and most good European importers.
For the non-Spanish speaking massive though, the good people at Spannered are running a slightly longer version of the piece, in English. You can check it here.
I’ll be posting up the Serie B version to the portfolio archive later. In the meantime get reading if you haven’t and don’t forget to check Scuba’s new album and the excellent new series of free mixes from Hotflush.
This feature appears in the July edition of Japanzine. The full, unedited version of the q&a I did with Goth-Trad is available on this blog, here.
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Mutation Man
The name may conjure up images of black-clad fashion disasters wearing too much eye-liner, but the truth about Goth-Trad is rather different. In the last few years, the bizarrely monikered producer and DJ – known to his mum as Takeaki Maruyama –has emerged as one of the hottest talents on Japan’s electronic music scene. Maruyama “rst discovered dance music at the tender age of 10, kickstarting a passionate affair that’s continued to this day. “I remember hearing Technotronic and loving it,” he reminisces. “I thought ‘Techno? What is Techno?’ The sound was amazing to me.” This early interest would soon grow into a deeper obsession as he discovered Kraftwerk and started listening to the UK charts. Living in Yamaguchi and then Hiroshima, though, satisfying this obsession wasn’t always easy and he had to resort to mail order at first.
‘A one-man army mutating the UK hardcore continuum in Japan’, says Kode 9. A pretty accurate description of what Takeaki Maruyama aka Goth Trad has been up since he started making music about 10 years ago. These mutations are nowhere near more apparent than in his own creation: ‘Mad Rave’, an amalgamation of the musical styles and genres that have influenced him since he first discovered electronic music. From old techno, house and jungle to more recent influences like crunk, grime, drum n bass and 2step, ‘Mad Rave’ is the logical culmination of over 20 years of collecting and listening to records and producing music.
While ‘Mad Rave’ has started to resonate with scenes worldwide in the last few years, from dubstep to drum n bass, breakcore to dub, it’s been a long journey already for Goth Trad. Since first deciding to dabble in production back in the late 90s he’s released 3 albums, appeared on many compilations and remix projects, and released another 3 albums as part of Rebel Familia, a collaboration project with legendary reggae bassist Takeshi ‘Heavy’ Akimoto.
He’s also toured Europe 3 times and has been playing regularly up and down Japan, solo and with Rebel Familia, for the best part of the last 5 years. His live work has only intensified since the release of his last album, and you’ll as easily find him playing at a drum n bass rave as you will a breakcore event, a reggae gig or his own monthly dubstep and grime night in Tokyo, ‘Back To Chill’. The diverse appeal of his music and live shows is reflected in the range of artists he’s played alongside in the last few years: The Mars Volta, Don Letts, The Bug, DJ Krush, Limewax, Toshinori Kondo, Mike Ladd, Bong Ra, Buck 65, Zinc, Doc Scott, Skream, Mala and Iration Steppas.
And so with the increasing interest in his work outside of Japan, following his debut releases on UK labels earlier on this year (including a release on Deep Medi Musik), it’s about time someone got some words from the man down on virtual paper.
What follows is an unedited transcript of an interview I did with Takeaki in May 2007. This interview will appear as a feature in Japanzine (Japan) and Serie B Magazine (Spain) in the summer of 2007. Goth Trad is likely to become a name you’ll hear a lot more of in coming months – he has his first major European tour coming up in September, where he’ll be playing at DMZ in London, a Japan tour with Kode 9 and The Bug, more releases on UK labels and interests for collaborations and releases with artists like Distance amongst many others. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. As things continue to get bigger and better for the man, it seems the summer of 2007 could well prove to be the summer of Mad Rave. Continue reading »
I’ve just had my second travel related piece published - this time it’s in the excellent weekly free magazine/paper One Week To Live which you can get in London (and in some other big UK towns too). Last I remember you can grab it in most places, shops, clubs, etc… The piece is called Yabai! (Japanese slang for bad, as in meaning good) and is about Tokyo: the cool, the eccentric and the funny. It’s in the fashion section, which is kinda funny seeing as fashion and me don’t really get on that well :lol: .
Anyways if you’re in London check it - oneweektolive.com for more info on where to find it. Enjoy! I’ll post up a pdf of it later on this week.
