Fitting the Pieces Together: FIT NYC v.1

Seeing Trouble & Bass members Luca Venezia (Drop the Lime) and Patrick Rood (The Captain), and later Star Eyes at the inaugural FIT party on Saturday night made me already miss New York City. It was not unlike watching the street wear movement begin to infiltrate Rap’s upper-echelon as I sat at my laptop freshman year of college. Then last summer as I roamed the cozy confines of the Lower East Side I naively expected the ALIFE store on Rivington to take up the entire block. Don’t believe the hype. Or do, and make sure you get to the ALIFE store the night before to get those new Puma collabs.

FIT, sponsored by the Dallas based Unit One Productions and an official arm of the “Heavy Bass” community here in the states, is of a similar DIYmovement involving a small community of like-minded and inspired individuals. Unlike Electro here in the States and abroad, the Bass community (Dubstep/Bassline/UK Gaage) has a more niche following. While Bassline has exploded in the UK with the likes of T2’s Pop charts hit “Heartbroken,” the States have been reluctant to respond. But that should come as no surprise because the States have been playing catch-up to Europe’s club scene since Jungle first appeared in the 90’s.

Saturday night at the Knitting Factory was one of a few burgeoning examples of the States response to that movement. The only things absent all night were the sounds of American producers. But at FIT that night was one of a handful of producers who have rightfully crossed the Atlantic, and Drop the Lime’s playful enjoyment of DJ opener !ANJAMZ colorful Bassline set was just another affirmation that yes, the State’s Bass Movement has begun. With more than one appearance at the legendary Fabric in London as well as appearances by fellow crew members Math Head and Starkey, the DTL and the T&B franchise has bombs and bass pointed East.

And to witness fellow bass heavyweight and headliner Jason Mundo on Saturday night confirmed the worthiness of the “Bass Odyssey” for those of us unsure how cities like New York and Dallas would fare in both the love affair and contest occurring between the pond. Mundo, Unit One associate from Dallas and part of Dallas’s infamous Dub Assembly, took the stage around 2AM and played out to an auspicious crowd of 70-80 people as diverse as any crowd I’ve ever seen. A clear Original Gangster in support of UK Garage and Dubstep, Mundo made me feel like I was young and naïve again. I didn’t know a single tune and how refreshing it was. The smiles were slathered on like messy ice cream and the high-pitched divas of Mundo’s Garage records were enough to make me giggle. And looking over at the night’s founder, principle promoter and MC Than Ngyuen, giggling and prancing were all he was capable of.

Saturday night was family night and the warmth present in that room was enough to invite even the most naïve and farthest flung into its community. Because whether you’re on the 1’s and 2’s, handing out flyers, or just dancing your tail off, it’s a family affair. Than (MC Tiny) follows in the footsteps of his forbears, hosting the night’s event as an MC and hype man, a position most commonly seen in the Hip-Hop community. The importance of that figure in the Hip-Hop community often seems superfluous, as there isn’t just one hype man there are five, and they all seem like they’re just along for the ride. On Saturday, Tiny made FIT an event. It was his to drop to the floor, or his to make memorable. With so many club events left to the DJ’s control, it can feel like a disparate relationship. On Saturday the vision was clear and the crowd was not left alone. Sometimes booze speaks too loudly and the genuine feeling of community is distorted. Luckily with the touchstone of an MC, there is no room for hiding in the darkness of the bar.

Much of the dance music we here today and especially that which is most popular in Europe, is influenced by the subversive and uniting forces of Hip-Hop and Reggae. Most overtly through Baltimore Club, Dubstep and Ragga, is the evidence of those founding vibrations. Sometimes those origins are taken for granted by the seduction of pop-culture’s ability to amplify and sensationalize, but what I found on Saturday night was a “thank you,” “try this, “and “wow.” Watching the awkward shuffles of Drop the Lime’s stringy legs and the B-Boy bounce of a Latino woman’s calf-high Chuck Taylors, I saw not the vision for FIT, but of a global sound and a unifying rhythm, and we all fit right in.

