Yes, Dutty Artz is a recording label with actual (and digital) records in stores, tremendously talented musicians, one extremely dedicated operative, and supporters.

Here’s a tune from DUTTY REMIX ZERO which is still fresh in the stores. This remix is great, but you should really hear SHADETEk’s “Can’t Breathe” remix.
[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Cauto-BonaVida.mp3]
Cauto – Bona Vida

Rupture and JahDan are in the middle of their UK trek. If you are in the area, go and see them! Something wonderful happens when these two are together. Check DATV001 for proof.


(pic by Sr Atlantico)

We also got teh mixes –

[audio:https://duttyartz.com/mp3/GekoJones_live_on_WFMU.mp3]
Geko Jones New York Tropical; live on WFMU is still up + popping.

[audio:http://nyc.duttyartz.com/mp3s/Taliesin-BassBinShit.mp3]
Taliesin got some dark dark dark for ya… Well, it ain’t so dark, but it is.

Jahdan Blakkamoore: We Are Raiders 12

Jahdan Blakkamoore: We Are Raiders, presented by Matt Shadetek and DJ /Rupture will be in your shops on July 7th. We’ve been labbed up and working hard to get this first taste into the world as quickly as possible while finishing the full length that these songs are taken from, and now: it’s here! Well, in a few days anyway. But trust me, unlike some of our past infinitely receding release dates, this one actually exists (camphone evidence by Geko Jones):

jd camphone art

It will be available in CD, digital and 12″, with instrumentals and a bonus tune on the CD and digital, vinyl is the four vocals only (CD cover pictured).

The CD EP tracklist is as follows:

1. Buss It Pon Dem (Produced by Chancha Via Circuito, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

2. Nice Green (Produced by me, Matt Shadetek, New York City, USA)

3. Go Round Payola (Matt Shadetek)

4. Pon Time (Produced by Stereotyp, Vienna, Austria)

5. Pure Riddim (Bonus Instrumental, Matt Shadetek)

6. Payola Riddim (Matt Shadetek)

7. Nice Green Riddim (Matt Shadetek)

8. Varela (Chancha Via Circuito)

Pre-order yours now (and hear samples) from Boomkat or Cargo, distribution by Cargo (UK & Europe) and Traffic (USA).

Jahdan and Rupture will be in the UK this month on tour promoting the release. Get dates and more info from Qujunktions.

Also get a sneak preview of Nice Green off the EP over at my myspace, along with Go Round Payola.

First, here’s an all Steve Gurley mix I’ve been listening to quite a lot lately. I am flagrantly ripping this from the dubstepforum, where it was ripped from Uptown Music Forum, where it was posted about a year ago. The mix was done by someone named AverageJoe, an ordinary DJ with a funny Homer Simpson gif as his MySpace default.

Steve Gurley Mix

***

And now some pictures from last Friday.

The first is of Mr Eliel Lucero skankin’ (to some really good Roots music Matt was playing earlier in the night) in his brand new Dutty Artz tee! Get yours!

And here I am, standing around (yeah, i’m mad bcuz i’m only) in my plain old regular tee— waiting for that lite tropical pink.

And here’s Yellowman, AKA Geko Jones. This man spins and dances behind the decks like a mutha, (but then again, he falls into a state of deep concentration at times.) I’m not sure who’s the better dancer behind the decks, Matt or Gex? I don’t think Rupture dances behind his decks. Maga Bo doesn’t either. Well, I’ve never seen them dance behind their turntables anyway. Have you? If you have, I need photo-or videographic evidence of these two men getting down.

Maga Bo, author of Archipelagoes —a monster I can’t find the words to describe—, here manning the controls at the bottom of a bluest ocean with weird fishes and creatures swimming over his head and around him, while at the same time modeling tee shirts by designer Ghislain Poirier. Oh, Big Poppa Ghis (© Rupture), thanx 4 D Gros Beats. One beer wasn’t enough.

(I don’t have a single picture of Matthew Shadetek for some reason, and the man wasn’t scarce either. I apologize for that.)

And the people, the people, the party people…

Yes, lady on the left can shake it like a salt shaker.

My, my.. dazzling, beautiful brown eyes…

Go ladies.. all you stereotype ladies

Getting hazy and sweaty right about here.

Goodnight.

Much respect to Benga for being open about how he makes his dubstep tunes. Some people are insecure about sharing their studio knowledge, but those that know know that its really not about process, technique or ‘secrets’ but as 77Klash says “Music is a combination of vibes and energy.” If you’re a producer quite a lot of this is stuff that you know, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and if you’re young or aspiring you might get some real useful stuff from this. Big up to Future Music for filming this and putting it on Youtube. If you don’t know who Benga is he’s responsible for this past years HUGE dubstep anthem “Night” with Coki, also check for his album Diary of an Afro Warrior.