Dubstep feature – Published in Serie B magazine, 2006
This article contains extracts from a series of interviews conducted in person and over the internet with Skream, Kode 9, Scuba, Bruno Belluomini, NuMaestro and Infinite over the spring of 2006.
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Dubstep: Doin’ it in your earhole
London has always been a cauldron of musical activity - a unique recipient for cultures, ideas and sounds to clash, merge and form anew. At the turn of the century the explosion of UK Garage led to the emergence of various new strains of the sound, spread across the capital. In the years following these strains engrained themselves in various London boroughs and continued to mutate, emerging more recently - first in and around London and gradually spreading outwards. Grime is one of those strains. Another is Dubstep, a music that is just now starting to get a lot of attention.
While Grime emerged from the council estates of east London, it was in the south London borough of Croydon that a darker variant of Garage emerged. Built around the bouncy patterns of 2step combined with dark sounds, heavy bass and reggae, dancehall and dub samples and influences, as opposed to the rnb influences that dominated at the time, it was first pioneered and experimented by the likes of El-B, Steve Gurley and Zed Bias. In the years following it further developed and mutated thanks to producers like Horsepower, Menta, Artwork, Hatcha, Skream and Benga who built on the darker 2step foundations and were centred around the now defunct Croydon-based record shop and label Big Apple. Big Apple was instrumental in the early developments of this sound, as was Ammunition Promotions who were, and still are, responsible for the leading label Tempa, and the Forward>> club night. Ammunition coined the term Dubstep for a magazine article, a term that would slowly stick as the music bloomed over the years.
DJ Klock feature - Published in Serie B magazine, 2006
This feature was based on a longer online feature on DJ Klock and his work which is available online at spinscience.org.uk.
DJ Klock – Non-circular music
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Japan is a fascinating country to many people for many reasons – personally the one thing that never ceases to amaze me about Japan and its culture is its constant ability to surprise. Musically speaking this translates into the discovery of new artists whose work always bring something fresh. In the last few years I’ve discovered artists such as O N O, Goth Trad, Kentaro, DJ Baku, Tatsuki, Shing02, and DJ Klock who all produce and work across the hip hop, electronica and turnablist scenes. While their work can be seen within the frame of such genres, what’s truly interesting about it is that it is sometimes so different and ahead of what is being done in the West, it sounds like something entirely new. Back in issue 8 I looked at the new generation of Japanese DJs, turntablists and producers such as Baku, Kentaro and Tatsuki, who over the last 5 years have been pushing things in new directions, unhindered by what was happening outside of Japan. But there was one artist amongst this new generation who I didn’t really touch on – DJ Klock. Alongside Baku and Tatsuki he was part of Japan’s first turntable band, Whakhakha, and he’s also one of the country’s most interesting electronica artist blurring the boundaries between hip hop, glitch, house, live instrumentation and scratching and bringing all his influences together in a mix that works surprisingly well.
A-Trak feature - Published in Serie B Magazine, 2006
This feature follows up from the original interview I did with A-Trak in 2004, ahead of his becoming Kanye West’s tour DJ. A full length version of the original interview, and this feature are available online at spinscience.org.uk.
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Homeboy got that crack!
Sitting in a studio in a flat somewhere in New York with Hell Rell from the Dipset exclaiming ‘that’s that crack!’ when hearing a beat isn’t the type of setting where you think you’d find a world renowned turntablist and young producer, responsible for said beat. The beat in question was for a track, ‘Don’t Fool with The Dips’, that became one of the big surprise of 2005 in some music circles – a track featuring 3 young members of the Dipset collective rhyming over a production made mainly from turntables isn’t exactly run of the mill after all. But then again at just 24 years of age the man responsible for this, A-Trak, isn’t your average turntablist, DJ or producer. In the last 2 years he has made a habit of breaking norms and surprising followers of his early days as a turntable prodigy and battle DJ champion, as well as surprising a fair amount of people out of scratch circles since becoming Kanye West’s tour DJ. So how exactly did this Canadian boy, who still hasn’t finished his university studies, get to go on the road with Kanye for the last 2 years, have the Dipset rhyme on his track, end up doing cuts for Common’s lauded ‘Be’ album and more importantly achieve what most turntablists haven’t managed to by linking the underground, and inward looking, scratch scene to the current mainstream of rap and hip hop? Whatever answer you’re thinking of is probably off by a few miles. It involves a shop in London, a routine, some guts, Dame Dash, and of course skills.
