Jam Jarr is one-half Bakaman and one-half Rubix Qube. Half hip-hop, half trance but in no way a combination of the two. Jam Jarr is fresh, nu-age South African glitch come hop come dub come kwaito, with a full head of bass to keep the club hoppers happy.

“A spasm of electronic, a shiver of dirty, filthy, salt up your nose kinda bass. Jam Jarr is a glitch-rap duo made up of Soundproof and Bakaman, and they’re here to tear your eardrums asunder with a cache of tracks ranging from dubstep to glitch-hop, and all the other beat-stops in-between.”

Their debut EP, Fat Fruit, is due for release on African Dope tomorrow (Friday Sept. 10) and in a celebratory, ululating fashion we caught up with the two muso’s and gave them the ultimate question word: WHY?

Dont Party presents

Jam Jarr and The 5 WHY’s?

1. Why Jam Jarr?

We wanted a name that spoke to the no-holds barred nature of our music, as well as the gob-smacking potency of it, and the mixture of our two different, yet similar musical backgrounds. Jam Jar was the result, and for some extrra flavour, and extrra R. And now we arre Jam Jarr.

2. Why Fat Fruit?

First of all, Fat Fruit sounds Dope when you say it. It is fortunate enough to have the added quality of making sense. Basically, this EP is the first tangible piece of fruit from the tree we planted a year ago.. and the fruit is fat, bursting with flavour, and ready to be made into a Jam.

3. Why South Africa?

South Africa is obviously both of our home country, so naturally, we’re laying the roots here. Cape Town is the creative garden of Eden in this country of ours, and the quality, variety and accessibility of outstanding electronic music and it’s artists is always at your fingertips. Cape Town and South Africa will always be our home, we’re incredibly lucky to live here. We obviously have great ambition to perform overseas extensively, but there’s only one place we’re coming back to : ) Slaapstad.

4. Why African Dope?

African Dope is the Dopeness!! They are what opened my (Bakaman’s) eyes to ‘leftfield electronica’ that was happening in my very own country! I was blown away by the adventurous possibilities of music outside of the mainstream garbage. My saliva trail has led from those preparatory days to African Dope’s doorstep. It’s the perfect place for an artist to retain their creative liberty and be able to release the music internationally, digitally and physically. The African Dope name is strong, locally and abroad, and we’re proud to be associated with that name.

5. Why Music?

There was no other choice. Music called and neither of us have hung up the phone yet. If you want a life of financial security and solid future prospects, don’t pick up the microphone, and take your fingers off the decks. The digital age has made it all the easier for independent artists and labels to get their music out, but it’s also meant that music is usually lost in the sea of all the other crap that’s flying around, let alone the gargantuan quantities of music itself. Still. Some things are just too good to pass by, so here we are, riding the wave of digital uncertainty, and over-abundance. Godspeed to us all.

TAKE A LISTEN :: FAT FRUIT [the EP]

MORE?

• BUY the EP (african dope online)
• Jam Jarr facebook

The Glitch Mob are a 3 man electronic group (edIT, Ooah and Boreta) based up the West Coast of America who have made a name for themselves as front runners of progressive music; specifically glitch-hop. Their style is hardly categorical or generic but they have been able to take the genre of Glitch-Hop, to which they loosely subscribe, to a world platform.

Undoubtedly one of the most intriguing aspects of The Glitch Mob is their live show. A combination of technology, instrumentation and energy combine to create a unique performance package that echoes throughout global music followers.

Don’t Party was lucky enough to get the opportunity to have a short Q & A with the Mob in order to gain a little more insight into the minds of these amazing musicians…. and here is what transpired:

Don’t Party presents

The Glitch Mob Interview

San Francisco seems to be the epicenter of the glitch-hop scene at the moment. We recently interviewed Ill Gates [click] and he was telling us how glitch-hop, and music of the sort is noticeably blowing up in the states (we’ve certainly noticed it here!). Is the community of alternative ‘glitch-hop’ artists really tight knit? Is the glitch scene in San Fran like a family?

San Francisco is a great place to be an artist of any sort, and especially in electronic music. The intersection of like minds, lots of talent, and SF’s wild underground scene make it a very unique fixture of the West Coast music scene.

Does the semi-new, wide-spread acknowledgement of this scene affect your perception or feeling about the music you make? Is there any added pressure now as opposed to when you were just jamming tracks at your home studio because you loved just making music?

We are really just doing the same thing we were in the beginning — we are making music because we really love doing it. We also love playing and performing it. It amazes us every time we play a show to a large crowd! We’d be doing it even if there weren’t people there so it’s an honor every time we get to play to our fans.

The ‘Live’ element of music seems to always be in debate between classically live bands and electronically based artists. Your performances definitely undoubtedly puts you at the very forefront of what a live electronic group is or can be. But what is your opinion on ‘Live’ electronic music, do you guys consider yourself as live musicians, and can it ever be as ‘Live’ as traditional band? What would you say to the dude who says electronic music can never be ‘live’?

We are interested in finding new ways to perform music. Whether it’s a new tool, a new sound, or a new instrument, these are all exciting to us. To us it’s about the music more than the technology. It just so happens that technology allows us to do perform in ways we could not do otherwise.

I don’t think we fit into the same category traditional live musicians. We are practicing a very different art form than someone who goes on stage and plays a something like trumpet or a set of drums. I think new definitions will emerge as the technology progresses and becomes more accessible.

How has the advancement of these technologies, such as Ableton, traktor, Jazzmutant Lemur’s, APC 40’s etc, affected your performances? Has it changed them and is there anything that you can’t currently do that with all this tech that you want to on stage?

The way we perform on stage would not be remotely possible without Ableton. There’s absolutely no other piece of software out there that could allow us to do what we do. Before when we were only DJing songs there was lots of software that could get the job done. Now that we actually play each note from our songs on various controllers, we need something as vast and powerful as Ableton to handle it. When we were creating the live set, we bounced out every single note from Drink The Sea and ported it into Ableton so we could perform it mainly on the Lemur. The Lemur allows us to get the crowd involved with show because of the fact that it’s a touch screen and we tilt it towards the audience. It’s also completely customizable so it’s easy for us to program interfaces to our liking.

‘Drink the Sea’ is amazing, and is definitely one of our top albums of the year! But the name, the Glitch Mob, insinuates a strong force of glitched/ tweaked out music, but the new Album ‘Drink The Sea’ seems to have shed the ‘glitch’ image, wherein music is cut-up and effected, and the tracks are really strong musically. Do you guys still see yourself as part of the glitch scene/ movement or have you traversed its boundaries?

When writing Drink The Sea our focus was to make an album that was a journey. We aimed to use our sound and music to paint a picture and tell a story. The way the album was engineered and mastered was meant to support the narrative of record. It was important for us to allow the listener to really dive into the sound and get lost in it. That’s not to say that we’ll never use our hyper-chop glitch tricks again! I think of it like a painting that we just wanted to look a certain way to get the point across.

When I listen to the album (for example tracks like ‘a dream within a dream’, ‘between two points’ and ‘bad wings’) I feel as though I am listening to a live, instrumental band: Was this a conscious decision, like let’s make this album as live as possible, and does the construct of doing live electronic shows have a strong influence on how songs are written and sound? In other words does the premise of performing these tracks live in any way dictate how they sound in the studio?

The way this album was written was very introspective for us. It was more about us putting ourselves out there and really being true to how we felt when writing the music. Everything else you hear is really secondary to that for this album.

Take us through the process of stripping a track down to recreate it live as the Glitch-Mob does. Is it kind of like edIT you take drums, OOah you take guitars, Boreta grab the effects, or do you mess around with the midi, splitting it into sections until it feels right?

