[ t e x t . o n l y . v e r s i o n ] [ b y . a l i a s ] Paul D. Miller has a passion for exploration. Be it through his music, art, or writing, he expresses himself through nearly every creative means at his disposal. He is constantly on the look out for new sounds, new ideas, new avenues in which to push the boundaries of expression.
He will discuss such
topics as the paradox of free market economic rationalism with as much
enthusiasm and expertise as his native New York hip hop scene. He is
undoubtedly a worthy spokesperson for the digital age.
Not solely a recording artist, Miller is also an accomplished writer. He is
a contributing editor to the digital arts magazine "Art Byte", while also
contributing to various, art, lifestyle, and culture magazines. Also,
Miller has gained recognition in the visual arts. He has hosted solo
exhibitions and installations and specialises in constructing cross media
forays into sound, conceptual and installation art. Be it through sound or
vision, Miller constantly aims to challenge.
Much of this can be attributed to his upbringing. 'My Dad died when I was a
kid and left me his record collection, and my Mum travelled a lot,' he
explains. 'This music is a natural extension of how I grew up. I was always
educated to be open minded and equipped, so if I saw something that I was
thought was interesting my first inclination was to check it out.'
Miller began exploring his father's records as a way of getting to know the
man who passed away when he was just three years of age and gradually his
interest in musical culture became more like an obsession. He hosted his
own radio show at Bowdoin College, where he had begun studies in French
literature and philosophy and found that he was spinning sounds ranging
from the ska based Specials, to the bottom heavy groove of Trouble Funk and
the Junkyard Band, while also throwing in seminal punk sounds such as Minor
Threat and Bad Brains. Boundaries were always a foreign concept to Miller,
he was much more interested in being nomadic, creating a hybrid. 'There is
no sense of purity, everything is a hybrid,' he asserts. 'Anybody who says
they are pure anything is under illusion. Everything is mixed.
The first recordings under the DJ Spooky banner surfaced in 1996. The remix
compilation "Necropolis" first surfaced on low key independent Knitting
Factory, and the debut proper "Songs Of A Dead Dreamer", was released
through New York label Asphodel, home to such luminaries as Rob Swift, We,
Tipsy and Mixmaster Mike. While "Songs" was essentially an aural
illustration of a conceptual art project aimed at the academic world,
Spooky quickly found himself in the middle of a media buzz.
Remixes for Nick Cave, Metallica, Sublime, and Kim Gordon's Free Kitten
followed, while US pop culture magazine "Spin" stated 'he's got a handful
of LPs that make DJ Shadow sound like Hanson,' and "CMJ" proclaimed "Songs"
to be "one of the most important and satisfying albums of the year.' Spooky
was hot property both in his native New York, and also across the Atlantic
in Europe. In cities where playing a breakbeat record over a house tune was
considered by many as experimental, Spooky showed those people it was
possible to mix all styles -- hip hop, ambient, drum 'n' bass, techno,
classical, traditional -- in a way that proves to be as challenging to the
listener as it is enjoyable. For someone who enjoys a wide range of musical
styles, the end result could not be any different. 'Most people make music
out of their own conditions and that's all,' he states. 'I am a strange
free-floating variable and I float -- that's my thing. I like checking out
different stuff.' DJ Spooky's latest album is a natural progression of the
ambition displayed on "Songs". "Riddem Warfare" is a highly ambitious work
that blends completely opposite styles into a cohesive unit -- in his own
words 'music made from fragments of the world.' It is music that requires
effort from the listener, Spooky challenges you at every turn.
'If you listen to the album it has a lot of different layers and things
going on,' he illustrates. 'Some of it is metaphorical, where even the
basic name of the track conveys something. Like "Mono Ni Kami" [by
acclaimed Japanese artist Mariko Mori] is a Buddhist mantra about
recycling, and that is the last track on the album ("Twilight Fugue"). Or
like "Killah Priest" talking about falling into the ocean of sound, acting
as a sound agent. Or "Kool Keith" rhyming about being schizophrenic walking
around the city and having different aspects of his personality come out.
