Andy aka Deviand is one of the ideologist and pushers of Community Skratch Games – an event that unites people intrested in Skratch, live music and video perfomance, parties in unusual places, travelling and sharing their knowledges.
In this story, Andy, will tell us about collecctive, about his feelings about music, about music and things he inspired by.
Deviant – Scunga Time (A Tribute To Flying Buttresses) by Deviant & Naive Ted
We founded the Community Skratch Games out of frustration, the only time all the skratch DJs in Ireland would ever meet up would be at the DMC battles. We planned on having a little “skratch party” in the house but the idea was too popular so we had to move it to the pub! It has grown from a one day event to a free four day festival, with workshops, improvised noise music, freestyle battle, DJ & producer showcases and a big bag of meat.
There are no defined roles in the collective, the festival is mainly run by Jimmy Penguin, Chiwawa Studios and I, but there are so many people involved who volunteer their time, the whole event is not for profit. All performers get a small amount of money for travel and a bed/couch. This is very important to us as it means only people who really want to be there will come.
The collective has grown out of this event. We journeyed on the 2nd Community Skratch Tour in August, taking in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Berlin, London, Bristol and Brighton and featuring performances from G.O.D, Oslo Flow, Epigon a.d:m, Melodica Deathship, DJ Clockwork, nemployed Superheroes and us of course! Also we founded the free music label, which has just reached 23 releases. We promote one-off events when the time is right such as Gaslamp Killer, Egadz, DJ Pain and fundraising events for the festival throughout the year.
“We are all newcomers. I’ve been using records for 14 years and I still think of myself as a baby of music.”
Vince Mack Mahon is Mikey Fingers, Tweek, Jimmy Penguin and me. We started Vince Mack Mahon in 2007. It was originally a one-off to promote a CD release I had made. The response we got was phenomenal, most likely because most people had never seen that shit live in front of their eyes before, four weird looking blokes with four turntables making horrible noises!
It’s difficult to pinpoint one gig as being better than any other. The first Vince Mack Mahon performances were amazing for us. During that time we inhabited an alternate “skratch bubble”, the four of us lived by the sea in house outside the city. Skratch music was all consuming, so the performances were a real release of dedication, and a definite indication that what we were doing was worthwhile. We often played as Vince Mack Mahon and The Entourage, which included performance artist Rocky Meaney, creating live drawings to our music with violent body movements, rappers Sebi C and Muipead, drummer Tony Higgins and a band of musicians, improvising full shows. During this time we played all over Ireland, one of our first performances was supporting D-Styles at the DEAF festival which was a huge deal for all of us, being as he is a major influence on our work.
We worked with performance artists, rappers, musicians, whoever wanted to come improvise with us. For two years we did every gig we got offered, played festivals, shitty little pubs, community halls, record shops, wherever, whenever. We released the record in 2008, got well reviewed and we sold a few, and shortly after we stopped performing as a quartet due to the usual band shit. It was difficult to get the time to rehearse when we no longer lived together. It’s not financially viable either when you have to split peanuts in a four ways! We still do improvised performances from time to time and all still work on each other’s projects.
I’m originally from Killarney, a town in the south of Ireland. DJ Noize’s 96 DMC world final set was the jump off point for my interest in turntables, I got my first set that year and I was 15 at that time. Spent a lot of time in my bedroom, played a lot of gigs, started making music in 2005, it’s the usual musician story really, not very exciting.
Skratch influences were many when I began in the mid/late 90s, you had Invisibl Skratch Picklz, DJ Disk, D-Styles, X-Men, DJ Swamp, DJ Faust, Beat Junkies, A-Trak, Craze, there was a constant stream of crazy shit coming out. Then D-Styles dropped “Phantazmagorea” and we all shit in our pants. The Ned Hoddings and Bastard Language DVDs were highly influential. We all thought the revolution was coming, SKRATCH MUSIC had been born, this had nothing to do with battling, nothing to do with showmanship, this was anti-bodytricks, this was about content, about musical progression and virtuosity, composition via juxtaposition. Then, I knew it was on. And I knew I had to make my contribution.