We split the entire song into bits and pieces first. Every note gets bounced out from Cubase as audio and imported into an Ableton Sampler instrument. Then we lay everything out in the arrange and recreate all of the filtering, automation and compression using the Ableton tools. The goal of this is to have the song be playing as close to the recorded version of possible but out of Ableton, and with no effects (so that we lessen CPU/HD load). Once everything is in we decide who wants to play what and we’ll map things to different controllers. We’ll play around with Lemurs, keyboards or V-drums and see what feels right for that sound. Once we decided on that, we automate all of the samplers so that they automatically change throughout each song depending on what part each person is assigned to play. For instance if your part in a song starts off as drums, then changes to a synth, then goes back to drums we will automate the samplers so that you can just stay on one controller. This allows the focus to remain on the performance as the computer does the work of choosing the sounds for you.

What studio gear do you guys favour to create your tracks? Are you outboard junkies or do you rely more on VST stuff?

Right now we are mainly software based. We use Cubase 5, Ableton, Native Instruments software, Arturia, and UAD.

You guys always seem to be pushing the boundaries whether it be marketing (taking it so the streets in san fran), music, music videos or live performances. So what comes next for the Glitch-Mob?

Lots and lots and lots of touring!

Lastly we just want to say that we love what you guys are doing, thank you to the Glitch Mob!

Thank you!

MORE MOB?

• The Glitch Mob website
• The Glitch Mob facebook

Boom Monk Ben is one of the most dynamic and audience capturing DJ’s that I have come across in my years of music. His style is so diverse that you could put him on at any slot and at any gig and he’ll do it justice.

Unique due to the fact that he is one of the very few people who have been able to survive and reach an international level of acclaim through purely DJ’ing.

so without further ado I give you our session with the man himself:

Dont Party presents :: The Boom Monk Ben interview

Benny Boom! You have DJ’ed in South Africa 4 times now! How does each experience compare to the last?

Yes indeed, I’m becoming a bit of a regular these days! Each time I come and play South Africa, Cape Town in particular, it gets better and better. Having played Fiction twice and now Assembly twice as well I feel like I am starting to get a real feel for the city and what sets the party off. The gig I just did with you guys [click] was definitely the best of all my Cape Town shows. In fact, it was the best gig of 2010 so far for me. I loved it and am already gagging to come back. As well as the gigs, it’s great to travel to somewhere knowing I have a lot of good friends to catch up with and geek out about music. It’s even better to know that every time I return I make new friends. It just means I’m so busy socializing that I rarely get to explore the city as much I’d like. Still, I would not have it any other way.

I have read a lot about you as well as spoken to you face to face on many occasions but I don’t think I have heard (or read) anyone ask: Where does the name Boom Monk Ben originate?

Ha! It’s really not that exciting a story but it is an odd name so I’ll satisfy your curiosity…when I was at university in 2000 my friends and I had a jostling rivalry with another flat of our mates. They christened their flat The Cathedral of Prog and themselves the Nights of the Prog Table. They were big into prog rock and being students had too much time on their hands. To counter that and cement our rivalry, our hip hop obsessed flat named ourselves The Temple Of Boom. As such we became known as The Boom Monks. This was early days in our DJing exploits, so much so I had never even played out with of our living room. One day I was asked to DJ at a party and they needed a name for the flyer. I scratched my head and thought about it for a bit before replying ‘Hmmm, I dunno…just use Boom Monk Ben. That’ll do until I think of something different.’ Which I never did.

What got you into dj’ing in the first place and how did you progress from the bedroom to the world?

I just kind of fell into it really. I arrived at university and then turned 18. All of a sudden I had access to student loans and an overdraft as well as a dwindling inclination to actually do any academic work. All that money and free time as well  an obsession with classic hip hop (Main Source, DITC, Organized Konfusion, KMD…all the good stuff!) led to me making an impulse buy and getting some turntables. My real inspiration came when I first heard the DJ Food & DK ‘Now…Listen!’ mix CD for Solid Steel & Ninja Tune as well as the DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist ‘Brainfreeze’ mix. I was unsure what was going on but I knew that what ever these guys were doing but I knew I wanted in on the action. I spent the first few years learning how to scratch and playing about with hop hop records before my style started to develop in unison with my ever broadening musical palette. Over the years it’s developed into a free flowing, bass frenzy that knows no bounds. Funnily enough, these days I play very little hip hop, let alone classic stuff. That’s life for you I suppose. I still love it though and enjoy geeking out and digging through my masses of golden era wax.

My progress from bedroom DJ to touring DJ has been a slow burning process that can’t really be attributed to any one incident. I have always had a lot of confidence in what I do and like to think I have a unique style that people seem to enjoy. I am also a tireless and savvy self promoter which has definitely served me well. Over the years of playing in Glasgow I started to get gigs in other Scottish cities, then some in England before being booked to play in some European cities. At first these more exotic gigs were few but over time they started to become more frequent. In todays hyper connected world, positive reputations can travel far and quickly and as I supported more and more big names and recorded plenty mix tapes, my rep grew bigger.

I suppose the real turning points were when Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel radio started to request mixes for the show and introduced me and my style to a wider audience. There was a definite upturn in gigs once that was a regular thing. This went into overdrive when they asked me to join the Solid Steel DJ team in an official capacity as part of Ninja Tune’s 20th anniversary celebrations. Having cited them as a massive influence and inspiration it was amazing when they asked me to join the ranks. That was a real watershed moment in both my career and love of DJing and music.

So you are still actively involved with Ninja Tune’s and the Ninja Tune XX?

Yep, very much so. I am one of the Solid Steel DJ team and record mixes for radio show on a (supposed to be) monthly basis. Realistically it’s more like every 6 weeks though. I get to DJ at some of their events and  get lots of gigs of the back of that association. We’re looking at doing a Ninja XX show to Glasgow later this year or early 2010  so will hopefully see that come to fruition. It’s a big year for the label and hopefully I’ll get the chance to get in the mix and help the celebrations.

You’ve made quite a solid career out of solely DJ’ing, I don’t think that there are many people out there who have achieved this level of DJing prowess. What inspires or motivates you (besides paying the bills) to keep on making people dance?

I know, it’s something I am very proud of. I often wonder what I could achieve if I made my own music! My main motivation is a love for music in all it’s forms and my unique opportunity to share with you all. Music is always changing and morphing in new and exciting ways and that really keeps me interested. The thrill of hearing a new track that you know will drop massively in your next DJ set and then seeing and hearing it actually happen is fantastic. The anticipation of sharing my favourite music and having a full club react positively to my selections is fantastic and makes me want to run to the club and bum-rush the decks. If you’re on before me then you’ll have me hovering over your shoulder, readying myself for action. Having a room full of people move and respond in unison on the dance floor is a unique thrill that I’ll never tire of.

Also, I don’t really know how to do anything else! As such I stick with it…

What kind of sound is popping out of the UK nowadays and how does that sound differ from a lot of the South African stuff that you’ve been privy to?

The UK is such an exciting place for music, electronic music in particular, and rarely leaves me wanting for anything. I am in to so much different stuff that it would be impossible for me summarise without writing an essay. Normally I would be happy to do just that but I think I ought to keep it short and sweet for you. Right now the UK funky and dubstep scenes are blowing up more and more. Artists like DJ Zinc, Roska, Ill Blu, Joy Orbison, Lil Silva are making great house music with a broken garage vibe to it. Also, dubstep acts like Joker, G31, Kavsrave, Guido, Taz Buckfaster and RSD are making great stuff as well. I’m lucky to be surrounded by fantastic artists who I also call my friends and colleagues with the likes of Parker, Hint, A La Fu, Leisure Allstars, Mr Benn, The Revenge. Mungo’s Hi-Fi and Clouds all making some amazing music in various forms.

The South African artists I really dig are Playdoe, Sedge Warbler, Mix n Blend, Sibot, Liver, Dank, 7ft Soundsystem, Krushed & Sorted, Mujava, PH Fat, Bakaman and SFR. Those guys all share a unique South African style that I’ll forever associate with the scene over where you are. They share a clean and crisp sound, with nuff bass to get your party started, much the same as the UK acts that I really dig.

