thu 09 sept 2010
abstract science, fresh-kid.com and the chicago electronic music and
art coalition (cemac) present a subfix sonar afterparty
> FALTY DL [planet-mu, ramp, rush hour, nyc]
> DJ WARP [chicago cultural affairs, bombay beat box]
w/ subfix residents
> PHADED + CHRIS WIDMAN
smartbar
3730 n. clark
10p-4am | $10 / $5 before 11pm w/txt | 21+
http://smartbarchicago.com | http://abstractscience.net |
http://fresh-kid.com | http://chicagoemac.org/about/
abstract science, fresh-kid.com & the chicago electronic music and art
coalition (CEMAC) present a special sonar edition of subfix featuring
FaltyDL from NYC, with DJ WARP aka brian keigher from chicago's office
of cultural affairs (which programs the chicago culutral center,
edible audio picnics at millenium park, world music festival, summer
dance and countless free city concerts), and subfix residents PHADED +
CHRIS WIDMAN. a perfect follow up to the sonar chicago showcase at
pritzker pavilion earlier in the evening.
------------
>FaltyDL
Drew Cyrus Lustman is a musician in love with complexity and beautiful
simplicity alike. On the one hand, the 26-year-old one-time sushi chef
grew up playing piano and upright bass in jazz and classical groups,
and cites Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Squarepusher and Weather Report as
life-changing influences; on the other, he loves clubs, loves to
dance, and considers hip hop, house, jungle and UK garage to be as
important as any of those virtuoso musicians.
Vitally, there is no sense of any divide between these influences –
Drew does not see technical music as separate from music that is there
to stimulate good feelings and soundtrack good times. His first
releases in 2007 may have been unashamedly Squarepusher-influenced
IDM, but they were tracks for the rave and not mere exercises in
programming complexity, and listening to their tear-out jungle breaks
now, they are unmistakeably the work of a man who dances in the
studio. Which he does. And even more impressively, in his more recent
releases, these precursors from across the globe and throughout
musical history are tied together on the later tunes that brought him
to global attention into a sound that could only come under the city
lights of his adoptive home of New York in the 21st century.
The breakthrough with these latter tracks came when he dropped the
tempo and allowed his beats to breathe, which found him a natural home
on the British label Planet Mu, itself revitalised by its immersion in
the possibilities of the dubstep and post-dubstep underground.
Centring on the rhythms of UK garage provided the key which unlocked
Drew’s natural sense of the interconnectedness of electronic funk
styles, the limber beat patterns allowing him to forward from UKG into
dubstep space, back into NYC’s orginal garage and further back still
towards disco. The rolling rhythms of jungle were still there too,
albeit sublimated, and underlying it all was the fresh-to-death gleam
and defiant boom of hip hop.
His timing was impeccable: the ‘Love Is A Liability’ album and
‘Bravery’ EP came just as the post-dubstep underground was becoming
far more fluid, and his easy stylistic shifts provided the perfect
bridge between the new garage of artists like Brackles and Geiom, the
cosmic hip hop of LA and Glasgow, and those people who were falling in
love with house music all over again via Funky, Omar S and Karizma.
But where some English producers might say “it’s all house”, he says
“it’s all hip hop! Ya dig?”
Back in New Haven, Conneticut where he was born, a younger Drew would
let his mind roam: smoking a lot of pot and “watching the paint drip
off the paintings” in the Yale Art Museum, or sitting at home reading
Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East and Siddhartha over and over. Now,
thanks purely to those two Planet Mu releases, he is travelling in
person all over the planet. Drew still has the yen to make wild
jungle, and one day maybe he’ll end up back in smoky jazz clubs. But
right now, he’s still as in love with current club music as the scene
is with him, slipping easily between and ahead of new genre collisions
even as they happen. It takes improvisatory skills to deal with a
musical world that shifts and reconfigures as wildly as that of 2010 –
but if anyone has those skills it’s FaltyDL.