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DJ Spooky

 

Disc jockey

It is unlikely that Paul D. Miller knew, when he started mixing James Brown and Public Enemy tracks at a New England college radio station, that he would be launching a music revolution. A decade and a half later, Miller, better known as DJ Spooky, is regarded by many as a founder of the "illbient" sound, as well as one of popular music's hardest-working mixologists.

Miller was born in 1970 to educated, politically active, well-traveled parents in Washington, D.C. His father, who died when he was three, was a dean at Howard University Law School and an advisor to members of the Black Panther Party. His mother owned an international fabric shop on D.C.'s Dupont Circle and often brought her young son with her on work-related expeditions around the globe. Miller inherited his father's extensive book and record collection, thus beginning a lifelong fascination with both music and the written word. Miller was also exposed to the hardcore punk, ska, and go-go sounds of D.C.'s thriving late-1980s music scene. "I grew up watching Go-Go bands such as Junkyard Band and Trouble Funk," he told the London Independent, "but there was also a big hard-core scene with Bad Brains and Minor Threat."

As a student of philosophy and French literature at Bowdoin College in Maine, Miller launched a radio show, "Dr. Seuss's Eclectic Jungle," on the college station, where he had his first chance to experiment with mixing disparate sounds. Miller briefly moved to Paris after college to pursue his interest in the intersection of popular culture and theory. He undertook science fiction and other writing projects that reflected his love of science fiction writers like Phillip K. Dick and Samuel Delaney. Upon relocating to New York City, he began writing advertising copy and contributing articles to such publications as Artforum, The Source, and the Village Voice. Plugged into a network of forward-thinking artists, writers, and musicians, and unimpressed with the city's club scene, Miller began organizing loft parties featuring fashion and conceptual art projects with soundscapes provided by himself and other DJs. "Most of my friends were other artists and writers," Miller told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "So our events became the place where you would go if you didn't want to go to a normal kind of club. It was very downtown specific, but it became big because a lot of people did not like normal clubs."

It was here that Miller began to fuse dub, hip-hop, jazz and drum 'n' bass in a sound that came to be known as "illbient." He took on the name DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, an addendum to the name borrowed from a character in a William S. Burroughs novel. In an interview with L.A. Weekly, Miller discussed his musical idols, lending some insight into his eclectic sound: "My heroes are folks like [minimalist composers] Steve Reich or John Cage mixed with Ornette Coleman and Charlie Parker, while Afrika Bambaataa spins someplace in the back of my mind."



Miller released an album of remixes, Necropolis: The Dialogic Project, on New York's prominent avant-garde label Knitting Factory in 1996. That same year San Francisco's Asphodel released his first LP of original compositions, Songs of a Dead Drummer. Dubbing it "one of the definitive modern ambient albums," L.A. Weekly said of Songs of a Dead Drummer, "Both chaotic and restrained, it approached the theme of space in the same manner as pioneers like Iannis Xenakis and Brian Eno." The buzz surrounding Songs of a Dead Drummer and Miller's captivating live performances drew the attention of the Geffen label, which released 1998's Riddim Warfare on its Outpost imprint. The album showcased both Miller's varied interests and his broad appeal: guests included Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, rapper Kool Keith, and conceptual artist Mariko Mori. That same year he scored the film Slam.

Riddim Warfare marked Miller's closest brush with the mainstream to date. Following its release, he continued to write and edit and began to focus on his artwork as well, landing shows at the Whitney Museum and the Venice Biennial for Architecture and, at the turn of the century, launching C21, a web magazine focusing on critical theory and digital culture. He recorded and performed regularly as well, always following his own direction. "I'm not really dependent on normal music industry situations to make a living," he told LA Weekly. "That makes me independent of the entire situation, and frees my hand to be a lot more experimental. When I go to normal industry stuff and check out stuff like the Automator or DJ Shadow ... I feel like, oh, I don't know, a penguin in Jamaica or something." In 1999 he released File Under Futurism, a collaboration with the Freight Elevator Quartet on the Caipirinha label, followed by a mix CD, Under the Influence, on the Six Degrees label in 2001.

