DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid
Gold Teeth Thief
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Spooky’s a gifted self-promoter–he’s probably the most famous-for-being-famous person in postdance culture–but he’s never done justice to the aesthetic he articulated so well on paper. His production work has been scattershot; like his most obvious forebear, Bill Laswell (both play bass, both are highly prolific, both tend to make music that reads better than it sounds), he’s at his best when he focuses instead of sprawling, as on 1998’s almost poppy Riddim Warfare. None of the three live performances I’ve seen–one with a band in support of that record and twice on the decks–has lived up to the hype, and neither does his most recent release, the mix CD Under the Influence, issued in September by the San Francisco global-dance indie Six Degrees.
The ideal DJ-mix CD features artists you’ve never heard of and music you want to hear again and again. But Under the Influence’s track listing is far more impressive than the music. The set is certainly eclectic, ping-ponging from hip-hop to dub to noise-rock to electro-funk, and it’s occasionally effective: Spooky flawlessly replacing the dub trifle “Live Jam” (credited to DJ Spooky vs. Carl Craig’s Innerzone Orchestra) with the 70s funk pastiche of DJ Logic’s “Michelle,” or foreshadowing the inclusion of Saul Williams’s “Twice the First Time” by stringing its vocal hook (“I will not rhyme over tracks / Niggers on the chain gang used to do that way back”) through the track before it, Singe et Verb’s “Hover Dub.”
And though the mix was finished before September 11, its emphasis on Arabic sounds is doubly resonant now. Djivan Gasparyan’s “Dle Yaman,” a meditative instrumental played on an Armenian flute called the duduk, nestles into Funksorung’s ghostly mix of the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Reunited,” whose tense feel is blown apart by the breakbeat shitstorm from an untitled Nettle track. And in the CD’s final sequence, “The Taliban,” a track by Muslimgauze, aka the late British Palestinian sympathizer Bryn Jones, is followed up hard by “Homeless,” one of Paul Simon’s collaborations with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and a gorgeous live cut by singer Miriam Makeba, who spent 30 years in exile from segregated South Africa. DJ /Rupture may not have created a universe with his records, but far more than Spooky, he’s managed to give the globe a good spin.