Part One

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_6RitUOONI[/youtube]

Part Two

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACSqPEYER_s&feature=related[/youtube]

Part Three

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuyIXZ4XthA&feature=related[/youtube]

I’ve been getting more and more into the whole youtube thing lately and I’ve noticed a lot of people are using it as a jukebox or a place to quickly find songs. We like that, so we decided to stick the tracks from our new EP Dutty Remix Zero by me and Cauto up on there. Here they are complete with my own public-access-esque graphic accompaniment. Wondering why there’s this amazing low-fi yet consistent graphic design aesthetic through all the DA visual branding? It’s because instead of trying to press-gang any of our friends who are actual graphic designers into doing art for no money and put up with our vague and annoying feedback and everything thereby taking forever we just decided to do it all in-house, specifically, my house. Witness my simple yet devastatingly powerful deployment of the black box, stock type-face and gradient tool. Dun know the photoshop skillz. For your listening, embedding, re-blogging pleasure.

MATT SHADETEK SIDE:

GIRLFRIEND REMIX:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIxBoFg8zmI[/youtube]

CAN’T BREATHE REMIX:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asDfiV7IQbY[/youtube]

CAUTO SIDE:

OLD SCHOOL:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5hO554GCk[/youtube]

BONA VIDA:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du5NAT3YpAE[/youtube]

Check the Dutty Artz Youtube Channel for more stuff you might have missed.

Buyable only on vinyl from fine independent retailers everywhere or wholesale through Cargo distribution.

UK: Juno, Boomkat, Norman.

US: Turntable Lab.

Japan: Cisco.

is FINALLY in the UK shops! we had ALL MANNER of production delays on this one, but now that Dutty Artz has turned on, we can safely say that we’re gonna keep sprinting for a long time to come.

you can cop the 12″ at Boomkat and many other fine shoppes

here’s the Boomkat review: “Two of our favourite rhythm and bass scholars Matt Shadetek and DJ/Rupture join forces to present their new imprint Dutty Artz, dedicated to dubstep/grime tempo bangers with a four track disc rammed full of primed dancefloor winners. Matt Shadetek brings up the A-side with ‘Can’t breathe remix’, taking advantage of his outsider position within the scene to draw a number of significantly heavy strands of plasticky synth ridden grime styles with R’n’B styled vox and a killer conga pattern reminding us of Skepta’s crazy ‘stageshow riddim’. The real shocker on this side is the insanely effective ‘Girlfriend rmx’, obviously inspired by the ghetto house styles currently ruling sections of African dancefloors at the moment and spilling into Grime and Funky London styles, Matt kills it with a charging batty wriggler riddim with heavily autotuned vox and stupid fresh bass for a cut that is guaranteed to liven up any floor.

Cauto keep up the pressure built on the A-side with an mean update of Shy FX’s classic ‘Original nuttah’ augmenting the original vocals and licks with a dubstep/breakstep riddim and freshened bass rubs that will be demanding a lot of attention very soon. ‘Bona vida’ leaves us on cool dubbers tips, structuring a forward thinking dub riddim in the finest Disrupt style, before adding some angular breaks to wipe any dancefloor dilettantes, rough styyyyles. This is definitely an imprint to be keeping a close eye on in the future, and a definite must buy for any fans of Werk, Hyperdub, Hot Flush, Heatwave, or any of Ruptures legendary mixtapes. Well recommended!!”

UK low-end bredren Sinden started off his (highly influential & generally awesome) Kiss FM radio show last night with the Cauto stormer from Dutty Remix Zero, Bona Vida! Tracklist. Seems like you can stream it back here for a week, although are my computer & I am not smart enough to make it work for us.

cauto

[Cauto]

Across the Atlantic, on my radio show last nite we aired an exclusive set by another Londoner, bassline/grime producer Dexplicit. Listen back. This will be available as a podcast soon.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrVmEQIsWmw[/youtube]Boom! The first episode of Dutty Artz Television (aka DATV#001) lands with a bang and crash.

Check out the DA family repping at NYC’s original and best dubstep night Dub War. DJ /Rupture, Geko Jones and Jahdan pon mic. It was a wicked night, the sound was booming, the vibes were strong and Rupture dropped a whole bunch of exxxclusive Dutty material including a bunch of tunes by myself. Check the video and watch my Can’t Breathe Remix fuck up the place when it drops. Starting the episode is new producer Cauto from Barcelona’s Bona Vida another BIG tune that will be out very soon, along with the Can’t Breathe Remix on our first release DA00 DUTTY REMIX ZERO 12″.