The main difference is that the UK acts have a platform and adequate exposure to be heard by the rest of the world that is yet to develop in South Africa. The way you guys are going though, I think Cape Town will be a big scene with international attention in the coming years in the same way London, Berlin and San Francisco have established themselves as a cohesive electronic musical movement in recent years. Your time will come, of that I am certain.

You are also and active event promoter, running regular nights up in Scotland. Who are some of the acts that you have had play at your Glasgow events?

Phew, we’ve had so many amazing acts come up to play it’s hard to know where to tstart. Let’s see…Fake Blood, Rusko, Caspa, Ghostface Killah, A-Trak, Edan, Peanut Butter Wolf, C2C, Sinden, Switch, Kid Koala, Chromeo, Cool Kids, DJ Zinc, Hudson Mohawke, Playdoe, Fingathing, Bass Clef, Cadence Weapon, Annie Mac, Mary Anne Hobbs, DJ Mehdi, Drop The Lime. DJ Craze, A-Skillz, Jack Beats, Plastic Little, Spektrum, Starkey, L-Vis 1990, Sharon Jones & the Dapkings, Duke Dumont, Kentaro, Quantic Soul Orchestra, Greenskeepers and loads more have all played at Mixed Bizness events. That’s just the tip of the iceberg really. I can’t keep track any more!

Between now and the new year we have Benga, Caspa, Emalkay, Foamo, Hostage, Hint, Parker, Magnetic Man, Carte Blanche (DJ Mehdi & Riton), Fake Blood, Jack Beats, Malente, Toddla T, Hot City and more all stopping by. It’s busy round our way!

Now to a bit of the tech side of things: What is your ideal DJ setup?

It’s pretty simple really…2 Technics turntables, a Rane TTM57sl mixer with Serato Scratch Live built in, Shure White Label carts and stylus and my trusty Sennheiser HD25 headphones. Then comes the BASS!

Do you have an opinion about the new age of synchronized DJing whereby the concept of beat-matching has become null and void?

I could go on about this for days and offer many conflicting views depending on my mood. I myself will always mix records, either real or Serato, and really enjoy and value the craft that comes with that. It’s what I consider fun and it keeps me occupied during my preferred 3 – 4 hour sets. However, ultimately the most important thing in DJing is the choice of music and the order you play it in. As long as the music is good and put together in an interesting and considerate fashion then I am happy. For me, Ableton and synched Traktor DJing is not as much fun as mixing records but is no less worthwhile or creative. It’s just not the way I like to do things. Not that I have ever tried mind you. I don’t even know how to use a CDJ! I have always used vinyl and then Serato Scratch Live and will continue to do so.

Both approaches have their drawbacks and merits but as long as the music makes me want to dance and is put together in the right the way then it’s all good.

If you could throw one  serious banger of an event, who would be your top 5 DJ’s for it: the best gig night ever?

Hmmm, my dream line up would consist of JD Twitch, resident at long running Glasgow institution Optimo Espacio. He’s the man and I owe so much of my musical education to Sunday nights spent in Sub Club dancing like a maniac to his music. Next up would be Tayo, resident at Fabric and label head for Cool & Deadly in London. His sets are a smash up of dubstep, garage, house and global bass. his mixing is deadly and his tune selection is so fresh and upfront it makes me rage with jealousy and whoop with delight at the same time. Joining them would be DJ Food & DK, a massive influence on me and two DJs I’ll always credit with inspiring me to start DJing in the first place. Throw into the mix fellow Mixed Bizness resident Point To C and my man Parker from Jalapeno Records and you’ll have quite the party on your hands!

And finally… When are you coming back to SA?

I don’t know. I think you can probably answer that better than I can. Just let me know and I’ll be there!

… and we’ll gladly have you back homie… ANYTIME!

MORE BENNY BOOM?

• mixed bizness website
• boom monk ben myspace
• boom monk ben soundcloud
• boom monk ben’s dont party mid week mix

Ill Gates is more a mentor than a musician. His outlook on life and music is so supportive and encouraging it instills confidence in me and many others who chose the chromatic scale as their desk-job. A well established and versatile DJ, producer, VJ and all-round music guru Dont Party had the absolute pleasure of interviewing this figurehead, and what began as a short interview turned into a 1 and a half hour phone interview! So let’s get to it:

Dont Party presents

the ill.gates interview

DP: I was introduced to you and your work through Bassnectar [click for our interview with him], and have been an avid fan ever since. You and him collaborate quite a lot together, how do you know eachother and how did bond between you and him form, are you guys from the same areas?

Ill: No, we live totally far apart. I live on the east coast of Canada, in the north where it’s cold and snowy all the time, and he lives in Berkeley, San Francisco. In 2002/3 I put out a record called ICE 9 and he liked it and played it when he was a breaks DJ. He then sought me out. It was really funny because I was producing some kind of psychedelic, tripped –out sort of breaksie stuff, and so was he, so then we got to talking and found out that we saw eye-to-eye on pretty much everything. He came to Toronto and stayed at my house and I’d stay with him when I was down there. This then leads to us doing tunes together; I even VJ’d for him for a while. It was a lot of fun, he’s probably my best friend.

Ill: Well I don’t actually VJ and DJ at the same time anymore; it’s either one or the other. You get what’s called ground-loop interference when you have two separate circuits for the audio and the video, therefore, you have to bring a ground-loop phase interrupter which is yet another adapter to lose and that much more to set up. I just hate it when night after night you are there in the beginning of the night to set up and at the end to clear up. I just taught myself how to do it because I wanted to have a little bit more control of the visual environment. But in the last couple of years music has really taken over, I don’t even have enough time to do my own web design or graphics anymore.

DP: In terms of your shows, with VJ’ing and DJing, creating more of a complete environment for your gigs, do you see these elements as really important to create a performance in a club? Do you still see visual work as really important in a gig?

Ill: Well I see it as very important, but it’s more important not to fuck it up. Basically everything has to be either excellent or transparent, if any element is noticeably bad it can ruin your whole night. As long as there are no fractal, screen-saver buddhas or its not set up like you’re watching a TV it’s all good. But I really want to set up more of a live performance because right now I play DJ sets with all of my material and have some pieces of songs I’ve singled out, but I want to have it that each element in the track has a video element so I can manipulate the audio and the video at the same time, but I have to wait for it to be more stable.

DP: What equipment do you use to DJ/ perform?

Ill: I use a Macbook Pro and Ableton with 2 outputs into the DJ mixer and a trigger finger to control effects and stuff. There’s a DJ mixer at every gig so it’s pointless using all your knobs and faders to try and emulate what a mixer can do when one is there all the time. There are lots of times when I’m at a sketchy after-party or a festival or something and I don’t really want to leave my bag lying around, so you gotta be able to carry it for extended periods of time, from plane to plane, on a bike in the desert, so I keep a very minimal setup.

DP: A lot of times I’ve heard clips of you playing D n B and Breaks etc, and you used to make breaks under ‘the phat conductor’, so my question is how do you mould, merge and blend these genres in sets?

Ill: My whole M.O. is that when I’m writing I try to write something that doesn’t sound like any song that I’ve written before. One thing that bothers me is that a lot of people find a certain style that works and then they just do the same thing again and again and again because there’s a lot of pressure from labels, promoters and stuff to be predictable and follow trends and to do a set that always sounds the same so that they can put a little sub-genre next to your name, etc. But in the long term that is not a good idea, because genres and trends come and go, so you don’t want to be left in the dust as an artist when the genre you’re pigeonholed in eats shit. So I try and build a fan base from people that just trust me to play good music of all genres. I have different ways of doing tempo transitions that work and all the styles I play are music that I like and most of the people that come to see me just like my music period. So I can change genres all I like, it just keeps things interesting.

