DJ Spooky Albums (16)
What The Critics Say
In 2004, DJ Spooky was given full access to the archives of Sub Rosa, a Belgian label celebrated for its catholic musical range -- everyone from Bill Laswell and Alter Echo to Nam June Paik and Edgard Varèse (posthumously, of course) have found their work featured on Sub Rosa releases. Given his status as the most prolific and admired of the postmodern DJs, Spooky was an obvious choice to create a huge sonic tapestry from this wildly varied catalog, and his creation was titled Rhythm Science: Excerpts and Allegories from the Sub Rosa Archives, Vol. 1. Four years later comes a companion volume with a similar title, this one more groove-oriented and really very fascinating. In typical postmodern fashion, it revels in juxtapositions that make little sense on paper but turn out to be quite compelling listening -- spoken word excerpts from Allen Ginsberg and Jean Cocteau rub up against instrumental selections from To Rococo Rot and Trilok Gurtu, and often the different elements are layered over each other. On track seven, for example, music by Marcel Duchamp is layered with music from the Master Musicians of Joujouka and juxtaposed with snippets of an interview with George Heard Hamilton. Elsewhere, chunks of Philip Glass' "Music in Fifths" are followed immediately by Varèse's pioneering piece of musique concrète titled "Poème Electronique," and Bill Laswell's "Ghost Dub" provides a dark musical bed for a recording of René Magritte discussing the elements and history of surrealism. What all this adds up to is, inevitably, yet one more chance for DJ Spooky annoyingly to show off his erudition (at least this package doesn't include a photograph of his book collection) and it's also true that he's pushing his luck when he asks the listener to regard this program as an "essay" in any meaningful sense of the term. But it's also a fascinating crazy-quilt of forward-thinking musical sounds spanning a whole century, and it will provide plenty of food for conversation as well as a starting point for any number of musical research projects. Highly recommended. ~ Rick Anderson, All Music Guide
'Creation Rebel'
Release Date 10/16/2007
Tracks 14
Label Trojan/Sanctuary
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What The Critics Say
One of those rare remix albums that exceeds expectations, DJ Spooky's Creation Rebel is a "Re-Mixed, Re-Visioned, and Re-Versioned" journey through the Trojan Records vaults with the experimental maverick bringing the spirit of the legendary reggae label into the laptop age. Spooky may add modern beats, hip-hop influenced scratching, and other manipulations only possible with computers, but what makes this album so special is how Trojan the whole thing sounds, as if the label was jettisoned into the future with all their dirty six-foot bass cabinet charm intact. By opening with the same Mad Professor sample the Orb used for their chillout room classic "Blue Room," Spooky immediately connects the dots between electronica and Jamaican music, making the same argument he introduced in 2003 with Dubtometry and then continued in 2006 with In Fine Style, his unmixed Trojan compilation. In the liner notes, Creation Rebel features another essay by Spooky that relates modern sampling and turntablism to the Jamaican style of borrowing riddims along with the sound system culture of early dancehall. His insight is well appreciated and thought provoking, but the richest reward here is the music. Whether the DJ is shaking the rafters with an especially aggressive mix of "Under Mi Sleng Teng." or slowing down Michael Rose's voice DJ Screw style for hallucinatory effect, everything works. With its infectious beat and air horn blasts the celebratory remix of "Soul Rebel" creates a feeling of a future dancehall session, while the usually slick "No No No" from Dawn Penn gets wonderfully disheveled with grimy bass, making its story of heartbreak sound all the more desperate. Mutabaruka's dub poetry is absolutely at home on top of the two trippy soundscapes Spooky lays underneath, and if you don't think a remixer could do something amazing with just a couple knob adjustments and a Marley a cappella, you're gravely mistaken. Whether or not Spooky is referencing producer Adrian Sherwood and his Creation Rebel project with the title, he does share Sherwood's skill for making Jamaican influenced music that's both otherworldly and intoxicating. Spooky's Creation Rebel begins where Sherwood's left off and forward-thinking reggae fans couldn't ask for more. ~ David Jeffries, All Music Guide
'DJ Spooky Presents - In Fine Style: 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records'
Release Date 6/27/2006
