The tour has been great!  We have some crazy stories and have been so fortunate to get to tour with Starfucker.  They are super nice guys and they put on an amazing show every night.  Not to mention the fact that we get to mooch off their huge crowd every night haha.  Right now we have only one date left on the tour and are finally getting some rest.  We are sitting in a hotel waiting for our laundry to dry  in Grand Rapids.  Things got a little crazy in Cincinnati for Midpoint Music Fest, ended up staying out till 5 partying with homeless people, its a long story, but we needed to get some rest afterwards haha.

DD: It was a pleasure working with you guys at EMP, I hope I’ll be helping you guys again for your Warm Oscillations showcase. How do you feel about this upcoming show? For all the Decibel goers about to descend on Seattle, how would you encourage them to check out your performance? 

Well we are stoked, feeling super lucky to get to perform with such great producers.  We know its gonna be an amazing night.  As for our performance: come ready to party!  We have to drive from Chicago to Seattle in two days so we are gonna be ready to rage.  We have done something like 22 shows in the last 25 days, so its gonna be a bittersweet final performance, but we promise to bring the heat.

Beat Connection on Facebook, Twitter and Soundcloud 

– Jimi Jaxon

Along with local producers Cyanwave, the Blurring The Lines showcase will feature performances from

Martyn (3024 / Brainfeeder)

Martin Buttrich (Poker Flat, Planet E, Cocoon Recordings) 

Max Cooper (Traum Schallplatten, Bedrock, Veryverywrondindeed) 

Egyptrixx (Night Slugs)

DD: There is a very smooth, sexy feel running through these sets of yours on Soundcloud. How do you harness all this groovyness? 

We really focus on the interaction and balance of every element in the mix.  Most of our sounds and programming are reactions to what the other is doing.  By constantly playing off of each other we are able to build and explore different grooves and ideas.  We use this idea in the way we approach writing material as well as performing.  When the song writing and performance aspects come together that energy and feeling can really be captured.

DD: What about Decibel connects with you the most? You’ve been placed on a massive showcase, Egyptrixx is one the acts I’m most excited to see, and Martyn and Max Cooper have been doing some incredible things..Best of luck with your performance! 

We are definitely very excited and proud to be part of the Blurring the Lines Showcase. All the acts involved are pushing unique and forward thinking sounds, especially in a Live format.  The AV showcases, boat parties, and conferences keep us pretty busy between most of the events all weekend.  Connecting with so many new friends and close ones at the same time through great music is one of the amazing things about Decibel Festival. Thanks!

Cyanwave on Soundcloud    

– Jimi Jaxon

For those of you who caught the Dropping Gems Showcase over at HG Lodge last night, I have this interview with opener DJAO

Thanks, I’m glad you like that track. It didn’t take me very long to make, compared to some of my other stuff, so I’m always flattered when people say they’re into it.

I’ve been fortunate to have all my affiliations develop organically. I joined up with Dropping Gems last year, after basically showing up to the label launch show with a USB stick full of beats, all of which I had made while living in Baltimore. That night they had some extra room at the end of the lineup (around 3am I think) so I jumped on and did my chopped-and-screwed DJ thing too, and we just went from there. I went to middle school with Aaron (manager of DG), and for a year or so before that first show we’d see each other on Facebook posting music, talking about shows, complaining about Low End podcasts not having track lists, etc., so I knew we had similar taste and were heading in similar directions. After I moved back to Seattle I hit him up and we reconnected. Other than that, though, the night I showed up I was meeting everyone for the first time. Since then everyone in DG has become like family. I’m the only one who lives in Seattle, but I know every time I’m down in Portland or Olympia I automatically have a home. We collaborate on music, pool our time and resources to develop the collective’s pursuits, and manage our careers as artists, but mainly we’re friends.

Car Crash Set is a slightly different story, but also has to do with unlikely connections and the luck I’ve had reaching out once I moved back to Seattle. I met Will (Ill Cosby) at a show he was playing, which I was motivated to attend purely because I recognized people on the lineup from the internet, and found out him and I had indeed been “hanging out on the internet” for years. We began running into each other a lot at shows, during a time where I was trying to grow the Dropping Gems presence in Seattle and learn to do a bunch of stuff I’d never done before, promotion/musical wise. He’s done a tremendous amount for the electronic scene in our city, helping carve out a reliable space to hear forward-thinking bass music that’s usually under appreciated.  He booked me for my first true future-chopped-and-screwed DJ set, which for me was a landmark moment in my musical development, and which I later developed into the Endolithtrophic mix on my Soundcloud. It wasn’t until later on that he approached me about a release, and I’m honestly super excited to be involved. I’m eclectic in both my music taste and my production style, and it’s wonderful to have a structured outlet to make the kind of future music that Car Crash Set is known for putting out. I have an immense amount of respect for him and the label.