Ill: Basically in the beginning I was just learning what I was doing, my second tune ever got signed so I was just cutting up samples in Acid and I’d just pick sounds that I’d like and put them in an order that made me feel something. All I knew what to do is cut and paste, and pick sounds, and arrange, so all the normal problems you’d be dealing with from a mixing perspective, I’d be dealing with just from a Sound choice. And when I got signed and was talking shop with the guys at the label and I was like “I just cut up samples in Acid” they were shocked, so then they insisted that I have to learn logic and I have to learn MIDI and compressors and sampling and all that stuff. So I did learn all that stuff, but it really slowed my work flow down and became really frustrating as I was now awash in a sea of possibilities and it really bothered me. I was really young , thirteen, when I first started DJing and was nineteen when I got my first record deal. I would consider myself really lucky to put out records because when I started DJing it was my dream to put out a record and hold my own record in my hands. That was the end goal of me DJing! So I consider myself so lucky to still be able to do that. I used to DJ hip-hop, b-boy breaks and weird psychedelic music and the label was like ‘that’s not what style is right now, what style is right now is the UK style nu-skool party breaks and electro’, so I thought, well, these guys are much more experienced than me in the music business so I should listen to what they say and adjust my style to suit them, but once I was more confident in my own production and confident to make the music that I wanted to make I started Ill Gates. I don’t produce any electro house or anything breaks under ill gates. It’s all dubstep, glitch-hop, experimental, dancehall, drum and bass, stuff that I can stand behind 100%. Also Ill gates translates a lot better, when I was the Phat Conductor in France they’d keep putting my name as ‘le gros conducteur’, and I was like no ‘it doesn’t translate;’ besides everyone knows who Bill Gates is, although when I met Bill Gates he didn’t know what ‘ill’ was and I had to explain it to him!

ILL GATES :: SPEED LIMIT (mixtape)

DP: When and how did you meet Bill Gates!?

Ill: Oh I dj’d for him at Sundance Film Festival, he’s like my homie now!

DP: Really! How did he feel about the similarities in the name?

Ill: Oh he thought it was funny. I actually really like Bill Gates, the name’s funny because he’s not hip-hip, he’s like the least hip-hop dude ever right!? But it’s ultimately like a big-up to him, because I think what he does is really admirable, and he’s in kind of a unique position to affect large-scale socio-economic change. When you get to the top levels of power it’s kind of this old boys club that basically got together and then decided that the 3rd world won’t be able to develop to the same standard of living as the 1st world; so they’ve kind of made a conscious decision to keep being as racist as they have always been. They go to countries such as Jamaica with the IMF and the World Bank and say ‘hey do you want to borrow millions and millions of dollars from us’ and the corrupt leaders are like ‘sure!’ and then borrow the money and basically fuck off with it, then the IMF and World Bank restructure the economy In such a way that they are actively impeding its development. I mean a lot of people at these organizations’ lower levels are well intentioned, but at the highest levels the game plan has always been to control the development of these 3rd world countries and prevent them from achieving the standard of living that we enjoy. Whereas Bill Gates, yeah he is the richest guy in the world, but compared to the Rothschild family, the Rockefeller family or the IMF he’s small potatoes. But he’s in a unique position: he is at those high levels of power, and he does have the ears of these leaders and is privy to all kinds of information that we just don’t get. His vision for the Gates foundation is to not only help us in the 1st world to make our standard of living a little bit more palatable from an ecological perspective, but also to provide better education, housing, water, food and cure preventable diseases to inevitably decrease the birth-rate so that in the next 50 to 100 years both our standards of living will be kind of equal. I thought that was a pretty cool concept that he is working with, and he’s not brainwashed by that kind of boys-club ignorance that most major powers in the world are. I mean he could just be sitting around and shaking a fistful of money at everyone but instead he dedicates his time to something he believes in and something that is actually good. I mean he doesn’t have do that, he could generate the same kind of PR buzz by dumping a whole bunch of money into a charity while he’s skiing in Aspen, but instead he is dedicating all his time and energy into the Gates foundation. So I do have a lot of respect for him and I am really glad to know him and also consider myself lucky to have been able to hangout with him.

GET SOME FREE ill gates tracks HERE [click]

DP: Back to music, I see that URB rated you in its top 100 musicians that you will know in the years to come. Does this affect your outlook regarding your work; does it evoke a conscious thought or an element of added pressure that this kind of thing put on you?

Ill: Yes and No. I’ve always known that this is what I want to do, and always prioritized my life so that nothing gets in the way of music: I don’t have a car, I don’t have a kid, I live in Chinatown. The one thing you can’t buy is your own time, that’s the most precious commodity in anyone’s life, so why would you want to sacrifice your own time for a bunch of shit that you don’t really need, that doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve always structured my life so that I have the maximum amount of time dedicated to music and so I’m glad that they’re on board and want to help me, because I felt this way, way before that article, I’ve always felt that purpose so I’m not stressed out about it at all!

GET SOME FREE ill gates tracks HERE [click]

DP: About your tutoring and lecturing and the seminars you do: What do these entail? Is it purely music based?

Ill: Well the first part of it is my philosophies on creativity and how to cultivate your own creativity and originality because that’s really, really important! A lot of people just want to play it safe and give people what they know that people already like. You know that might get you some gigs, and make you palatable to a larger audience but you’re not going to make any real fans until you’re doing something that’s wholly original. I mean other people should sound like you; you shouldn’t sound like other people, right? So a lot of it is teaching people to find their own voice, how to trust themselves creatively because the rational part of your brain is so very afraid of anything that’s new so when you’re on your way to doing something that’s unique there’s a part of your brain that’s like “this doesn’t sound like a collage of my favourite producers, I don’t like this, this sucks”. So I just help people access the different parts of your brain so that you can create and experiment when being creative and then criticize later, how to make and keep your own deadlines, how to properly promote yourself, how to present your music live well, how to network with fans and build a following, different ways to make money that are not obvious. I don’t nerd out about the technical stuff I just teach people how to FINISH SONGS like one after the other, because that’s what you got to do; the days of being able to build your whole career off one song are gone!

DP: You said previously that you live life in kind of a minimalist fashion, whereby the things you own are the things you need. Does this outlook carry through to the studio and your studio gear?

Ill: Oh yeh, I work with very, very minimal gear, I just have really, really nice monitors, a really nice sub and for checking [the mix] I do this thing that is basically free that I’ve found really useful: I have a friend who worked at a junk removal service and I got him to hook me up with all these crappy speakers and a stereo amp, then I have a second output on my soundcard that goes to the stereo amp, and that stereo amp runs to a couple different kinds of headphones, laptop speakers, ghettoblaster speakers and all these other different kinds of speakers that I have around the studios so that you can kind of A/B between them or have 3 sets of speakers going at once. From this all these different things come out that you would never have heard on nice monitors, cos most people are listening to your stuff on like an iPod or shitty laptop speakers or a home stereo or whatever. To have the access to all these different things to listen on is really important for doing mix-downs so that you can make sure that your mix-down sounds good.

DP: I want to speak about glitch-hop. For us glitch-hop has been a music genre that myself and a lot of people I know have been into for a really long time, but has never really had a mainstream platform, but now with artists like you, mochipet, akira kiteshi, bassnectar etc. Have you noticed this growth of the genre from your side?

