Last month I had the pleasure of DJing fellow Haligonian James White’s art opening in Toronto. James is an uber-talented young man who has done some great work in the design world, independently and for large companies like Nike and such. His work speaks for itself.
I brought a box of 45s and my Serato equipped laptop to field Iron Maiden requests and what not. Photographer/Video guy Aaron Van Domelen had his camera at the show and made this video of me cutting up “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band, a classic and one of my favorite beats to double up.
Thanks to James for having me by for his show. James is also currently designing a logo for “Scratch, Skratch, Scratch”. Wait until you see it!
On Friday, May 28th, I’ll be playing at the famous “Beat & Juice” night in Paris, France at Nouveau Casino. I’ve heard a lot about this night from friends who have played it and I’m looking forward to showing my stuff over there! Unfortunately, Neil Armstrong had to cancel some of his European dates and won’t be making this show, but I’ll be holding it down for North America. More European dates to come!
BONUS: Read on to check out the radio ad for the Paris gig.
When you talk about ‘hip-hop’ artists that provide you with that raw ENERGY, no one does it better than M.O.P. Alongside many classic MCs hailing from Brooklyn, NY, the duo has carved their way into rap history with 4 incredible albums and countless club bangers. I cannot name a record that I have played more than M.O.P.’s gigantic, jump-up-and-get-stupid, throw-your-body-uncontrollably, yell-as-loud-as-you-can anthem, ‘Ante Up’. You just can’t help but get amped when those horns start buzzing, and when the kick hits – mayhem. It has never, ever failed. Honestly.
My admiration for the group dates back to the day I bought their second album, Firing Squad. After only one listen, I was a fan for life. They just made me want to go out and do whatever I was doing as intensely as I could. At the time, that activity was mowing lawns, and believe me, if you rolled by my block (which I had on lock), you could see me wilding out with my headphones on, mowing the lawn as quickly, efficiently, and raw as possible. My friend the Kuttin’ Kracker and I would drive through the city and actively promote the album by blaring it and even stopping people on the street to let them in on the good music.
A little under a month ago, we took the Scratch, Skratch Scratch show out to the East Coast for the celebration Canada’s music industry celebration, the Juno Awards. Drake and Classified showed up to help us rock the place. Big ups to Fokus Productions and Red Bull Canada for helping us put this together.
Scratch, Skratch, Scratch play Toronto JazzFest Thursday, June 24th at the Mod Club, 722 College Street. Be there!
Here’s an amazing visual art video by Austria’s Clemens Kogler. I know nothing about Clemens, but his website says that he is an “illustrator and filmmaker [who] would hate to narrow [himself] to those fields alone”. It would appear that another field he is at least interested in is DJing, or turntables. Here, Kogler uses the turntables’ 33 1/3 rpm speed combined with a slow shutter speed on his cameras to create animations using 12″ platters of looped. It’s kind of hard to describe in words, so read on past the video for a visual description of his setup along with a link to an interview with the artist.
Keep an eye out for classic and cult-classic album covers, and peep the abstract Neitzsche-inspired “Stuck In A Groove” audio. This project must have taken AGES.