2tall feature - Published in Serie B magazine, 2005
This feature is based on various much q&a sessions which took place over a year at 2tall’s home and studio. The first and longest of these q&a sessions is available online at spinscience.org.uk and ukhh.com.
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Musicianship can take many forms and artists many shapes. And in many ways the above sentence has never rung truer than when applied to scratch DJs. From the musical stylings of Mixmaster Mike and D-Styles to the dnb productions and club sets of Craze, scratch DJs are constantly redefining concepts of music. And in the UK, one DJ in particular is standing tall over the rest.
2tall first came to music in the early 90s and through playing the piano and drums during his youth and teens. 1995 saw him catch the DJ bug, and after a few years of mixing he discovered battle and test tone records, opening up a whole new world of sonic possibilities which he started to integrate more and more into his mixing, experimenting with scratching as he went along. This led him to take scratching more seriously and find out about its history and the emerging turntable music being made at the time. By 2000 2tall was incorporating all the different music making skills he’d learnt in his youth alongside his newfound love (and talent) for scratching. 2001 saw him take to the battles for the first time as well, both solo and with UK crew The Truesicians. All this ultimately led to his first official release, the ‘Rise EP’, on Needlework Records in 2003. A snapshot of his time battling and learning the scratching ropes, the EP also hinted to a different and more musical side, which would eventually materialise further into his first full length solo album, ‘Shifting Tides’.
This is the full length q&a interview with Skream which was used for the feature published in ATM Magazine, June 2006. This unedited version of the q&a session I did with Skream is previously unpublished.
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So when, how and why did you start making music?
Skream: I was about 13 and some boys I was rolling with they started making tunes, and it was like ‘rah they’re making music!’ It was on a Playstation I think, and I always DJed from when I was 11 and it was like just that next step, and it seemed so easy on that and it was just wanting to do your own stuff. Wanting to imitate the tunes you’d wanna get and make your own stuff.
Big Apple was also a big part of it, obviously. My brother used to work there and I got in there, met Hatcha, and he was spinning that dark 2step thing. And it just took me. I was on that commercial sort of garage, like most people were, but it was twist and difference in the sound. It was just mad. The whole music thing has always been the thing for me, it’s a cool thing to be involved in and the people involved in music always seemed like cool sort of guys. It’s a good way to make a living… well no it’s a good career choice if you can get in there, you know?
I was listening to El-B, Horsepower, Artwork, and it just felt like it was for me man. It was something I molded into and it was when I was at school. I wasn’t interested in school one little bit, I was a little fucker (laughs). But that was something I could concentrate on, and go off and be in my own little zone.
“If this album didn’t even come out, I have had so much fun and I have learnt so much from doing it that I’m happy.” This sentence seems to sum up perfectly the state of mind DJ Zinc is in, since finishing his new album. Over 3 years in the making, the LP ‘Faster’ is a welcome surprise from one of D&B’s most prolific and influential producers. He seems very relaxed and happy about it, sitting in the sun discussing the trials and tribulations that have brought him to release an album on a subsidiary of Polydor, P Records, which is the label that signed Ms Dynamite and shot her to fame. But rest assured that Zinc has no intention of selling out, as he explains his main motivation for releasing an LP outside of Playaz and his own Bingo imprint: “I said to myself ‘what do I want to achieve by putting this album out?’ My bottom line aim all along was to try and get the music to as many people as possible.” Let’s rewind back a few years to what started as a seemingly innocent favour for a friend of his.