Ill: Oh my God yes, it’s huge! It has just been massive! Glitch-hop has been around for a really long time right, it’s not a new genre by any stretch of the imagination and a lot of people who wouldn’t really consider themselves glitch-hop have glitch-hop elements in their tracks. Even in that “Fuk ‘n Rad” (Sibot and Waddy) album a lot of those songs sounded glitch-hoppy or would find home in a glitch-hop set; but I’m sure those guys aren’t like “we are glitch-hoppers’! So the genre has been around for a long time but especially in the last couple years it has really opened up. Also the growth of dubstep has helped a lot because people didn’t really consider music under 120BPM to be club music so dubstep has really opened things up for that. Although lately dubstep has just gotten ravier-and-ravier and I think that people are sick of it and they want to hear what other BPM’s have to offer, which has brought a lot of international attention to glitch-hop, but it’s also because people are tired of the same old thing and it’s not interesting! Glitch hop is really out-there and new-sounding and that is something that is interesting. The idea has basically spread one person at a time and is just spreading on the strength of being good music, and interesting and being unlike every other genre of music and nowadays with the internet there are glitch-hop scenes linked all around the world. It’s funny how you go to all these different countries and these people are playing records that my homies back in Canada made in their garage… it’s really crazy to see how far it has spread and how popular it has become. I think it just gives people hope that if they want to do something new, different or interesting they can become successful with that. It just says great things about the future of musical creativity. It’s really very encouraging.

DP: You have a new album coming out soon. Tell us some more about it?

Ill: I’m really excited about it, it is the largest product I’ve launched yet. It’s going to be a free live album that you can just download in exchange for your email address. There are 3 EP’s from the album that are going to be coming out on MUTI music and potentially another label, and then there’s also an online course where it is basically a 12 week boot-camp for producers which launches July 1stand the album releases June 1st. The album is called ‘’The ill Methodology’ and I’ve recorded it at a couple places live and it’s just a matter of picking the best one and It’s going to be totally free; I recorded it when I played for Bill Gates and when I played in Vienna and I just recorded another version in LA that is a bit shorter and it’s going to be totally free!

For me it’s a bit of a problem when I sell people CD’s on the side of the stage, you know ‘Autopirate’ doesn’t really sound like me when I play live. It’s a collection of studio tunes, it’s not a (DJ) set and fans they want a set! They want to have something that sounds like me live that they can put on in their car, or in a house party or something with bangers the whole way through that makes them want to dance and rock out or whatever. The traditional tracks will be available through various music websites, but if you’re a fan and you want something that you can play in your house then it’s a free live mix that contains some bootlegs that I’ve done, some remixes I’ve done for different artists and contains all my favourite tracks that I actually play live.

DP: What about the online course?

Ill: Im really excited about it because when you think about it it’s been found that institutionalized education relies on an extrinsic motivational model; you are doing creative things to get rewards and avoid punishment. This is not why an artist creates: artists create because they think it’s beautiful, or they do it for its own sake, because they feel like it’s an end in itself, or just because they feel like an artist and that’s the kind of thing they do as an artist; this is more of an intrinsic motivational model.

This guy Ed Deci did all these studies and test at the University of Rochester with 3 conditions: 1. A control group where they gave these kids a bunch of art supplies and told them to paint, 2. There was an intrinsic motivational group that they had a teacher that they looked up to and respected that came in and casually remarked that these paintings are wonderful and that they’re all talented artists, 3. Extrinsic motivation group where they offered candy in exchanged for paintings.

What they found was that in the control group there was a wide range of artistic quality. In the intrinsic group they found that the kids painted really, really well. In the extrinsic motivation group it was just atrocious, they were the most half-assed, ‘I don’t give a ‘eff’, give me my candy paintings’. That’s why you get people who go to art school and drama school and then by the time they’re done it’s not fun for them anymore and they go work in an office to pay off their debt. It’s also why the extrinsic motivational is poisonous for creativity, so the institutionalized model doesn’t really work for creativity. So where else do you turn if you’re not going to go to those $20,000 per year audio schools? Well, people will turn to music magazines and all those music magazines, on the front cover, are like ‘best synth ever!’ and will try and sell you all this gear and won’t teach you how to finish a song, because they don’t even necessarily want you to finish a song they just want you to keep buying their gear and magazines and synthesizers that you don’t need.

So eventually I want to redefine the model of electronic music education to be artist driven or promoter driven. I want kids’ first thoughts, when they’re coming up, to be like; ‘what workshops can I take? Who can I apprentice with? Are there any artists in my area that I like that I can get to come into my studio to show me a thing or two? Who can I collaborate with?’ That should be your first thought not what $20,000 a year audio school can I go to, or that they need a Virus TI… because you don’t need any of those things, you just need passion and time and to know what sucks. And if you feel like you know what sucks and that you love music and want to put the time in and the passion to put into music then you’ll get good. But if you’re worried about making mistakes and you need these external ideas of legitimacy by buying gear or going to an expensive school or whatever then you’ve already lost the plot. So the ill-methodology.com is going be the go-to place for artist-centered modeled education. When you take the course you get a login on the message board, and the message board is going to be a place where people can talk about actually finishing songs, promoting yourself properly, making money in the industry, those kinds of things that you can only actually learn from successful musicians. There are also going to be guest videos every month and I’m also going to teach the students to teach others; the subscriptions are going to pay out based on whose videos gets the most number of unique users watching it. So if you’re a student and you can put together a good tutorial that’s going to give you a chance to get known and make some money. The ultimate goal is to redefine the model of electronic music education.

It’s all unified by this brand the ill-methodology: If you’re a fan I’m going to make sure you’re always getting free stuff, if you’re a DJ you can go and buy the songs, and if you’re a producer then you can join this non-corporate, independent creative educational community and network with producers, set-up tours and go do workshops etc. I’m pretty excited about the whole project! I want it to be platform for other people to learn and to share and network and grow. So yah, that launches later this year!

GET SOME FREE ill gates tracks HERE [click]

• more ill gates: check out his myspace
• or phatconductor.com
• or eskamon.com

3rd June 2010………….
Jungle politics!!

If you’ve been in and around Cape Town for the last err… 4 YEARS then you’d know that Thursday night is owned by the ‘It Came From the Jungle‘ Drum and Bass stompers at Fiction!…

Next week these crazy bassheads are celebrating 4 Years in the business.

It Came From the Jungle has not only kept the D&B flag successfully flying well high, it has also provide you out there with many, many top international acts.

In a nostalgic bid to bring a teary eye before the bass drops, Dont Party asked Niskerone, promoter and all round owner of the night, how this event came to be?

“During 2006, Cape Town’s midweek nightlife was going through a noticeable decline. Places like The Orchard Bank was closing down and Marvel changed their music policy to the R&B and Hip Hop side of things. It was during this period that Adam Klein and Jon Cline approached me to tell me that their opening a new club. I was offered a spot and chose to run a weekly night on Thursdays with the music policy catering to the lighter side of Drum & Bass. The name came about through many discussions with AK about what to call it.

On Thursday 4th May, Fiction finally opened it’s doors and It Came From The Jungle was their first night of business. We started it off as a free night and invited a few local D&B DJs to play alongside myself every week. The first few months was tough, as we we’re still building a name for ourselves, but around summer 06/07 things really started taking off. We started packing out the venue week in and week out and made sure that everyone left with a smile, that’s what we focussed on. In order to secure a fanbase, we had to make sure that everyone who attended our night would leave in high spirits and actually enjoy their hangover on Fridays… We released our first mixed CD in April 2007 and followed it up a year later with “vol.2″ in the ICFTJ series. Both releases were given away free on the night as a thank you to those that represented each week.

Over time we started hosting DJs from other cities and eventually started hosting international acts. We’ve brought over guys like Drumsound, Danny Wheeler, Temper D and Nymfo amongst others and also had the pleasure of having Dieselboy and Pendulum play sets “just for fun”.

In 2010, we’re continuing to raise the bar. The next major international act we’re hosting is the mighty Camo & Krooked who’ve already snapped up releases on most of the major D&B labels this year alone.”

Niskerone

Keep your eyes and ears locked to Dont Party kids, cos’ in the next few days we have got some MAD giveaways, generously donated by the ICFTJ crew, to giveaway!

more info: facebook event [click]

Stencil art has become more than just a way to quickly throw up something on a canvas. The kind of Warhol-esque artistic place that stencil creations have found is no less than deserving of this form. Possibly the biggest inspiration and innovator of this medium is Banksy and since his blow-out a multitude of great artists in the real world have found their feet and confidence with the stencil, and now Cape Town has its very own::

Describing himself as “just a guy in cape town, south africa, with a love for old images, stencil art & photoshop“, Wall.Ace is derived from his middle name: Wallace; and so it seems in his birth right that this love for stencil art and imagery would become the need for expression on a public forum.