Miller's next full-length album of his own compositions, Modern Mantra, appeared in 2002 on the Shadow label. Miller also unveiled an early version of "Rebirth of a Nation" that year. The live project combined segments of D.W. Griffith's infamously racist 1915 film Birth of a Nation, with music mixed on-site by Miller. "I'm using Birth of a Nation as a kind of metaphor, a kind of jumping off point," Miller told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, upon his presentation of the project at that city's Spoleto Festival in the spring of 2004. "It kind of gets people to think about how the past conditions the present. We are a country of amnesia. A lot of kids barely even know about Vietnam or World War II." The project has been featured at various museums and festivals and a full live performance was commissioned by New York's Lincoln Center and presented in July of 2004.

In 2003 Miller collaborated with several notable jazz and experimental artists, including Matthew Shipp, Pauline Oliveros, and spoken word artist Carl Hancock Rux, who contributed sounds for him to sample on his Thirsty Ear release Optometry. The album's remix companion, Dubometry, was issued the next year. Two more remix albums, Rhythm Science, which mines material from the Sub Rosa label, and Celestial Mechanix, featuring sounds from Thirsty Ear's Blue Series, appeared in 2004, along with Riddim Play, a collaboration with the dub outfit Twilight Circus, released on Play. While moving his experiments into the twenty-first century, Miller says his challenge is creating something new in an over-stimulated society. "It's difficult for me to imagine a sound I haven't heard. We have reached a total saturation point," he told the London Independent. "But there are more interesting ways of putting together sounds."

Selected discography
Necropolis: The Dialogic Project, Knitting Factory, 1996.
Songs of a Dead Drummer, Asphodel, 1996.
Riddim Warfare, Outpost, 1998.
File Under Futurism, Caipirinha, 1999.
Kaotik Transgression, Manifold, 1999.
Under the Influence, Six Degrees, 2001.
Modern Mantra, Shadow, 2002.
Optometry, Thirsty Ear, 2002.
Dubometry, Thirsty Ear, 2003.
Celestial Mechanix: The Blue Series Mastermix, Thirsty Ear, 2004.
Rhythm Science, Sub Rosa, 2004.
Riddim Clash, Play, 2004.


Sources
Periodicals
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 23, 2004.
Independent (London, England), April 2, 1999.
LA Weekly, July 18, 2002.

Online
"DJ Spooky," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (August 28, 2004).
DJ Spooky Official Website, http://www.djspooky.com (August 28, 2004).
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  • Genres: Electronica

Biography

DJ Spooky (That Subliminal Kid) is the most noted (and notorious) proponent of turntablism, an approach to hip-hop and DJing whose philosophy merges avant-garde theories of musique concrète with the increased devotion paid to mixing techniques during the 1990s. Though he's overly intellectual at times (to the detriment of his recordings, interviews, and mixing dates), Spooky was a critical figure in spotlighting the DJ as a post-modern poet in his own right. Influenced equally by John Cage and Sun Ra as well as Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, few artists did more to mainstream the DJ-as-artist concept than he.

Spooky was born Paul Miller in Washington, D.C. His father was a lawyer and member of the faculty at Howard University but died when Miller was only three. He inherited his father's record collection, which, along with frequent trips around the world (thanks to his mother's international fabric store), opened his eyes to a wide range of music. Growing up in the '80s saw Miller interested in D.C.'s hardcore punk scene and British ska-punk as well as go-go music. While attending college in Maine, Spooky began mixing on his own radio show and attempted to introduce his KRS-One tapes into classroom discussions on deconstruction (an idea made quite conceivable just ten years later). After graduating with degrees in French literature and philosophy, he moved to New York, where he wrote science fiction alongside advertising copy and pursued visual art as well. He was still into hip-hop, however, and formed the underground Soundlab collective (with We, Byzar, Sub Dub, and others), a scene that later morphed into the illbient movement.

After an assortment of singles and EPs during 1994-1995, Spooky gained a record contract from Asphodel in 1996 and released his debut album, Songs of a Dead Dreamer. The single "Galactic Funk" became a hit on the club scene, leading to recording appearances with Arto Lindsay and remixing spots for Metallica, Sublime, Nick Cave, and Spookey Ruben; Spooky also began writing regular journalist columns, for The Village Voice and Vibe. As if that didn't keep him busy, he also released the mix album Necropolis: The Dialogic Project, recorded a Paul D. Miller solo LP titled Viral Sonata, and performed in a new digital version of the Iannis Xenakis composition Kraanerg. His second proper album, 1998's Riddim Warfare, saw Spooky with a cast including disparate indie world figures from Dr. Octagon to Thurston Moore. He has also mounted visual exhibits at the Whitney Museum in New York and scored the award-winning 1998 film Slam.