Pendulum cover feature – Published as cover feature in ATM Magazine, 2005
Menace from Down Under
“We’re going to the UK to make drum n bass where drum n bass comes from – see if they like it – work with people that wanna work with us.” When Australian trio Pendulum uttered those words nearly two years ago they had no idea how true they would ring. By the time these words came to print (back in ATM issue 57) their first official release under the Pendulum moniker, the now legendary ‘Vault’, had started them on the path to dnb stardom and made them into a household name before most people had even seen them or heard their story. A couple of tracks later and the trio, composed of Paul, Gareth and Rob, were on their way to London town with hope in their eyes and a deal with the newly born Breakbeat Kaos label, fronted by Adam F and Fresh. In retrospect it seems only fitting they would end up on Fresh’s label, seeing as they first fell in love with the drums and the bass after hearing Fresh and Maldini play in Perth. As Rob explains “I heard ‘Messiah’ that night and I was like ‘fuckin hell!’” Gareth adds “we walked out of the club that day, looked at each other and said ‘fuck it, let’s do that!’” Fast-forward to 2004 and Pendulum is the name on everyone’s lips when it comes to dnb, from the most fervent raver to the most clueless newbie. With an original approach, concepts galore and a finesse and refinement in sound which leaves most other productions by the wayside, Pendulum have come and taken drum n bass to a whole other level, repeating the success of ‘Vault’ a few times over and laying claim to the genre like no other crew since… well since Bad Company maybe…
Digital downloads feature – Published in ATM Magazine, 2004
The revolution will not be digitised… until now!
In the last century alone the world of music has witnessed no less than three major revolutions, each impacting on the way we consume music, the way it spreads and is recorded. And now at the dawn of a new century yet another revolution has engulfed the music world but this one has the potential to truly change the landscape of modern music like never before. The revolutions in question involve music formats. First we had vinyl, which has so far survived all the following revolutions and claims of its death. Then we had tapes which didn’t survive so well. And then came CDs with people claiming they would once and for all kill all other formats. While not entirely true, CDs have played a big part in helping eradicate tapes and usher in the digital revolution. By the end of the century CDs had become the major format on which music is sold and consumed, alongside newer digital formats like DVD. Yet the foretold revolution was still waiting to happen: vinyl sales were on the up at the turn of the century, the turntable constantly outsold the guitar in most developed countries and DJs had never been so popular. The eternal death of analogue technologies is nowhere to be seen yet their continued existence have not hindered the progression and rise of digital technologies, and somehow a happy medium between both has installed itself since the late 90s. But it looks like all this could change…
Mixmaster Mike is a legend in the world of DJing but not necessarily for all the right reasons. He’s won DMC world titles, he introduced Qbert to scratching, he’s been a part of the most famous DJ crew in history (the Invisibl Skratch Piklz) alongside Qbert, Disk, Apollo, D-Styles and Shortkut, he’s been the Beastie Boys’ DJ since 98 and yet he’s also known as a crazy motherfucker both on and off stage, responsible for some of the most mental turntable music to date and for using his scratches to talk to aliens and other cosmic entities (and that’s not even the half of it). But it would seem that time has had a soothing effect on Mike as demonstrated by his recent second solo LP, ‘Bangzilla’, a sharp contrast to his first solo outing, ‘Anti Theft Device’ an album still regarded to this day as one of the weirdest and most singular pieces of turntable music and production ever released. So has time really soothed the Serial Wax Killer or is just a ploy?
Jonny L has been a busy man. ‘27 Hours a Day’, is the title of his new album, and by the looks of things he’s been working against the clock for the last five months trying to finish it. Add to that all the stress and work involved in releasing an album, when you don’t have the backing of a major or even a big independent like XL, as well as running your own label and you can see how the album is aptly titled.
So how different was it for Jonny to produce and release an album on his own? “Well for one by the end of my time at XL I was always complaining, about artwork, record sleeves and the rest. In the end I had a little falling out with them, and then I went onto a proper major (Arista/BMG) for a while when I was working with Truesteppers. And there I realised how much better XL actually were, because Arista were a proper nightmare! And with this LP on Piranha, I have really come to realise how much work is involved in releasing an album and how time consuming it can be. I even had to hire someone at the last minute to help me because I just couldn’t bare it anymore. Releasing singles I can handle, but now that I have seen what’s involved in doing an album, I don’t think I would do it ever again.”
French Drum N Bass Scene – Published in ATM Magazine, 2004
In this constantly growing international dnb scene the “French touch” is not something that should be quickly overlooked. The French are slowly but surely making their presence felt in dnb after putting in years of hard work. The jungle and dnb scene in France took seemingly much longer to fully develop than many other countries. London exported its early rave and junglistic sounds to the mainland as far back as 1990-1991, but it wasn’t until the early 00s that these sounds would become ingrained into the French musical landscape and cross the channel back to the UK.
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