“I’m just a guy in cape town, south africa, with a love for old images, stencil art & photoshop” – Wall.Ace

Together with his girlfriends love for photography and extreme modesty Wall.Ace has done some pretty interesting pieces, that he wouldn’t describe as art for fear of insulting “real” artists, around the mother city. Dont Party asked this enigma 5 minor questions to find out some more…

1. Why stencil art?

Just to be clear.. My stuff is imagined stencil art or graf-faux-ti as I’ve dubbed it. I’ve always love stencil art and have been into design but I am fucking lazy and so I just started creating what I would like to see if I had the time. Part of what I like most about stencil art is the imperfections. The drips, oversprays and the way the works erode give them an awesome quality that I’ve always loved and have tried to recreate.

2. What inspires your work?

Old movie posters, weathered urban textures and real stencil artists.

3. How do you decide where to place your work?

Me n my girlfriend, CC, go on scouting missions to find textures. She is an awesome photographer and takes photos of whatever we can find then I look at em and think about what would look cool on the particular textures.

4. What can we expect next from Wall.Ace?

Maybe the leap from the bedroom to the main stage? but probably not. The intention of me making these designs was to have them printed as wall art which I’m having done now so they’ll be available but in very limited quantities only though.

5. As Cape Town is synonymous with its anti-graffiti laws, do you have any worry about cops?

I worry about the cops but not with regards to my designs.

check out: wall-ace.withtank.com for more

Dont Party Interviews Steve Aoki

Recently Dont Party was lucky enough to talk to Steve Aoki, a few dropped calls and some bad reception later, we got to the end of what was an extremely insightful chat with the man behind Dim Mak Records [Click for Dim Mak Site], who founded and released artists from Bloc Party, The Kills, Klaxons, MSTRKRFT, The Bloody Beetroots, Mystery Jets, The Rakes, The Gossip, Envy, who is also the same man behind the production moniker Weird Science that has remixed Peaches, Snoop Dogg & Bloc Party. Under his own name, Aoki has remixed The Killers, Robin Thicke, Lenny Kravitz, Duran Duran and Timbaland, Chester French, S.P.A., All American Rejects, Chris Cornell & more. In the past he has collaborated w/artists from Boys Noize, The Faint, D.i.M., The Bloody Beetroots and Junkie Xl.

Often referred to as a serial entrepreneur because he’s involved in numerous ventures, Aoki has developed lines for KR3W Apparel, Supra Footwear, headphones for WESC, and in ‘09 sunglasses with KSUBI, headwear with NEFF, bags with Burton, & a brand new men’s/women’s range with his sister Devon. He even has a stake in a Korean BBQ restaurant.

All I can say is “it would appear Cape Town and Johannesburg are in for one hell of an experience when Steve Aoki comes to South Africa” courtesy of Havana Rum, Dim Mak, The Assembly, Adidas, The End is Night and Vice Magazine, because not only is he extremely friendly and positive about his trip to South Africa but he’s definitely going to be bringing a fresh and much needed influence to the South African scene.

Everyone here in South Africa is really hyped about your upcoming gigs [Click for Details]. What can we expect from your performances in SA?

It will be around 75% original material as in tracks I produce; either remixes or tracks from my album or collaborations I’ve worked on with other producers. The other tracks will be artists on the label [Dim Mak] like the Bloody Beetroots or any other artists coming out on the label. So at the end of the day it’s going to be a sort of Dim Mak experience!

Your sets are said to have a strong performance aspect to them. How do you blend performance together with a DJ set?

I do have a couple of vocal tracks where I’m singing, that’s maybe why you heard about my performances, because I do some live vocals. I recently started a new band called Rifoki with Bob Rifo from the Bloody Beetroots and I do perform that song. Its not a dance track, it’s more a punk song. So it could throw a curveball into the whole bored dance vibe.

Steve Aoki & Bob Rifo of the Bloody beetroots are Rifoki

Speaking of Rifoki we recently interviewed Bob Rifo of the Bloody Beetroots [click] and we spoke about the new band. Rifoki has a really new sound from the two tracks we’ve heard: Sperm Donor and Zombie Attack. What made you decide to venture back into punk rock, and how does it tie into your previous projects?

It’s a really natural progression for both Bob and I since our backgrounds really were in live music. It feels really good to be singing again in a band even though we’re not touring and stuff. It’s a completely new type of scene to when I was in the Machine Kills when we would be touring and playing these really like fucking mad house shows and basement shows, and fucking like really grimy punk spots, and now I’m able to perform this underground punk sound to people who might not even listen to punk at all, and probably don’t.

I’d say one of the defining moments was definitely Coachella 2007. It was one of the first festivals I played, and to me Coachella is one of the most important festivals in the world.I think it was like a really big point for me as a DJ playing that and moving on, moving forward.

You know there are certain tours that sparked up a huge interest in different territories, like my first tour in Asia, or when I started my residency in Ibiza in 2007 that felt like it was a really important moment for me, cos it kind of set things up for me.

In 2008 when I ended up doing the essential mix for Pete Tongs show on Radio 1 that was all setup because I played a really solid residency in Ibiza for 2007. I don’t know different territories have different shows that make it important for me to keep coming back.

Australia as well, its probably one of my favorite territories to go to. I’d say the Summerdayze, Future Music tour I did in 2009 was an epic tour for me, playing the festivals in front of all those people. I’m gonna be going back there in June.

You seem to really active and involved in a lot of different ventures such as owning a record label (Dim Mak) which later spread out into a fashion label run by you and your sister Devon, you’re bringing out a sunglasses range with Ksubi, bringing out Aoki headphones with WESC and you even co-own a Korean BBQ restaurant Shin, never mind the music production, world tours etc… How do you find time to keep all these projects priorities in your life?

With every big project there’s a whole team based on the project, without those people working those different things it wouldn’t be possible. The fashion label has its own team and we just partnered with a big line/company that handles all the factoring, sampling and manufacturing.

Then on the label side I’ve been doing Dim Mak for almost 13 years so I’ve slowly built up a team that handles all the production, marketing and distribution of the records, so yeah we have a pretty solid team on both those fronts.

As far as the restaurant goes that was something a few of my friends and I got together and we basically backed this guy who has this really amazing menu of Korean BBQ so he runs the restaurant on his own and we sort of just support him.

Tons of records! We have an EP with Gtronic coming out, Felix Cartel’s album, Scanners, Armand Van Helden’s next album, Herve’s greatest hits album.

A bunch of new tracks from The Bloody Beetroots, new MSTRKRFT tracks, more tracks from myself, as well as collaborations I’ve done with Armand Van Helden, Afro Jack and Laidback Luke – those will all be coming out this year. Also Sounds of Stereo, Malante, there’s a new band from San Diego which is sort of like Punk and dance music combined. There also new albums coming out, like the Rifoki album.

You can check out the Dim Mak site for more releases, oh and Sonic C and Autoerotique, I think that’s about it.

The tracks that I hear come out of Dim Mak are pushed to the limit, they are always loud and pounding, it’s almost hard to fit tracks into sets because they are so hard. But despite this each instrument and sound occupies its own space on the records. Was this a conscious choice to kind of say “screw it, let’s just push our tracks up, make them loud as fuck, drown out the competition”, or was it a natural development and just the best fit due to the type of sound typical Dim Mak artists seem to have?

We definitely have a diverse base, I mean as I said earlier we started the label about a decade ago releasing rock music and then we went into dance music with two of the first signings – MSTRKRFT and the Bloody Beetroots – which kind of helped forge the sound of dance music. That’s the kind of music I play as a DJ, and it’s in the same realm of music that Dim Mak is kind of part of.