Shout out to Dave Q from Dub War, we did a great interview but the sound didn’t come thru, we’ll get you next time fam. Shouts to everyone who was in the building: Elliel and 3rd Rayl from Funkworthy Sound, Human, DJ Child from PGM, Twin Sounds, Star Eyes from T&B, Secret Agent Gel, NRON, Lamin, First City Crew and all the ravers raving!

Watch this space and our new YouTube channel for further episodes and updates, upcoming features include our own NYC Street Fashion coverage and Cooking with the Family, a segment where we watch our musician friends cook their favorite dishes.

Available in both downloadable Podcast and YouTube formats. iTunes compatibility coming soon (fuck apple).

Podcast:

[display_podcast]

mobb deep purple vision

I remember the first time I heard slowed down, or screwed music. I
was in an old lincoln towncar, driving through Orlando, FL with a dude
named Cleon. It was hot as hell, and me and some guys from NY were
down there shooting a no budget gangster flick. We shot in the hotel
we were sleeping two to a bed in and used real guns for ‘props’.
Driving around during the day in the heat Cleon would play these
slowed down CDs that this dude Pookie Duke (who was also acting in the
film) would make using a cassette machine and a CD burner. Anything
was fair game, erika badu (sounding like a man talking about tyrone
slowed down, yikes), michael jackson, and lots and lots of southern
rap that I had never heard of. Usually just bare drum machine beats
and people saying violence. Slowed down, high out of my mind as I was
most of that week, in that heat, it sounded absolutely satanic. I
asked Cleon about it and he explained: “Well, during the day, when
you’re driving, you listen to the slowed down one. Then at night at
the club you listen to the fast one. But boy, if that DJ in the club
played the slowed down, he would have a riot. People would just get
TOO crunk.” I went to that club (still cant remember the name) and I
could see what he meant. Certain songs couldn’t get played halfway
through, even at regular speed. People would get too hype and start
fighting. Sort of like grime raves in the UK, and why they banned
“Pow”. But after hearing that stuff, and how demonic it was, I
couldn’t get the slowed down idea out of my head. Afterwards I
learned about DJ Screw and the whole codeinated Houston slowed down
scene, and got pretty into that. My two favorite from that style if
you’re looking for something to check are the S.L.A.B. – The Anthem
album slowed down, and David Banner’s first album slowed down by Michael 5000 Watts (jpeg on link is wrong but tracklist is right).

The slowed down hook has now become a staple of American commercial
rap, and lately some American Dubstep producers have started using
slowed down voices in their tracks too. I was out at Dub War and
heard some of these played and decided to make one of my own. I
picked one of my most favorite songs of all time, Mobb Deep’s “Shook
Ones”. I originally just wanted to use the acapella phrase that my track starts with.

“I’m only 19 but my mind is old and when things get for real my warm
heart turns cold”

I was gonna take that, make that a hook and give it to one of my 19
year old grime mc friends in London. But then I got bored with that
idea and felt that the drop wasn’t quite hard or deep enough and just
decided to sample the whole chorus, slowed down, with the beat in
there, and give the track a bit more of a opiated houston vibe. The results
are here, in 320 mp3 format.

Download it, play it, voice on it, do whatever you want with it.

It’s a big bait illegal sample so you’ll have a hard time making money with it, plus I just don’t care that much.

Lately I’ve been pretty down on the whole music industry, and
especially making money inside it. It’s kind of pathetic. Some
people I know fight and struggle so hard to make a living from music,
and I did that for a few years too. Now that I’m back in NYC though I
make non-music money, and it’s so easy compared to music it’s like a
bad joke. And because I’m not putting economic pressure on my music,
I’ve been enjoying making music again. It’s kind of a fucked up. The
most fucked up part about it is, considering the amount of money most
people I know make selling copies of their music (cd, vinyl, mp3,
whatever), it’s basically not even worth it. The only money worth
making is performance money, and the occasional license to TV or a
video game, and for those reasons it may actually turn out that giving
away all your music for free on the internet will actually make you
MORE money. Hopefully the whole industry will collapse in one final
fit of coked up executive self-defeatery very soon and we, the
artists, will be able to figure out some new way that actually works
for us economically. My best idea so far is something like the TV
tax in the UK. Everything is free on the internet (like it already
is) and iff you own a computer or mp3 player you pay a yearly tax to
the government and they pay publishing money to the artists. Either
that or build that tax into mp3 players and internet service charges.
iPods for example, have been making Apple a SHITLOAD of money based on
the non-advertised idea that the player is expensive, but the music is
free. I want some of that money Steve Jobbs.

I’ll be DJing at NYC’s DubWar party tonight, Friday Dec. 21. My set happens soon after midnite. Jah Dan will join me, blessing the mic. want to hear what 2008 will sound like? Come on thru.