I think I generally just have a lot of gratitude for all the support and inclusion that I’ve experienced from all the great people I’ve met in the past year and a half, and for all the things I’ve done that I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish otherwise.

Experimental, eclectic, organic, rhythmic. Psychedelic, maybe. I would say the artists all “kind of” fall underneath the umbrella of the “beat scene,” but that seems to be less and less useful as a description these days. It’s difficult to put into words. We use a lot of field recordings, aspire to doing a lot of live instrumentation, etc. Everyone has their own style. Ghost Feet are electrifying  and mournful at the same time. Citymouth’s style is really cerebral but it also has a visceral edge, with a definite head-nod factor. My stuff is supposed to be big and warm and enveloping, but it also jumps around a lot, and I’m playing with my friend Zuri doing live guitar. Generally it’s not club music or dance music in any typical sense, more like experimental music that employs dance idioms. A straight-ahead beat might melt into a drone, which becomes a dance track that devolves into a sound-collage, and so on. Our audiences do dance, but typically the music doesn’t easily lend itself to dancing, especially for unadventurous listeners.

The Non Projects guys we’re bringing up from LA (Anenon and Asura) are both incredibly talented artists in this sense. There’s plenty of rhythm and percussion in their work, but where they’re coming from is so left-field, you’re more likely to feel like you’ve taken an incredible emotional journey than like you’ve danced your ass off. They’re also remarkable for their sheer musicality. I know I haven’t seen anything similar so far this year, in terms of live shows, so I’m just as thrilled as anyone else to see what they’ll do. Everyone in Dropping Gems is. It’s why we asked them to come up in the first place.

Seeing artists that I’ve only heard/read about on the internet, especially UK artists, hands down. I don’t what I did to deserve an international electronic music festival in my back yard, much less one as thoughtfully and intelligently curated as Decibel. I suppose I’m just thankful, really. Between last year’s festival and the shows leading up to this year’s festival I saw a half-dozen major artists, Untold, Ikonika, Scuba, Mary Anne Hobbs, Mount Kimbie, James Blake, so many UK artists I never thought I get the chance to see. I missed out on even more. This year I’m looking forward to a lot of things, international and domestic, that I know I would never get to see otherwise. I can’t imagine know who else in this city would book Matthewdavid for an ambient set at Benaroya. 

 DJAO on Soundcloud & Facebook

http://droppinggems.bandcamp.com/album/wuhn  

– Jimi Jaxon

Caught up with this lad a few days ago. Head over to the Baltic Room on Sunday, Oct. 1 to catch his versus set with Kid Hops. Part of the Onset Showcase 

DD: Hello there Quadrant. How’s the weekend going? 

The weekend is going well so far, thanks. I mean it’s only Saturday, so anything could happen, but I have a leftover sandwich from Paseo in the fridge, so things are looking pretty awesome from where I sit. How’s yours going?

DD: What started your interest in Drum & Bass? I am not very knowledgable with this genre, but have been exposed to some rad sounds from artists such as Noisia and Nero.

I was slow getting into electronic music, even though the year it really hit me, 1998, seems like the ancient past at this point. I think the real eureka moment for me was hearing a tune from Photek on the soundtrack to the video game Wipeout XL. His breaks were so precise, and meticulously crafted– I was at a loss to explain exactly what I was hearing, so of course my natural response was to spend next 10 years of my life learning everything I could so that I could do the same thing. Along the way, I caught wind of Ed Rush & Optical’s seminal Wormhole album, which was a prime influence for all future “Neurofunk” artists (including Noisia), and got more into those sounds, which were creepy and cinematic, but still dancefloor.  Those are aspects I’ve striven, at one time or another, to bring out in my music.

DD: You’ll be playing on Sunday at Decibel Festival as part of  Onset’s dBridge showcase. What can festival goers look forward to at this event? 

It’s an exciting time for Drum & Bass. While the last decade was characterized by what I affectionately refer to as the “midrange synth arms race,” whereby everyone was trying to outdo each other by coming up with the sickest, and most startlingly grimy twisted out sounds, I feel as though a lot of the funk and swagger was thrown straight out the window in favor of technical prowess. That’s all changed now. The genre is re-exploring its roots, crafting tracks that stand on their own with just the building blocks of sparse breaks, sub, and well crafted basslines. It’s a joy to behold, and dBridge has been pushing this type of sound the entire time, certainly throughout the time when it wasn’t fashionable.

Kid Hops and I will be representing this style of D&B, heady and minimal but still danceable. I’ll also be dropping some new and unreleased tracks that I’ve been working on, and some collabs and original tunes from really talented up and coming producers from right here in Seattle, like Homemade Weapons, Dubtek, John Glist, and Iris. We’ll try as best we can to warm things up for dBridge, who I’m sure will be amazing.

Also, the lumpia place across the street is pretty bangin.

Moar sounds from Quadrant on Soundcloud 

– Jimi Jaxon