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Dub Champions Festival Launch party
FaltyDL (Ninja Tune)
RSD
(Rob Smith/Smith& Mighty/Tectonic/Punch Drunk/Reggae Roast)
DJ Kiva (Adios Babylon/Dubspot)
SET TIMES:
10 pm: DJ KIVA
11:15 pm: RSD
1:15 am: FaltyDL
RSD, perhaps better known as Bristol bass music stalwart Rob Smith and one half of the respected production duo Smith and Mighty, has been pushing bass heavy rhythms for more than two decades.
Forming the, now legendary, production duo Smith and Mighty with collaborator Ray Mighty in 1987, the pair’s early releases on the Three Stripe label were influential in laying the groundwork for both the trip hop and jungle scenes for which Bristol would become renowned.
As well as their own releases, they take production credit for Massive Attacks first release ’Any Love’ and Fresh Fours top ten hit ’Wishing on a star’.
From there it went to a world-wide respected musical career as Smith & Mighty – with world-tours and releases on K7 – including the now legendary DJ Kicks Mix series.
Rob remains firmly at the forefront of Bristol’s endlessly inventive music scene, with a staggering discography and a range of projects encompassing dub, drum and bass, 2-step and dubstep, Rob Smith has his finger squarely on the bass-pulse.
Under the moniker RSD, Rob Smith produces fresh, innovative bass music that simultaneously pays dues to his deep soundsystem roots while pushing things ever forward.
He comfortably adapts to the rolling, sub- heavy rhythms of dubstep. With releases on respected labels including Punch Drunk, Earwax, Tectonic, Black Box and Moonshine, RSD’s sound is typified by impossibly heavy soundsystem-testing sub-lines and junglist dub breaks.
On the DJ front, RSD is constantly touring the world, he stopped in Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, Slovenia – toured through Asia (China, Japan, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam) and of course performed all over the UK – the summer months are filled with festival, outdoor and club gigs in Finland, Ukraine, France, Slovakia, Poland, UK’s Glastonbury festival and as resident DJ at Croatia´s Outlook Festival, and as a glorious end to a very busy 2011, RSD performed on New Year´s Eve at the massive Electronic Ballroom event in Tokyo alongside Francois K, Goth-Trad and DJ Kentaro from Ninja Tune Japan plus many others. in 2012, Rob was reunited with Ray Mighty for a massive Tokyo date with Mad Professor.
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.
FaltyDL
FaltyDL's Spotlight page on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds
FaltyDL – Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and pictures at Last.fm
DJ KIVA
DJ Kiva is the founder of NYC based recording studio and record label, Adios Babylon.
Kiva has released numerous albums and has produced and remixed for many soul, reggae, & dance music artists. His style blends elements of dub, afro-cuban, soul, hip hop, and futuristic electronics. He has delivered his music through high energy performances and DJ sets at live events from Brooklyn to Berlin.
His production and remixes have been released on such labels as Adios Babylon, Destroy All Concepts, King Tubbys Dub Heritage Foundation, Bagpak, Tommy Boy, and Kindred Spirits. His music has received airplay on BBC’s 1Xtra and Sirius Satellite Radio. He has appeared as a guest speaker & performer on Public Enemy founder Hank Shocklee's Producer Panel at Remix magazine's "Remix Hotel NYC" event. Kiva has toured extensively around the globe as live guitarist for hip hop groups “Shape of Broad Minds” and "Willie Isz" featuring Jneiro Jarel and Khujo Goodie of Goodie Mob and has performed at such festivals as Sonar (Spain), Hove (Norway), Roskilde (Denmark), and Montreaux Jazz (Switzerland).
DJ Kiva is an Ableton Live certified trainer; he currently teaches electronic music production at New York City DJ & Music Production School Dubspot, mentoring and sharing knowledge to a new generation of upcoming producers from around the world.
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Adios Babylon's Spotlight page on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds
Music | Adios Babylon
Dubspot Instructor Spotlight - Video Profile: Kiva (Adios Babylon / Brooklyn) Dubspot BlogDubspot Blog
Sky Cities mix : Sky Cities : DJ Kiva : 12.08.13 by Adios Babylon on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds
Beauty + Ruin mix: Beauty+Ruin DJ Kiva by Adios Babylon on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds
DUB CHAMPIONS FESTIVAL ::::: NYC Sept 22-26
The fourth annual Dub Champions Festival returns to New York City to celebrate the influential style known as dub, from the reggae roots to the future of electronic bass music, featuring one of a kind performances & educational workshops by the legendary artists from Jamaica who invented dub as well as the latest innovators from around the globe who have continued to push the influential style forward in electronic music and beyond. NYC label Subatomic Sound began the mission four years ago developing a week long festival here in the city that has included NYC, DC, Philadelphia, and Boston, as well as expanded to Europe over the past two years and debuted this year on the West Coast in California.
Dub Champions Festival
Dub Champions Fest (DubChampions) on Twitter