One year later, he released File Under Futurism, a co-production with the Freight Elevator Quartet. 2000 saw the release of a collaborative effort with Scanner entitled The Quick and the Dead. The highly praised mix CD Under the Influence appeared the following year, but the next real album to appear from the DJ was 2002's Modern Mantra. That same year, as part of its Blue Series Continuum, Six Degrees released Optometry, a collaboration featuring Spooky with numerous progressive jazz artists such as William Parker and Matthew Shipp. Its remix companion, Dubtometry, appeared early in 2003. In 2004 Spooky teamed with the dub outfit Twilight Circus for Riddim Clash released by Play. The same year he was courted to remix two different label's output. A mix of Sub Rosa material appeared as Rhythm Science in January, and Thirsty Ear gave Spooky access to their Blue Series for Celestial Mechanix, released in June. In 2005, Drums of Death, a collaboration with Slayer and Fantômas drummer Dave Lombardo, came out, followed the next year by the DJ Spooky-curated collection 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records.

A year later the DJ remixed some favorites from the legendary reggae label's catalog on the fascinating album Creation Rebel. In 2008, Spooky edited Sound Unbound, a collection of essays on music and art. That same year, he made an appearance in FLicKeR, a documentary about the Dream Machine, an invention pioneered by Brion Gysin. In 2009, Miller issued The Secret Song, his first new studio release of original material in a decade. He collaborated with a slew of artists, including a jazz quartet, a chamber ensemble, pianist Vijay Iyer, various rappers including members of the Jungle Brothers, wordsmith Mike Ladd, and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. The disc was packaged with a DVD that included his soundtrack to a visual montage of two of the earliest films by Russian director Dziga Vertov. ~ John Bush, Rovi
DJ Spooky

DJ Spooky in 2008
Background information
Birth name Paul D. Miller
Also known as That Subliminal Kid
Born 1970 in Washington, D.C., U.S.
Genres Electronica, jazz, dub, reggae, illbient, trip hop
Occupations Disc jockey
Music producer
Years active 1996 – present
Labels Asphodel Records, Thirsty Ear, Universal Studios, Synchronic
Associated acts Dave Lombardo
Website djspooky.com

Paul D. Miller (born 1970), known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author. He borrowed his stage name from the character The Subliminal Kid in the novel Nova Express by William S. Burroughs. He is a Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School.[1]

Contents

Early life

Miller grew up in Washington DC and attended Woodrow Wilson High School and Sidwell Friends High School. His father, Paul E. Miller, was Dean of Howard University Law School, and his mother, Rosemary E. Reed Miller, owned Toast and Strawberries, a legendary boutique in Washington DC.[2] She is the author of Threads of Time, a history of African American women designers. Spooky became interested in punk and go-go music. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, earning degrees in French literature and philosophy.

Career

DJ Spooky at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival

Spooky began writing science fiction and formed a collective called Soundlab with several other artists.

In the mid-1990s, Spooky began recording a series of singles and EPs. His debut LP, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, is now widely regarded as a formative influence on illbient. Spooky contributed to the AIDS benefit albums Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip (1996) and Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon (1998) produced by the Red Hot Organization. Riddim Warfare (see 1998 in music) was an underground hit that include collaborations with Kool Keith and other cult figures in indie rock like Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore who also appears on DJ Spooky's 2009 album release "The Secret Song."

He then worked with several other artists on various collaborations and mix CDs, returning in 2002 with Modern Mantra. That same year saw the release of Optometry, a widely acclaimed collaboration with avant-jazz players Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Guillermo E. Brown and Joe McPhee. (This album also features portions of a breaks record by Billy Martin of Medeski Martin & Wood.) In a classical vein, he has collaborated with the ST-X Ensemble in performances of the music of Iannis Xenakis. His film compositions have been performed by Kronos Quartet for the soundtrack to his remix of DW. Griffith's 1915 film Birth of a Nation. Kronos Quartet also performed DJ Spooky's remix of Steve Reich's composition "City Life."