I guess its a natural approach to releasing records since we do release records of that aggressive state, we get in a lot of music similar to that by other artists, or they will send us music they think we’d like. Half the time it’s not really what we want to put out, but then you know we release the records we feel are a fit with what we’re doing.

We try to rebrand ourselves outside of that sound as well, we’re putting out, say take, Scanners for example, is a rock band with girl singers, its like a dark melodious rock record, even the Afro Jack record is very different to say The Bloody Beetroots, its also in a complete different category of music in the dance world.

Is there a set direction you wish to take Dim Mak or do you sort of take things as they come?

Yeah it’s tough to have like a long term plan with music in general cos music changes and evolves faster than any other art form I’ve ever really been a part of. Fashion’s the same way, fashion changes really quickly, but I feel that music changes even faster. It just funny you look back one or two years ago and look at the state and what was popular and you look at it now and it’s a completely different programming of music, you know what was really popular in the clubs now will change in six months, and even the sound, the actual genres, the switching of genres changes.

I feel like even with producers, once they feel  they’ve maximized their sound and they’ve gotten to a really good place for their sound, a lot of times you hear them changing their sound for they’re next record, you know to try and do something different because everyone else is stealing their sound

Its like with Dim Mak I just want to pump out records that move me, it doesn’t have to be the most aggressive sounding record you know, and I’ve heard tons of aggressive records that were just too much for me. There are some records that are just too much, and there are some records that are just so aggressive and so powerful that it makes sense for us to release. So it’s not like we’re releasing everything that’s like fucking loud and abrasive that’s not the only thing we’re putting out, we’re not like Relapse Records where we put out fucking the heaviest metal records as a dance label, you know we’re definitely trying to be diverse in the sense that there’s good music regardless of the sound

Mark [ Cobrasnake ] is my best friend. We’ve been working together for like ten years now. You know he’s just one of those guys. I remember I took him for his first trip to Japan maybe like five years ago and you know that was one of our first international trips together. We got along so well outside of just seeing each other and doing fun things around LA. So after that, every time I could go on an international trip/tour or whatever, I’d always do my best to see if I could bring him along, since then we’ve grown a strong bond just as friends in LA, but also as traveling friends.

Cool, well we’re all really looking forward to seeing some South African photos on the Cobra Snake

We’re both excited, I’m just so happy he’s coming. We’re doing these two dates with you guys and then we’re going on a Safari, and doing the Safari thing, which is great. Its so out of reach, South Africa for us you know? I mean it’s like a going to the edge of the world kind of thing; it’s like totally different.

We heard Die Antwoord played at a Dim Mak event at Cinespace in Hollywood. What do you think of them?

Yeah well they’re my favorite thing happening right now at the moment. I’ve been ‘big upping’ them to really a lot of people, even for like the last like six months I’ve been really backing them up. I’m a major, major supporter of them. When they came to Cinespace to do the Dim Mak party I was on vacation so I missed their show and it really, really upset me that I wasn’t there, but I’m just such a fan and the fact that they played at a Dim Mak party was really an honour.

I’m almost 90% in the box I produce everything through Logic in my studio in my house. I have some synths that I use like I have a Tritan, I have Nord V that I rarely touch and a Juno that I work with on a few tracks for the most part I work in the box or if anything I’ll even sample the synths that I would normally use and just put it all on my computer so then I don’t really have to mess around with the keyboard and stuff at all.

I stick with a few sounds, I don’t know if I really want to give them away (laughs) I started out with Ableton and now I’m on Logik. I’m pretty standard with it, you know I do most of the writing for the tracks that I make just on the spot. There are different processes that I use when I make remixes to when I make originals.

You seem to enjoy making remixes, do you find it hard to create your own sound when working with someone else’s work, what drives you to keep pumping out remixes like you do?

Remixes are definitely easier to work with than doing originals I’ll tell you, just because you have something to work off, and you have like a template, you definitely have a structure that you can use. For some remixes I just cant use the actual track so I just use the acapella. Which is also fun, to just have an acapella to fuck around with. Like for example with the Kid Cudi track it was great to be able to work on that track because the chorus is such an epic chorus, so finding that sound that comes into the real chunky part of the track that was great. So I felt like I honed it down and I worked it right adding just the right elements, you know you don’t want to add too much to anything you want to stay at the bare minimum if you keep adding to much it takes away from the main point of the track.

Although with the Tiga remix, I did use a lot of the original elements from his track. I didn’t really use much of his vocals, as much as I did use a lot of the different precussive sounds, and different sounds that were in the track, mainly because, for example, the Proxy remix of “What you need” [Listen], he killed it on that remix but he used the main vocal line he pushed the vocals up in a pattern that I would have used in a second, but I couldn’t do that, so I couldn’t even use  the vocals that I wanted to use.

I don’t know, each remix is different, and they’re all interesting. Sometimes it takes me three weeks, sometimes one day. Sometimes I make four or five versions and I cant hit it on the head cos I’m not happy with the outcome. For now I’m really just trying to focus on finishing some of the singles I’m working on. I have the “I’m in the House” single that just came out, and I just finished studio time with Lil Jon yesterday. I got studio time today with two female vocalists, and I just did a track with Romanthony and Weezer, and I’m almost done with the track with Kid Cudi.

And Lastly when can we expect to see your new album on Shelves?

The Album is scheduled for release in the last half of 2010

Check out his myspace, facebook, twitteror check out the Dim Mak Site for more info

Book tickets to see him LIVE IN SA – CPT @ THE ASSEMBLY [CLICK]

Close your eyes and imagine, if you will, the bastard son of the Misfits and Daft Punk. As gruesome as the act of conception may appear, the union would generate the most grandiose of offspring. A formidable force, not unlike the Bloody Beetroots. They have dominated dance floors the world over including those on our own South African shores, when they left Cape Town and Johannesburg screaming for more!

Dont Party got to ask the extremely busy Bob Rifo of the Bloody Beetroots a few questions, and here what he had to say.

Click the link to view the interview

Music is something that brings us together, but is also powerful enough to drive us apart. Genres exist within specific subcultures that are reactionary to other cultural movements and styles. For example, during the early ’00′s we saw the revival of a dead supergenre, notoriously known as techno. This time around, techno had some new moves, and became it’s own successor, commonly known as minimal. During this time, there was a sharp opposing force, which some may not directly attribute to being reactionary towards minimal techno, but nonetheless, the maximized sawtooth onslaught dominated by the likes of Parisian Ed Banger Records and Berlin’s Boys Noize, had a massive thrust in the complete opposite direction to that of minimal. Concurrently, a multitude of subgenres and crossgenres emerged, each trying to make it’s own path, individual from the rest of the pack [think indie electro, crunk, nu rave, fidget house, b-more, ghetto tech, dubstep, grime, glitch, micro house, arguably even the resuscitation of tech house and all other forms of wonk/wobble bass music].

Zodiac Cartel, or Lord Zod to the minion, is a producer that has laughed in the face of all this primitive sub genre rivalry that has existed within the spheres of electronic music in the past several years. He burst onto the scene in ’07, and within the next few years he went on to do many mammoth remixes and original productions on renowned labels such as Wearhouse Music, U&A Recordings and Coco Machete. His sound was and remains to be impossible to pin down. Some have tried to slap the ‘fidget’ tail on his tracks, but then he would drop acid anthems like his remix of Fukkk Offf’s Rave is King, and just when you thought it was safe to go back to the rave, he unleashed a dancefloor shredder mix of The Subs’ From Dusk Till Dawn, and then a lazy bassline house stinker in the form of his own Stay on Top. The man is fucking elusive, having kept his true identity concealed for an eternity, and I get the feeling that the more the masses try to box it in, the more mischievous and obscure his sound will get.