“Born in 1981. Wrote this in 2011. Shit went down in between. None of it is really your business. I like Tea. Fags. Wrestling. Long walks and socialising.”
My studio is just a turntable, a mixer, a loop pedal, a lot of records and a software multitracker, there are no digital effects or programming. I like the beauty of dischord, the small mistakes, the pops and crackles, atonality, human artifacts within the music. Some people can do this with computers. I can’t.
I’m mastering my music at Chiwawa Studios, I record the bones of the track in my house, I bring it to Chiwawa, and we record live overdubs and mix it down. We make no use of effects or programming. Yet. They make it sound better. Life would be a lot more difficult for us without Chiwawa. We love Chiwawa.
My music is definitely about time, and the juxtaposition of existing musical (or non-musical too) elements to create something new. The aesthetic is “broken”, I don’t like things to be clean and quantized and polished. The music is held together with sticky tape, in danger of falling apart at any moment, it’s the ability to create harmony from chaos. If there is an overall theme in my work (and I’m not sure there is), time and the manipulation of time are key elements.
Skratch music isn’t really a genre in itself. It is a method of creation. My method is very strict. All sounds you hear in my music come from either records or sounds created using the turntable or microphone input. Pure skratch music involves no digital manipulation, everything is done by hand. There are very few people making music this way, most “turntablists” (what a shitty word!) who produce music don’t make skratch music, they skratch on top of electronically created sounds. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but it’s not for me, and it’s not skratch music. I don’t really care how other people do it to be honest, good music is good music, the artist must find a method that works for him. If you can make good music with a pair of socks, some cheese and a metal pipe then go ahead and do it! Art is overrun by software now, this is not in itself a negative development but it has led to a generic and homogenous sound across the board. Utilizing a different approach helps to create an individual, idiosyncratic sound.
I can get my inspiration from an old Invisibl Skratch Picklz record, or a Mark Rothko painting, or an overheard conversation in the butcher shop. The old woman who shuffles around Shantalla smoking fags all day. The Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe series of matches from 2006. From my dirty kitchen floor. From traditional Irish music on a Sunday afternoon. From regrets. From the blemishes on my face. From Ghostface Killah. From cigarettes. From Tea. From Guinness. From urban decay, I fucking love shitty parts of town, peeling paint, crap graffiti, old abandoned buildings. From jazz, folk and gospel. From churches. From rural pubs inhabited by grumpy old men. Art is a filter for all of these experiences. We attempt to channel all these disparate influences into music. In my opinion this is the hip-hop aesthetic, a bastard culture (mis)appropriating artifacts from the environment and recontextualising of these finds, creating a new work in an attempt to convey a feeling or a thought.
“I have no goals beyond making this music and showing other people how to make this music. I don’t care if it’s popular. I don’t mind if people think it’s.”
My ideal party is The Community Skratch Games! We do it as much for selfish reasons as any noble aspirations of entertaining and educating the public.
One of my favorite producers from Russia is Lapti, the Moscow producer. He really needs to release some shit soon! I’ve had his Monday Jazz mix on heavy rotation in my house for a long time now. His music is so human, it actually breathes, pulsates. This level of expression is very difficult for electronic and sample based musicians to achieve. I admire his approach a lot.
The only advice I would have for any artist is to follow your heart. Trust your own instincts. Be honest with yourself. Don’t be afraid to learn from others, learn the history of your chosen discipline and attempt to transcend it, never forget inspiration is all around you.