Dubchild @ Trouble & Bass: Ready To Rumble

Friday night saw the arrival of Grime/Dubstep OG Dubchild to the famed Trouble & Bass monthly at Love in the West Village. Dubchild, like many T&B invites and inspirations, hails from the 4/4-rich United Kingdom and shares bills with heavyweights like Caspa, Rusko and Hatcha. A short, stout and smiley man, Dubchild brought the T&B regulars to their knees on Friday night with a dub-heavy set that left the crowd both mesmerized and unsure what to do with their bass-fractured bodies. Looking around at the dead, I could see some bewildered folk. A particularly batty front-section of the crowd clearly knew Dubchild’s work as well as that of his colleagues, leaving a crowd majority feeling like they were on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Many of Dubchild’s initial tunes were minimal and fragmented, a more heady and traditional flavor of Dubstep that left some of the T&B Crew fans a little impatient. But at one crucial point in the set, 145 BPMs of Bassline bubbliness came ripping through a chunky dub track throwing everyone to the wall and bringing out the two-finger gun points, confirming Dubchild’s ownership of Love & bringing the Trouble & Bass crew back from the bar.
Trouble & Bass is commonly known as the DJ crew comprised of founder Luca (Drop the Lime, Curses!), Math Head, principal promoter and DJ The Captain, Star Eyes, and new additions Starkey and AC Slater. Recently acquiring their LLC as a label, Friday night also celebrated the release of Math Head’s EP “Turn the Music Up.” Putting out a more prolific series of Drop the Lime releases as well as others, Trouble & Bass will more quickly find its immortality as a label. Combining the rising power of Dubstep and Bassline in the UK, Trouble & Bass has managed to fuse the powers of Electro and Baltimore Club here in the States with the bass heavy leanings of UK’s club scene. While Dubstep has become the most recent kin to UK Garage and Drum n’ Bass, there has yet to be a State side re-interpretation of those genres. On tracks like Drop the Lime’s remix for Moby’s “Alice”, it becomes apparent that there is a conversation going on.
As a result of that conversation, to see Dubchild on Friday night felt strangely familiar to those of us who know the context. The “brratt, brratt” of the gun mimics were second nature, and even some keys came out towards the end of the night. As the glint of those keys glinted in Dubchild’s eye, he looked a bit shocked and even a little flushed. To receive the welcome that the Internet had been preparing us for was overwhelming for him and to go back and listen to Skream interviews about Dub War, you realize the power of American taste when it’s at its most proactive.
And what Dubchild did on Friday night was to remind us of the roots. Dub & reggae, more than anything in that room Friday night, was what created Friday night, and the Jamaican patois was no doubt thick and fitting. It’s that very synthesis that the States is starting catch up to, the torch that Trouble & Bass finally took and that Dubchild is currently leading the pack in.
As things were powering down around 3AM, Dubchild decided to say thank you. Still yet to be found in cyberspace, Biggie’s “Kick In the Door” came remixed to gritty perfection at time when our bass-faces were nearly cached and we were ready for a round of applause. At the juncture between Dubstep and Rap, death is upon you. Unless Jeezy or Biggie is rapping over sonorous horns or epic synths, the feeling of those men’s voices paired with mind-numbing 4//4 drums and dystopian bass creatures is enough to make me drop out of school and start e-mailing Project Pat my beats. But what I realized Friday night was that come 01.20.09, I’ll decide to stay in school to watch America usher in an answer to what the globe has been talking about, and maybe we’ll have something bass to say to the UK.

Crookers @ Webster Hall: Crooker's Deserve the Basement

Picture courtesy of jmoranmoya


Why was the highlight of the Crookers show the dominantly black basement party going on by the bathrooms? After dancing up a sweat and refusing to pay $5 for water, I ventured to the bathroom to cool down and escape an over-extended Crookers banger. Crookers, an italo-house DJ duo comprised of DJ Phra and Bot, are frying feet and minds alike with their b-more infused chainsaw synths and machine-gun melodies. Think booty bass shot-up in the rear with chunky house and I haven’t come close to describing the sound. And despite the show’s intermittent intensity, and perhaps because I myself am a dj, the show was sub-par. Much of it wasn’t Crookers fault either, Webster Hall is an enormous rock theatre with the main stage lifted some 4 feet from the main floor and during the show was brimming with hipster-flesh competing mightily to big up the Crookers boys the biggest. I myself am not one to compete and was almost content to spread my limbs on the stale dance floor.

Being a dj, Crookers supply a ripe collection of set-savers and peak tunes, creating an arsenal that mows down any reticent crowd. But the issue I found with their live show was that between a mix of original productions (the majority of their set) and their unofficial a-list remixes, it’s like chain smoking clove cigarettes, they’re delectable, but after 8 you feel like you’re going to throw up your shriveled lungs. The only track they played that wasn’t their own, the set opener, was most memorable part of their set. Before delving into 4 and 5 minute-long original productions, they introduced themselves with “A Milli,” Lil' Wayne’s brain-busting bass-heavy single from “Tha Carter III,” turning the crowd instantly into Crookers’ minions. This was not only a nod to summer, but also a nod to their influences. DJ Phra speaks to his infatuation with rap’s thump and grind and perhaps desires to create a similar hysteria induced by the likes of his rap-star heroes. But given that the energy was fractured between the seemingly employed stage-dancers and a floor crowd with out cohesion and intimacy, I found little reason to stay longer than I did.

It would be only 30 minutes before I was packed inside a basement floor of Webster Hall, listening again (thankfully) to “A Milli” and “Lollipop”, the two songs that seem to permeate through mine if not most of America’s day-to-day life. So what, affluent white boy sees what the black community chooses to do at Webster Hall when the Crookers are in town? For the lack of anything more enlightening, I liked the energy. Black girls can *expletive* dance. All chauvinism and objectification aside, those girls were working men’s crotches like NASCAR drivers forced to drive backwards around the track. I was mesmerized by the precision and timeliness of their movements. Also, songs were being sung and rapped to verbatim. More than anything, I felt the jealousy of a community that is finding rap music still exciting and important. Pop music flails in the wind and while rap is starting stutter, there was a true sense of belong and visceral excitement present in that room. That may be naïve, white-man’s guilt, vain, or other “insert-here” signifiers but that night, Crookers and Webster Hall took themselves for granted and the Top 40 rap dj were celebrating. In retrospect, they deserved to be upstairs, and Crookers deserved to be downstairs.