All of these people who have contributed are radically different people,
and I try as much as possible to use my music as a way to reference the
umbrella of all these communities. You've got to remember that in New York
it's all about boundaries, and how rigidly codified everything is. Like hip
hop is strictly one thing, techno is strictly one thing, ambient is
strictly one thing, you name it, it's all about boundaries. To make a long
story short, my music is all virtual theory.'
"Riddem Warfare" is an album which is basically impossible to pigeonhole.
Spooky utilises an astounding array of instruments and sounds to adequately
recreate his ideas aurally. Keyboard, acoustic guitar, trumpet, tribal
percussion, and tambourine are used in conjunction with samplers,
turntables, and electric guitar. It's hard to imagine such people as Kool
Keith, Killah Priest, Pharaoh Monch, Prince Poetry and Sir Menelik,
appearing on the same album as Arto Lindsay, Thurston Moore, and Mariko
Mori; yet somehow Spooky pulls it off with ease. 'I can only imagine
Thurston Moore, Killah Priest, and Kool Keith in the same room, with Mariko
Mori strolling buy singing a Buddhist mantra about recycling, on this
album,' Miller explains. 'They would never meet in real life. The album is
just a dream mix tape I wanted to make.'
Miller also has high praise for the MCs that guest throughout "Riddem
Warfare", and the role they played in shaping the finished product. 'I like
the way Kool Keith rhymes and I like his lyrical content, I think he is a
really talented MC. At the same time there are these other people -- like
Sir Menelik, Killah Priest. Organized Konfusion -- who deal with the
abstract. Take for example Bobby Digital, RZA's thing. He should have put
the movie out first, and then put the album out. The lyrics didn't conjure
up enough imagery as much they could have. If you listen to a Killah Priest
track you are all of a sudden in a verbal world, you are given a whole
sense of poetry as a way of exploring your own bounds. These days there is
so much uncertainty, and no one is exactly sure of where any origins
evolved from.'
Not purely a studio bod, Spooky is also in constant demand behind the
decks. Djing has taken Spooky to nearly every city around the world, and
through the Soundlab collective, in which Spooky is a founding member, he
has played a pivotal role in establishing the experimental electronic scene
known by many as 'illbient' -- a term used to basically describe the
indescribable, a place where different styles and flavours meet to create a
melting pot of dynamic sounds. As with most movements, Soundlab started out
of frustration. 'We were all bewildered and annoyed with the establishment
scene in downtown New York,' states Miller. 'I was broke, starving and
living in a junkyard, and a friend of mine was an artist who started an
artist's collective. We would throw parties in the junkyard, and I would go
out of my way to invite people who were from really totally different
scenes and put them under the same roof. The parties started becoming a
place where people could walk around and check out different stuff -- which
to me wasn't that big a deal -- but for the audience they were shocked.
They were used to going to an event and just hearing the same style all
night, and not only would we just put different people in the same space,
we were putting art objects and sculptures around everywhere, in a sense
that the whole area was radically different and these different elements
were conflicting with one another and clashing. The parties became more and
more popular because we tried as much as possible to give different people
a place to check out different styles, and provide some kind of place to
come together. Now the place I used to hold my parties is now paved over
and home to some condominiums.'
Miller is far from purely a DJ. 'I play bass, I also play many different
instruments, and just try to make a creative refracturing of music. The
turntable is used often just to create crazy scratching -- and that's cool
and I like that -- but I am much more interested in reconstructure. To me
scratching is deconstruction, to me reconstruction is looking for a
correspondence between different effects, and trying to turn them into a
seamless space and sometimes going out of line. I'll scratch and play bass
at the same time, and sometimes it amazes and astounds the audience, but
it's just the way for me to have a good time. At the end of the day it's
all about being nomadic, and again dealing with culture, in a place where
despite the critics, and despite everyone else, people want to check out
new stuff, and you can be much more open when you are nomadic. I think that
is why I am able to pull this off, I mean when I play people are willing to
check me out and try to wrap their ears around new styles. I call it being
actionary, rather than reactionary, always trying to find new ways to flip
the script. If that pisses off certain conservative critics then fuck 'em.'
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