DJ Spooky has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto on several projects including The Discord Symphony which toured Japan extensively in 1997. The concert and album were released as an enhanced CD containing both a full audio program and multimedia computer files. It features spoken-word performances by Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Patti Smith, David Sylvian, DJ Spooky, David Torn, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Miller also participated on Ryuichi Sakamoto's anti war project "Chain-Music" along with Towa Tei (formerly of Dee-Lite), Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, Pansonic, and Cornelius, in 2007. It is a concept project based on collage that makes an anti-war statement through music exchange.

Avant-garde music has been an influence on Miller, including artists such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Edgard Varèse, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Terry Riley, Ornette Coleman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and the French composer Erik Satie for his piano works and his ideas for furniture music. He collaborated with Iannis Xenakis on the recording of Kraanerg, with the STX-Ensemble in 1997, and he has since worked with another major influence on his work – Steve Reich.

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop has also been an influence on Miller, and he cites Delia Derbyshire as a major hero for women and people of color in electronic music. He's called Music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop released on Aphex Twin's Rephlex Label, one of his favorite compilations.

2005 saw the release of "Drums of Death", DJ Spooky's CD based on sessions he recorded with Dave Lombardo of Slayer. Other guest artists include Chuck D. of Public Enemy and Vernon Reid of Living Colour. The record was co-produced by Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto.

In 2006, he produced two extensive compilations of classic Jamaican music from the archives of Trojan Records, the 40 year old Jamaican record label founded by Chris Blackwell and Lee Gopthal. The U.S. release, In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records focused on "selections" from the archive, while the UK and worldwide release, Riddim Come Forward was a continuous mix. The compilation features a roster of Jamaica's most renowned artists and producers like Lee "Scratch" Perry, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, U-Roy, King Tubby and Prince Jammy.

In 2008 his work Being Black (featuring Ursula Rucker) was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike. He is just one of 9 artists who participated in thetruth.com’s Remix Project, where he remixed the Sunny Side song “Tough Love”.

DJ Spooky joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers.[3] [4] [5] He was also a judge for the 3rd Independent Music Awards.[6]

DJ Spooky has said that much of his work "deals with the notion of the encoded gesture or the encrypted psychology of how music affects the whole framework of what the essence of 'humaness' [sic] is... To me at this point in the 21st century, the notion of the encoded sound is far more of a dynamic thing, especially when you have these kinds of infodispersion systems running, so I'm fascinated with the unconscious at this point." [7]

DJ Spooky's CD The Secret Song is slated for release October 6, 2009 on Thirsty Ear Records. It has guest appearances by Thurston Moore, The Coup, Mike G. of the Jungle Brothers, Rob Swift of the X-Ecutioners, Mike Ladd, Vijay Iyer, and many others. String arrangements for the album were done by film soundtrack composers Peter Stopschinski and Graham Reynolds with the Golden Hornet Project, and edited and sampled by DJ Spooky. The Secret Song is a manifesto about our overloaded digital culture.

Other work

DJ Spooky composed the score for the 1998 film Slam, featuring poet/actor Saul Williams in the lead role. The film went on to win both the Cannes Camera D'Or and the Sundance Festival Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. He also made an appearance in the 2008 feature documentary FLicKeR by Nik Sheehan about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine.

His work as an artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; the Venice Biennale; the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum; Paula Cooper Gallery; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and many other museums and galleries. In 2007 his work appeared in the Africa Pavilion in the 52nd Venice Biennial. This remix of music from Africa was also distributed freely online, and promoted by the blog Boing Boing. "You give away a certain amount of your stuff, and then the cultural economy of cool kicks in," DJ Spooky said.[8]

In 2004 DJ Spooky released a book, Rhythm Science, published by MIT Press. The same year saw the launch of his film/music/multimedia performance piece "DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation". A live audio/video re-mix of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation which includes footage from choreographer Bill T. Jones and a score newly composed by DJ Spooky, "Rebirth of a Nation" was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Festival, the Festival d'Automne a Paris, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the Vienna Festival. DJ Spooky continues to tour the world performing this work. "Rebirth of a Nation" was released as a film in 2009.