According to his Myspace ‘The Zodiac Cartel ethos is simple. ‘Jackin’ House Music With A Techno Soul’

And according to IDJ Mag ‘Zodiac Cartel is so far ahead of most of the other producers pushing the warehouse sound it’s almost embarrassing!’

Us geeks at Dont Party are ecstatic to have been able to catch up with the accused for a heart to [dark] heart.

DP: The past few years have been a real roller-coaster ride of trend based genres coming and going, how have you managed to keep your somewhat ‘untouchable’ status?
ZC: I’ve never been interested in following trends. What tends to happen is someone will come up with a great sound or riff and within a month 1,001 people will have ripped it, imitated it and basically ground it into a bloody pulp. It’s the simple law of diminishing returns, basically. The perfect analogy for this is the Oozlum bird from Anglo-Australian mythology which flies in ever-decreasing circles until it disappears up it’s own anus.

DP: Aside from the actual styles of music changing, this past decade has seen loads of innovations on the way music is being played. We know that you remained cloaked and indoors for a while, but would you say that new technology in playing music out is a big part of the Zodiac Cartel experience?
ZC: The new technology is wonderful in many ways, but counter-productive in others and the worst thing you can say about it is that it’s made people incredibly lazy in how they throw their music together. I’ve seen massive DJs just come on & press play on their laptops then spend the next hour getting as pissed as humanly possible. I prefer to use two or three CDJs and a DJM-800 when I play out – that’s more than enough to engage the crowd with and also keep you on your toes.

DP: What software/outboard gear do you use for gigs? And for producing music?
ZC: No software for shows – I’m a DJ rather than a selector. Production-wise a mix of hardware & software all going through a 32 channel Mackie desk with Apogee & MOTU soundcards & converters. Understanding the space you work in is the main thing, and understanding the way that your sound translates once it leaves the studio is the other. I could give you a list of plug-ins & suchlike but that would tell you nothing at all – it’s what you do with them that counts.

DP: We’ve noticed many different elements in your tracks spanning many genres. Is this non-genre-specific approach purely an experimental process in order to find the true sound that is Zodiac Cartel, or would you say it is this experimental nature that is at the core of what you do?
ZC: Well I’m not really a preset guy. I don’t set out to ‘find my sound’, save it as a preset and then rinse it out for the next couple of years – that would be immensely uninspiring, and given the number of remixes I have done (all of which I take quite seriously), it’s only to be expected that the sounds will vary from track to track. Recently I remixed a trad jazz-based fidget track and then the following week I was doing a very mellow ambient Moby remix so it kind of figures that if the components are that varied, so will be the final outcome.

DP: A couple of years ago, it would have been safe to say that the UK [more specifically London] was the global epicenter of electronic music. Focus may have shifted substantially over to Berlin, yet the UK still retains a sound that is distinctively it’s own. Why do you think this is?
ZC: I don’t know – I never really trust those kinds of generalisations. All of the producers I know who lived in London a couple of years ago (bar two perhaps) still live in London. That whole minimal Berlin thing obviously blew up a while ago, but thankfully blew itself out pretty quickly – ultimately a lot of that stuff is just too cold, knowing and clinical to put a smile on people’s faces at the weekend, which is still a primary reason for making club music, right? The UK has such an incredible, rich heritage of innovative and very personal music that speaks to each ‘tribe’ in a unique and direct way, that we’re just never going to be that easily led … plus of course our superiority complex, which most creative-rich nations suffer from.

DP: Having toured the planet under your various guises, would you say that quality electronic music has crept into most corners of the globe? Do you sometimes have followings in unexpected places?
ZC: Yes that is absolutely the case, and these shows that happen right out there on the fringes of the world (as you know it from a Western European perspective) are almost always the most spectacular and the people are both the hungriest, and the least judgemental of all crowds.

DP: You remained behind the smoke screen of your hidden identity for some time. Would you say that the days of the superstar DJ are over?
ZC: No, far from it. I think they are now as entrenched, branded, corporate and ‘establishment’ as the most conservative of political systems, but they’re also still the most successful people in the game, and in many cases they are now standalone brands in their own right, which means they are no longer playing on the same playing field as many of us down here in the filthy mire.

DP: You have shown that success in this industry is not always formulaic. What factors would you attribute to your success?
ZC: The point of the ‘hidden identity’ thing was really to allow the music to do the talking, and nothing else. The Zod imagery evolved around it quite organically & continues to do so, but ultimately it just comes down to the simple fact that people seem to like the music, and that’s the main thing for me.

DP: What can we expect from Zodiac Cartel in future?
ZC: This year I’m looking to develop the DJ side of things further as I haven’t had that much interest in doing too many live shows until now, and I am working on some bespoke visuals with some of the Pixel Addicts crew.

I recently launched the website at http://www.zodiaccartel.com which includes some free downloads as well as an online store where we’re doing custom bundles of all the singles with added remix parts & other bonus content.

I also have a new single coming on U&A Recordings around May time and remixes coming out shortly for Moby, Lee Coombs, Emanul Kosh and this brand new thing for Tai on Coco Machete.

Thanks very much to General Zod for checking in with Dont Party. Check out some of his dancefloor bombs below [some of which are available for free download], as well as the above mentioned websites for MORE free tracks, exclusive purchases and various other explicit goods.

And remember kids, Dont Party cos you might start worshiping false idols. Hail Lord Zod!

Emanul Kosh – Make My Music (Zodiac Cartel Mix) TASTER by Zodiac Cartel

Sweet Control (128k TASTER) by Zodiac Cartel

Zodiac Cartel – All Day (TASTER 128k) by Zodiac Cartel

Zodiac Cartel – Stay On Top (128k TASTER) by Zodiac Cartel

The Subs – From Dusk Till Dawn (Zodiac Cartel Mix) TASTER by Zodiac Cartel

Franz Ferdinand – No You Girls (Zodiac Cartel mix) by Zodiac Cartel

['No You Girls' is part of Zodiac Cartel's Weapons of Choice series, available for free download]

Decoder & Healey – Echoes In My Head (Zodiac Cartel Mix) [TASTER] by Zodiac Cartel
['Echoes in My Head' available for free download here]

Fukk Off – Rave is King (Zodiac Cartel Mix) [TASTER] by Zodiac Cartel

Gtronic is a man making massive waves in the electronic music circuit overseas.

Straight out of Belgium Gtronic has become a fresh reviver to an overcrowded dance music scene. Where similarity has become the name of the game, Gtronic has ripped through the fog of mundanity to come out with the newest style of hardcore dance music since the Bloody Beetroots left their villas in Italy… and don’t think that the world hasn’t noticed either!

(the Bloody Beetroots rocking Gtronic’s Ironman track and going mental!)
Having done remixes for the Bloody Beetroots, Foamo, Heads We Dance, Mustard Pimp, Hostage, Audiodakt, NT89, Toxic Avenger, Devnik, Steve Aoki, toured all over Europe, the UK, and as far south as Australia, and with releases on Sony BMG, OneLoveMusic, , Dim Mak, Monkey See Monkey, Do, Traktor Records, Livein Music, Basserk, BMKLTSCH RCRDS, Gash Digital, Rainbow Mode, Wearhouse Music, Dirty Disco Tracks, and lately electronic heads like Fake Blood and Diplo loving his stuff Gtronic is currently owning it overseas… and now he’s coming to South Africa.

So amped on his SA show that he CANCELLED a gig to headline with the Bloody Beetroots and MSTRKRFT in Amsterdam, showing his intent to come blow us away, Gtronic is definitely going to rip something out the magic hat for us down here… and it won’t be a friendly little bunny!

1. When I hear the name Gtronic, my subconscious conjures up images of a sentient being controlling a crowd of marsupials through the medium of raw grit and anarchy in the form of music!

um, yeah what ever!

Check out Gtronic at the Dont Party:: Gtronic Edition, Friday 5th March, The Assembly, Cape Town.

SUCKER PUNCH Trailer from GTRONIC on Vimeo.