Tracks 34
Label Trojan
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What The Critics Say
Putting his name on the cover might strongly suggest it, but no, DJ Spooky isn't mixing these tracks. He's a selector -- or in proper Jamaican, "selecta" -- and the tracks on 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records fadeout untouched and unbothered by someone who can twist music like few others when he's inspired. Fans might find this a letdown since the man who defined illbient hasn't floored them with a production album in a while, and a jaw-dropping Trojan mix like Madlib's Blunted in the Bomb Shelter Mix would serve him well. Course, it is what it is and taken as that it's great, thanks in no small part to Spooky's enlightening liner notes. They are part history lesson, part enthusiasm booster with a dash of that Spooky talk that ties together technology and humanity (Spooky on Jamaica: "You can think of the whole culture as a shareware update, a software source for the rest of the world to upload."). Without the liner notes, 50,000 Volts is a pleasurable mix of tunes that unearths some of the seminal reggae label's hidden gems with a heavy emphasis on DJs -- as in the Jamaican sense of the word, not a turntable mixer but a Jamaican rapper -- and oddball cuts that shamelessly bend the rules. The Hollywood horns that dominate Bruce Ruffin's "Rain" and the Dave Brubeck-borrowing "The Russians Are Coming (Take Five)" from Val Bennett prove Spooky loves a gimmick, or the way he sees it, when some genre of music ingeniously borrows or plunders another. The selecta argues that Jamaica was there first and set the wheels in motion, allowing dance music, hip-hop, and eventually pop to borrow and rekindle beats and melodies. Resisting the urge to mash-up these already mashed-up tunes is, in the end, admirable and on point while expectations are adjusted easily once the listener has CD booklet in hand and cultural significance on the brain. To paraphrase Spooky, Jamaica has been doing the musical diaspora thing on the down-low long, long before whatever genre-blending artist you just heard about was coming up with their brew. 50,000 Volts is all the evidence you need and filled with brilliant ideas both in the music and the text. ~ David Jeffries, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Drums of Death is a collaboration between the relentlessly experimental hip-hop of DJ Spooky and drummer Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Fantômas fame. Is this another experiment in metal/hip-hop fusion? Yes, and no. And as such, it works better than most. Lombardo is a heavy metal drummer without peer. His big kit work -- especially his on-the-edge cymbal work and furious tom-tom workouts -- lends a weight and urgency to Drums of Death that anchors it and pushes it further than the inept nu-metal chart acts that shall remain nameless here. Excess is something Spooky has never been afraid of. His records are full of it. Sure, when it doesn't work, it can be tiresome, but when it does, there is no one more utterly engaging. Spooky refuses to be reined in by what musical genres are "supposed" to sound like. Also on board for the project are Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers, Public Enemy's Chuck D (who raps on three radical remakes of tunes from his crew), and former Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid (who appears on about a third of the album's 16 tracks). The science fiction theme on the cover art of Drums of Death is not inconsistent with the suffocatingly paranoid, chaotic futurism that the album offers aurally. The Public Enemy tunes -- "Brother's Gonna Work It Out," "B-Side Wins Again," and "Public Enemy #1" -- work surprisingly well. Dangers' guitar work on "B-Side" is a fine counterweight to D's aggressive delivery, but it is Lombardo whose skittering and punched-up skin throb pushes the thing into the red. Spooky cuts up the breakbeats and an array of sonic washes give the track a new sense of currency. Rapper Dälek guests on "Assisted Suicide," and offers a nocturnal anarcho-political take on hip-hop culture as it collapses in on itself. Reid's freakout guitar drones interlaced with Spooky's loose and loopy turntablism threaded through Lombardo's chopped and spindled breakbeats are the entryway into something entirely new. It's been hinted at before by groups such as King Crimson and Buckethead with Les Claypool, but never with this kind of raw power thud. Reid's power chords and Dangers' bass pulse team wonderfully on "Metatron," as Spooky's alterna-beats and sound effects skew to dubwise extremes that Lombardo is only too happy to indulge with some mind-bending breaks. Drums of Death is far from easy listening, but it is compelling throughout -- never dull, never boring, never rote. It points to a ton of new possibilities in the way hip-hop, electronica, and heavy metal approach and engage with one another, without becoming mired in any of them. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Celestial Mechanix: The Blue Series Mastermix'
