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DJ/Rupture, "Special Gunpowder"
DJ/Rupture puts on a master class on how to synthesize influences into something completely new.
Tigerbeat6
Picture this: you're taking an ethnomusicology class as an elective and it turns out that the professor is not only the campus' most highly touted party DJ, but he's also the advisor for the student activist group and the organizer of a weekly poetry slam. All this wrapped into one person would seem too good to be true if I hadn't spent the last couple weeks trying to dissect the different personalities of the man known as DJ/Rupture as laid out in his newest LP, Special Gunpowder. I'm still wondering how he pulls it all together. The truth is that DJ/Rupture's putting on a master class with this record in how to synthesize influences without either ripping them off or pandering to an audience who wants the flavor but not the substance. With a gaggle of guests helping out on everything from drum beats to sung and spoken vocals to programming, Special Gunpowder finds DJ/Rupture trading in his role as DJ for that of bandleader, in a sense. While this record under his own name is far more disparate in its attentions than recent work from Rupture's band-proper, Nettle, it does work as a perfect go-between for a talented DJ/Producer who is used to mashing things up and dropping the science in equal doses. While the production is a bit uneven from track to track (due in part to the many guest musicians and their input, no doubt) the whole thing is held together by a sincere love of rhythms and melodies, no matter their origin. And if those beats and words can be used in service of some sort of socially-conscious message, even better! Some will undoubtedly find the skipping back and forth from genre and culture and language to be a slight distraction, but anyone familiar with Rupture's DJ mixes should be able to keep up and will appreciate the album's raucous dancehall and rap alongside its playful tropicalia and folk songs. As always, DJ/Rupture remains one to watch, and Special Gunpowder is his most accomplished and mature work to date, leaving me only to wonder what he's got left for the next record.
Picture this: you're taking an ethnomusicology class as an elective and it turns out that the professor is not only the campus' most highly touted party DJ, but he's also the advisor for the student activist group and the organizer of a weekly poetry slam. All this wrapped into one person would seem too good to be true if I hadn't spent the last couple weeks trying to dissect the different personalities of the man known as DJ/Rupture as laid out in his newest LP, Special Gunpowder. I'm still wondering how he pulls it all together. The truth is that DJ/Rupture's putting on a master class with this record in how to synthesize influences without either ripping them off or pandering to an audience who wants the flavor but not the substance. With a gaggle of guests helping out on everything from drum beats to sung and spoken vocals to programming, Special Gunpowder finds DJ/Rupture trading in his role as DJ for that of bandleader, in a sense. While this record under his own name is far more disparate in its attentions than recent work from Rupture's band-proper, Nettle, it does work as a perfect go-between for a talented DJ/Producer who is used to mashing things up and dropping the science in equal doses. While the production is a bit uneven from track to track (due in part to the many guest musicians and their input, no doubt) the whole thing is held together by a sincere love of rhythms and melodies, no matter their origin. And if those beats and words can be used in service of some sort of socially-conscious message, even better! Some will undoubtedly find the skipping back and forth from genre and culture and language to be a slight distraction, but anyone familiar with Rupture's DJ mixes should be able to keep up and will appreciate the album's raucous dancehall and rap alongside its playful tropicalia and folk songs. As always, DJ/Rupture remains one to watch, and Special Gunpowder is his most accomplished and mature work to date, leaving me only to wonder what he's got left for the next record.samples:
- No Heathen (Blacksmith Mix) (ft. Wicked Act)
- Flop We (ft. Junior Cat)
- Mole in the Ground (ft. Sindhu Zagoren)