Of course I’m constantly inspired by the people around me here: Mikey Fingers, Tweek and Jimmy Penguin constantly surprise me with their new shit. Madek is another young dude here who’s made a great impact so far, a really nice take on electronic composition and live instrumentation. Laminator and Noid the Droid are two Galway based DJs, they’ve really opened my eyes to lots of shit over the years. They run Bap To The Future, a hip-hop/bass-music night in Galway City and are outstanding DJs. They’ve been flying under the radar for a bit, best kept secret type ish. MyNameIsJohn’s LP is another great kick in the arse for us all, really well put together, a logical progression of cut-and-paste type composition that is neither gimmicky nor po-faced academic shit. Shit to blaze to or snap your neck to. It’s a free release too so well worth checking out. He also kills it live, one turntable “super” DJing! SixFootApprentice has also been bubbling under for a while now, mixes up all sorts of shit, digitally but from a hip-hop perspective, quick edits, tight mixes, keeps it bangin. Christ I could go on and on……T-Wok, Rumbus Merrylegs, Rubble Digits, DJ Mayhem, Tu-Ki, Mek, Bitwise Operator, Junior85, Laura Sheeran, Lethal Dialect/Working Class Army, Peter Curtin, PCP, Jeremy Murphy, Code, Dal Kas, C!ties…..it’s not bad over here these days, lots to be inspired by!
On the skratch side of things there’s a few people who really stand out. Oslo Flow! Oslo Flow! Oslo Flow! Seriously, anyone that’s into cutting needs to check these fuckers out. I haven’t been this excited about freestyle skratching in yeeeeeeears. Obviously there’s a certain amount of bias here because they are affiliates of ours. Community Skratch is keeping me inspired I guess, with Oslo Flow, G.O.D., Bedlam Mind, Neil Bucannon and so many others on board it really is a good starting point for current skratch music.
Talking about my latest ep “Send In The Hounds” I can say that it is a further exploration into skratch music, composed entirely with a turntable, mixer, loop pedal and multi-tracking. We took Irish folk music as a starting point, most songs contain only Irish music samples, culled from both my own small collection of dusty trad records and those of a friend. We’ve tried to incorporate these traditional elements into our existing practice, not as a gimmick but as a legitimate appreciation of the source material, while creating something modern that is not merely a rehash of existing material, more a complete re-imagining and recontenxtualisation. It is released thru Community Skratch Music, on 12″ vinyl now, and in digital format June 2011.
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And in conclusion, there are some words about music that Andy listenning to, with a number of advices and recomendations.
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Roc Marciano – “Marcberg” was one of the best rap LPs in quite a while, putting New York back on the map!
Melodica Deathship – “Doom Your Cities, Doom Your Towns” is an amazingly realized piece of work. They make seafaring experimental hip-hop shit, the whole concept is executed with serious verve, a real individual, idiosyncratic spin on modern hip-hop.
Jeremiah Jae is killing it right now, “Lunch Special Pt. III” hasn’t been off my iPod since I got it, really amazing sonics, like it’s buried in miles of dust and dirt but incredibly beautiful throughout.
Listening to lots of older 90′s rap stuff again, Heltah Skeltah’s first record and Jay-Z “Reasonable Doubt” on heavy rotation. I try not to get stuck in a retro mire though, it’s a problem I see in lots of people’s music, appearing the “golden era” sound while bringing nothing new to the table.
SertOne is a young producer I’ve been following for a while, I really admire his take on modern hip-hop, it’s a very current, well-produced sound but, again, done with panache and individuality, check out his remix of Crystal Castles, shit is BANGIN.
I always find myself going back to American guitarist John Fahey, his albums “The Yellow Princess” and “Blind Joe Death” in particular. The dude had away with melody; he really seems to speak with his music even though it’s instrumental.
I listen to lots of old blues, Son House, Charley Patton, Mississipi Sheikhs etc. I think it’s the rawness of the recordings that really piqued my interest in that era of music. I first heard of Leadbelly thru Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged CD when I was a teenager, I like to see the evolutionary lines my tastes have taken over the years, I get a similar buzz from some ol’ braggadocious blues song as I do a Sean Price hood rap joint.
Deviant socials: Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook,
Community Skratch Games socials: Facebook, Bandcamp, Youtube.
www.nozlrecordings.com