I’m not gonna go into hype mode, because Dutty ARtz family is forming, Voltron-like, AND WE HAVE NO NATURAL PREDATORS…

I don’t even need to talk about how we recorded 10 TUNES with JD this weekend, all ten riddims slew. Don’t even have to mention my crate full of dubs and international ‘xclusives…

But i should give a shout to my man GEKO JONES who not only knows what time it is, he knows what time it will be, and he’ll be opening the evening so i suggest you show up early New York stand up & get dutty.

also: I have a pair of tickets to giveaway for this event. First person to either A) identity this tune — hint, it’s called “Live in Harmony”

??? – Live in Harmony

or B) tell me what yr favorite Octavia Butler book is & why, with details, will get a pair of free tickets. email nettlephonic at yahoo dot com.

dubwarrupture

darth vader
This pic has nothing to do with Dubstep, I just saw it on a news site but HELLO, how can you be flying in some multi-million dollar piece of killing hardware wearing one of these guyver anime darth vader helmets blowing up rebel ‘insurgents’, women and children in the desert like you’re in a video game and not know that YOU (aka WE if you’re UK or US) are the bad guys.

I just got around to reading this excellent ‘how to make dubstep bass’ tutorial from Mashit Records’ DJ C and thought it worth reposting here.

The knowledge he’s sharing is good and useful and with a little thinking applicable to whatever synth/software you use. One of the best ideas I find in it is the idea of LAYERING. This is an idea it took me literally years to figure out as a producer, dumb though that may sound. The simplest form of this is simply taking whatever notes you have, copying them to another channel in your sequencer exactly the same (or an octave up or down) and assigning a different sound to them. It’s important the notes are exactly the same so that there is no rhythmic difference between the two so that the two sounds mesh together to create a new, thicker sound.

Actually I have to give full credit to Jammer for really showing me the value of this, and how to do it really well with Logic. They don’t call that dude Top Producer for nothing, he really knows what he’s talking about, so all credit where it’s due. This idea is especially useful when it comes to producing the type of bass that so many of us love that’s found in drum & bass, grime, and dubstep records.

You know the kind I mean: bass that is simultaneously in-your-face, loud and blaring, practically taking up the whole track, but still feels like a punch in the stomach when it hits. I remember spending literally hours and hours and hours trying to get a synth to make these sounds but never could find the right balance between that mid-range growl, or shininess or blare that I wanted and the appropriate down low chest rattling bass heaviness. This is because, in fact, it’s not ONE synth making these sounds, but at least two, and often more. The mid- and high-range detail that provides a lot of character of the sound is one synth going through its own EQ, distortion, reverb, compression, whatever, and the bottom subwoofer sound of pure bass weight is usually just a very simple, non-descript sounding sine wave (write that down SINE WAVE, very important).

An easy way to make a sine wave in Logic is to use the EXS24 sampler with no sample in it, it defaults to a sine wave cycle, go down to the lowest octaves on your keyboard and try not to blow your speakers. Other waveforms can be used but a very low pure sine I find is one of the most sure-fire ways to make people’s hair blow back like they’re in a hurricane in the club.

And as Gervase from LDN’s excellent Heatwave sound points out in the blog’s comments, the tutorial he’s given provides basically all you need to know to make some pretty familiar sounding ‘dubstep by numbers’ type shit. Why do I mention this? Well, I like dubstep. I think it’s interesting and I like the fact that there’s a genre of music that’s around thats focused on pushing the limits of pure physical sound and what you can do with that. However, I don’t like a lot of the way that a lot of the people in dubstep act. Like they’re on some holy quest to make the deepest, purest, most whatever whatever sound, that they’re ‘smarter than grime’ or ‘more complex’ etc, when in fact they are just another branch on the same tree that started decades ago in Jamaica and mutated into Rap, Jungle and soon enough is gonna be mutated into something else. Especially now that Dubstep is starting to have the type of commercial success that drum & bass had in a certain era and go international I feel like some of the people near the heart of that scene are trying to do what a lot of top dnb heads did, which is to lock the doors behind them and say ‘this is ok, this is real dubstep, and this isn’t and only we get to say so, and blah blah blah’.

I have no time for those type of people as I have always been a mutant genre nomad and am never happy sitting in ANY little genre fishpond. To me the moment a style sits still I’m bored and looking for something else. That’s why I like dancehall so much, every month not only are there new tunes and riddims but new tempos, beats, sounds, everything. So my point here is, take this knowledge, do what you want with it, flood the market with derivative dubstep records, make bassline house out of their favorite tunes, put wobble bass in tv jingles, generally make it hard for everyone sitting still. Me, I’m moving, so I absolutely don’t care. By the time you catch up to me I will be somewhere far far away.