Trunk Rattlers

Living in New York during the summer can be eventful. Going to the Virgin Megastore in Union Square on June 10th, the day of Lil Wayne's new release "Tha Carter III," feels important. Choosing that other other Deli for the cheaper Honest Tea feels important. Not seeing Get Smart despite the clever advertising, feels important.

I could have guessed as well as the next guy that Lil’ Wayne would do “A Milli” in its first week. That is not because of any industry predictions and certainly not because of any trends in rap sales.

Sometimes in the bubble of cyberspace and campus life, the Pop effect is easy to forget about. Getting Tha Carter III leak a week before the releases feels crafty and triumphant, but both are fleeting. I didn’t even listen to it at first because I had the new Boy 8-Bit to digest. It was only after feeling the trunk reverberations that I cocked my head. The Internet waters it down. And it wasn’t until New York that I felt the album's size, the weight; it’s colossal.

Lying comatose on a dirt-dotted futon, courtesy of the heat and the ever-present stick, you can’t hide from the sounds. It’s a New York minute outside and there is no need for a radio. Out of the 50 trunk rattlers (cars w/ subs and high volumes) that creep past my window, 40 of them thump “Lollipop” and 10 thump “A Milli.” Last summer Rihanna's “Umbrella” was 50 for 50. Just listen to the streets. If only Deerhunter had some rolling 808’s and fixies had trunks. Chrome (the messenger bag) should think on that one.

When I saw the 5th Harry Potter on 86th st. last summer (oh, a trunk rattler rattling “A Milli just bounced past the East Village Café) the screen blacked out 3/4 of the way through, leaving just the sound and hundreds of 10 year old and their parents committing seppuku in their AMC seats. Amongst cheers and jeers though out the movie, I felt like I was experiencing a phenomenon. Then a month later I sat on the subway, drowned by a sea of reddish-orange book covers as the capital of the world read the last of an unprecedented series. New York is the pulse of Pop.

In a 21st century world of leaks, blog rock and home music videos it’s refreshing to hear the unabashed obsession of “A Milli” on the corner of my Alphabet City block and then turn to my computer to hear Chris Brown rap over the instrumental as an ode to greatness. I’ll keep spending $12 to see kids clap for a Harry Potter title sequence like it’s the only part of the film they’ll be seeing and I’ll pay for music if I can see threadbare Vans tapping USDA organic high hats on Just Blaze’s “Mr. Carter.” Thank you Darwin for the justification of closet apartments, high- rises, hot summers and the subsequent need to be Outside. New York knows greatness, but sometimes what’s Great is right in the trunk.

An NY Introduction

Last Summer I lived in DeNiro –land (TriBeCa) “house”-sitting a house-sized loft and taking care of a dumb dog. It was most certainly “the life.” I saved money working construction before I left in July and arrived with nearly enough money to lie around on an A/C cooled couch and watch the quality afternoon movie showings available on HBO. The residents were smokers, theoretically affording me even more incentive to stop affording unaffordable NY packs. Sidenote: If you put “NY” in front of a noun, it makes it A) expensive and B) cooler. So I sat around a lot, smoking a lot, drinking when I couldn’t afford cigarettes, and sometimes making it to Brooklyn to see some free shows. Seattle, figure it out.

That was a great summer. I learned the city well, watched a couple great TV shows, and most importantly, solidified my decision to come back. That may have been the first and only lazy summer I’ll ever have in my adult life. And here it is, summer 2008 and I’m back and I’m here to grind. New York isn’t making any excuses for me this time and after a great (good) year back in Seattle, New York makes a little more sense. I have a job, an internship and an apartment that I (kinda) pay for myself.

So what brings me to New York you ask? What do I do? Where do I live? Well, New York is New York I suppose and it goes with out saying what a great city New York can be. But for me I find solace in the creative energy that rips and roars both in the streets and the skyscrapers. And of course being a music writer and a dj, I’m puking music on a daily basis and I couldn’t be happier for it.

Thanks to the Buffalo Exchange and recycled fashion, both of which I love dearly, I will be working at the Brooklyn branch of the Buff-X. I reside in a much more humbling and stimulating part of town called Alphabet City (East Village) and I believe a sex club is located in a liquor store across the street. So as you can see there will be stories to tell and here Iwill be telling them. Despite how much I’d like to give you all the “haha, I’m in New York and you’re in Seattle” stories, I’d much rather keep it to the music.

To give you an idea of what I’ll most likely be doing, New York will be granting the freeness (Check out: Summerstage, Prospect Park, and McCarren Pool) and when I can afford it, the occasional major-label act at a vintage venue. As a dj you may be interested in the Brooklyn nightlife, of which I’ll be spending the majority of time, and if I get lucky in this city of happenstance, I’ll write about my first NY show. Look for a few posts a week, the next one about the insights of NY trunk rattlers.