Sound Unbound, a collection of writing about sound art, digital media, and contemporary composition, edited by DJ Spooky, with writings from Brian Eno, Jonathan Lethem, Chuck D, Saul Williams, Steve Reich, Cory Doctorow, Saul Williams, Pierre Boulez, Mendi & Keith Obadike, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jaron Lanier, Moby, and many others, came out on MIT Press early 2008. Longtime collaborator Roy Christopher was Assistant Editor on the project.

DJ Spooky is also a professor of music mediated art at the European Graduate School where he co-teaches (with Mitchell Joachim) Intensive Summer Seminars in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

In August 2009, DJ Spooky visited the Republic of Nauru in the Micronesian South Pacific to do research and gather material for a project in development, with a working title of The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture.[9]

In late 2009 the Naihné People of Tanna, a southern island in the archipelagos of Vanuatu, South Pacific, invited DJ Spooky to form an artists retreat within their remote eastern territory. In early 2011, Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation, a non profit organization, will begin building Tanna Center for the Arts in a beautiful and isolated part of the island.

DJ Spooky's multimedia performance piece Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica[10] was commissioned by BAM for the 2009 Next Wave Festival; the Hopkins Center for the Arts/Dartmouth College; UCSB Arts & Lectures; Melbourne International Arts Festival; and the Festival dei 2 Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. In the Australian summer of 2007–2008 DJ Spooky took a studio to several of the main ice fields of Antarctica to gather material for this, his first symphonic work. The project incorporates what Miller likes to call "acoustic portraits of ice" into its compositional structure, and it references the first symphony written about Antarctica in 1948, by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. With video projections and a score composed by DJ Spooky, performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble in the United States, and Alter Ego Ensemble in Europe, Australia and beyond, "Terra Nova: Sinfornia Antarctica" is a portrait of a rapidly transforming continent.

DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation was commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival;[11] Spoleto Festival USA; Wiener Festwochen; and the Festival d'Automne a Paris. It was the artist's first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed in venues around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times. The DVD version of Rebirth of a Nation was released by Anchor Bay Films/Starz Media in late 2008.

During 2010 DJ Spooky became one of the first DJ's to put together an iPhone app based on being able to use the iPhone as a mixing tool. The DJ Mixer app has been downloaded over 1 million times.

In 2010 Miller formed The Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation, a contemporary arts organization dedicated to exploring dialog between Oceania and the rest of the world.

Discography

References

  1. ^ DJ Spooky / Paul D. Miller Faculty page at European Graduate School (Accessed: June 4, 2010)
  2. ^ "The Owner". Toast and Strawberries. http://www.toastandstrawberries.com/theowner.htm. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
  3. ^ "Independent Music Awards". Independent Music Awards. http://www.independentmusicawards.com/judges. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
  4. ^ MicControl[dead link]
  5. ^ "Top40-Charts.com". Top40-Charts.com. http://top40-charts.com/news/Charts-Awards/She-&-Him-The-Black-Keys-Mark-Hoppus-Aimee-Mann-And-Bettye-LaVette-Join-Judging-Panel-For-The-9th-Annual-Independent-Music-Awards/48785.html. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
  6. ^ "Independent Music Awards – Past Judges". Independentmusicawards.com. http://www.independentmusicawards.com/ima_new/pastjudges.asp. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
  7. ^ "ªªHyperdub¬¬¬¬¬Softwar". Web.archive.org. 2004-07-03. http://web.archive.org/web/20040703040026/http://www.hyperdub.com/softwar/spooky.cfm. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
  8. ^ Kirsner, Scott (2009). Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age. Boston, MA: CinemaTech Books. p. 99. ISBN 1-4421-0074-5. http://www.scottkirsner.com/fff. 
  9. ^ "The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture". Djspooky.com. http://www.djspooky.com/nauruelegies/. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
  10. ^ "Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica". Djspooky.com. 2010-05-11. http://www.djspooky.com/art/terra_nova.php. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
  11. ^ "Rebirth of a Nation". Djspooky.com. 2005-07-08. http://www.djspooky.com/art/rebirth.php. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 

External links

Interviews


 
 
Related topics:
This Is Home Entertainment, Vol. 2 (1996 Album by Various Artists)
Electric Ladyland, Vol. 3 (1996 Album by Various Artists)
Under the Influence (2001 Album by DJ Spooky)

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