Release Date 6/22/2004
Tracks 46
Label Thirsty Ear
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Horns echo over broken beats and voices ping and pong as DJ Spooky takes all of the releases in Thirsty Ear's Blue Series and gives them some serious crinkling, crumpling, and stretching on Celestial Mechanix: The Blue Series Mastermix. The challenge of the Blue Series is to take artists from different genres and break down the stylistic barriers between them. Heavy in concept for sure, but the series has offered up more than its fair share of outstanding records. Many releases have delivered on Thirsty Ear's promise of hearing "the shape of jazz to come," but Celestial Mechanix is all quirky, illbient, and echoing Spooky. Then again, with such a sprawling selection of tracks that are already unclassifiable, what was the guy to do? The tracks on the first disc are remixes that contain "elements" of different Blue Series releases, and it's the lesser of the two discs. If it wasn't for all the flutes, saxes, and the voice of Saul Williams, this could be an old Byzar or mid-period Ben Neill record with that atmosphere-over-direction aesthetic and a good bit of excusable noodling (the exception is Spooky's moving, melancholy, and purposeful take on Craig Taborn's "Shining Through"). Had the mix on CD two been placed first, the collection would work a lot better. Spooky's disc-one constructions pay off on the "anything goes" mixed disc two. It's like listening to some undiscovered late-night radio station where the DJ has excellent taste in music along with a digital delay, and the station's program guide just lists the show's genre as "freeform." It's murky but goes somewhere, and Spooky has somehow come up with a flow to these wildly divergent tracks. Things start with rap, electronics, and dub but end on the jazzy, organic tip with a slow, smooth transition. The whole trip has less to say about the possibilities of music than other Blue Series releases, but as a dubby, guilty pleasure for academics, it works. Slaves to the esoteric, come get your fun. ~ David Jeffries, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Riddim Clash, a collaborative soundclash featuring DJ Spooky's Paul Miller facing off against Twilight Circus Dub Sound System's Ryan Moore, finds Miller being dragged down from his ivory tower to wrestle at ground level with Moore's raw, streetwise dub. The results are very impressive, each artist finding in the other's production style not only differences to spar over but also elements to combine. Moore's contributions include the devotion to classic dub (King Tubby, Augustus Pablo), the inspired percussion consisting of closely miked live drums and technoid basslines, and, best of all, the requisite sense of huge spaces that modern dub creates better than any other music. Miller's contributions are more difficult to decipher, since dub is a heavy influence but not his usual forte. Still, the restlessness of these tracks, the sense of searching for something beyond, speaks to his influence, and he also contributes the production intricacies that make this an excellent headphone record. Riddim Clash also permits solo space for other musicians, including the evocative gypsy style of violin player Daniel Bernard Roumain on the highlight, "Other Planes of Dub." A rare example of collaborative effort where both artists sound refreshed and energized, Riddim Clash marks a high point in the discography of both participants. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
It's the obvious next step for DJ Spooky. Take the tracks he worked over on his groundbreaking Optometry album and give them to various remixers so they can create their own vision of his sound -- a refraction of it, if you will. For the most part, the overworked "dub" tag doesn't really apply, even when he brings in a couple of dub masters like Lee "Scratch" Perry and Mad Professor. But it's a hook to hang it all on. And certainly some of the people here have clear ideas. Karsh Kale, for example, makes a percussive vehicle of "Variation Cybernetique," with tablas unsurprisingly to the fore. It's interesting to compare with Twilight Circus' take on the same piece, which heads toward dreamier realms altogether. Blend offers an almost gamelan sensibility to "Kollage," with plenty of delay creating something quite otherworldly. Negativland's trademark cut-up sensibility comes to "Asphalt," hitting high on the disorientation factor. If you're expecting dub in the Jamaican way -- a remix that's aimed at both feet and head, you won't find it here; this is strictly cerebral. But it's a very successful brain warp that often pushes all the way to the edge (stand up DJ Goo). It makes you wonder if remixes of the remixes might come next, like ripples moving out across a pool. It'd certainly be an interesting idea. In the meantime, be happy with this, a fabulous idea made flesh. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Thirsty Ear's Blue Series has already been host to many progressive jazz projects, among them albums by William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Craig Taborn, Guillermo Brown, Mat Maneri, Tim Berne, and others. The label also did a project with British DJ drum'n'bass duo Spring Heel Jack that was neither a jazz album or a DJ record, but some strange amalgam unto itself. DJ Spooky's Optometry is the next installment in the Blue Series' DJ experiments, and it's one that succeeds on every level. For starters, Optometry is fully a DJ outing and fully a jazz record. The band playing with Spooky is comprised of Parker; Shipp; Brown; Medeski , Martin & Wood's Billy Martin; Joe McPhee; Carl Hancock Rux; and others. Spooky plays bass and kalimba besides his turntables and mixing board. He illustrates, collages, paints, spindles, cuts, and mixes a live performance by the rest of the band. On "Reactive Switching Strategies for the Control of Uninhabited Air," Billy Martin cascades snares and toms in counterpoint to his ride cymbal, setting up a rhythm that is followed by Parker and Shipp. Shipp's playing fleshes out the motif and makes it a modal stretch, and the time signatures fluctuate between four and eight, as Spooky dovetails -- à la Brian Eno -- various timbres and harmonics emitted by the individual musicians, as well as the quartet sound. Slipping keyboard washes in between Shipp's repetitive lines that are big enough for Parker to vamp crazily on, and putting distance in between various segments is the DJ's art here. The title track moves from abstract arpeggiattic saxophone striations by McPhee to phat, dirty, nasty, synth lines from Shipp, playing some combination of the funk in Sun Ra's Lanquidity and Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters. While this is happening, Parker pops and bows his bass to stay alongside the bottom end of the groove for a particularly disorienting effect, as it almost falls apart at the beginning of each chorus. Spooky samples all the proceedings and mirrors them back slightly altered while adding loops and found sounds to break down even the most innate structure in the tune so it has to be built according to memory. Whew! When the scratch attempts to do that, Shipp moves to his acoustic piano, and McPhee comes inside to refract Shipp's lines back to the rhythm section -- which includes Spooky at this point. And this goes on for almost 12 minutes. There is no let up in the creative vibe here; each member attempts to express for the collective. Spooky included. Riff, vamp, timbral fractures, lyrical tension, splintered harmonics, and a constant, seductive sense of groove permeate this jazz album, opening up a door onto a brave new future for a free jazz with soul -- Spooky has exceeded all expectations here. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
DJ Spooky's mix-album trawl through the deep, varied back catalog of Shadow Records is a great mix of laid-back breaks and hip-hop, populated by long-buried tracks from several scenes all over the world. (Granted, Shadow is as much a domestic distributor as it is a record label.) Spooky's mixing is excellent; with deft transitions and great scratching (plus just a bit of post-production), he injects energy into blunted hip-hop from Sharpshooters and DJ Cam, then ups the tempo with a great mini-set of drum'n'bass with highlights from Jack Dangers (the Meat Beat Manifesto main man) and Cujo (aka Amon Tobin). Modern Mantra finally touches down with jazzy, experimental selections from Goo ("The OG") and Spaceways ("Requiem for Ra") and ends by stretching back to early-'90s ambient with Prototype 909 and a closer from Moby's Ambient album of 1993. DJ Spooky compensates for the lack of vocals by dropping a pair of ace Aesop Rock tracks (the album's only outside licensing) and makes a smooth transition from post-millennium sound sculptor Russell Mills to the genesis of Shadow in the early-'90s ambient techno scene. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
