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DCDNB - a continuing project centered around drum'n'bass and the DC Metro area (basically within a 25-mile radius of Washington, DC).

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5 March 10

Five For Friday #09: Tittsworth

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March 2010 is going to be a momentous month for electronic music in DC, and one of the key players is none other than Jesse Tittsworth, a standout of the DC music scene; accomplished producer (check last year’s debut album ‘12 Steps’ on Plant Music), revered bootlegger (the oft-heralded remix of Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.”, which US music publications noted as being a prime example of unofficial remixing done extremely well), seasoned promoter (the drum'n'bass booker for the Stereo events at The Edge, part of the crew that threw dnb weekly Volume at UP in 2003, and then the no holds barred Krunk events, where hip-hop and club reigned supreme, with DJs and crowds that were out to have a good time), and then on to globe trotting club DJ, headlining everywhere from gully dive bars to sonically pristine mega clubs and multi-day music festivals.

So what is next for Tittsworth? Where does it go from here? How does one of DC’s own go from opening up the occasional dnb night in 2000, to eating live octopus during a three week DJ tour of Asia in 2009? Lets get down to the Q&A

DCDNB: We are jumping right in. What’s the word on U Street Music Hall? We want to hear about the sound system, first & foremost. Plus stuff like capacity, age limits, hours, the kitchen menu, the bar, any hidden little treasures. What is going to make this spot the spot for electronic music in DC?
Tittsworth: U Hall is a no frills dark basement spot at 1115 U Street NW (under the 7-11 / Subway - http://twitter.com/uHallDC).  It focuses on forward thinking dance and live music several nights of the week.  It’ll be around 350 capacity, 18+ on most nights (21+ on one), and come as you are - no bottle service, dress code or bullshit pop music. Some nights might be techno or dubstep, others might be house or even a live band performance. 

Imagine a proper stage to enjoy your favorite live act and a large wooden dance floor that runs almost the entire length of the venue, connecting to the DJ booth on the opposite end of the club.  The dance floor has a little bit of spring to it so that it will bounce just enough when folks really get into it.  The DJ booth alone is larger than some venues in DC and the sound is epic. I’m talking a system that will physically compel you to dance.

The are 2 bars, one of which stretches almost the entire length of the club.  I’m not sure if we’ll be open with food right off the bat but expect interesting culinary takes on old favorites like hot dogs and grilled cheeses.. you know, proper bar food you wouldn’t be ashamed to eat if you were sober!

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DCDNB: Any event info you can leak to us? The opening night with Belgian duo Aeroplane and DC’s Beautiful Swimmers is on the calenders for 3/17 already, as well as 88 Music’s Forward Festival event on 3/19, but we want to know what else. Any drum'n'bass acts planned yet?
Tittsworth: One of the things that I love about U Hall is that most of our weekends will focus on residents and locals. I love the idea of having our city and our friends hold down Fridays and Saturdays. I think it speaks volumes for the talent in our city and in our scenes. 

Don’t get me wrong, we’ll have the occasional exception to the rule, but by in large expect many of your touring acts to take place on week nights. This will include drum'n'bass of course ;-)  The thought process here is that U Hall DC become the type of place you go to because you expect good music and good times, and less about having to see this DJ or that.

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DCDNB: Your own musical history includes a heavy chapter on drum'n'bass, from DJing a lot of the pertinent local drum'n'bass events to going on to throwing several of your own that featured drum'n'bass. Now with your genre bending, “lets just party” sets incorporating whatever you are feeling & is moving crowds, you’ve been going in to some stretches of drum'n'bass tunes in your current sets. What was doing it for you back in the late 90s / early 2000s? And who is doing it for you now?
Tittsworth: I was a weird kid growing up. In the 90’s I was in high school and all over the place. I remember when I would get all done up in goth paint and was really into Skinny Puppy, Coil and Throbbing Gristle. Around then I got a taste of local hardcore, punk and indie bands right (Hoover, Frodus, Jen Hitt). At the same time, I was always drawn to black/urban music. My first 2 tapes were The Fat Boys and Michael Jackson, Prince too, but in the 90’s I guess it was more go-go, Big L, Wu-Tang, Nas, ATCQ, etc. 

THEN THE RAVE BUG BIT. 

After that it was all over. For about five years I forgot what songs with vocals even sounded like. My world unraveled to to the beat of drum and bass, techno, house, etc.  Goldie’s 'Timeless’ was one of my favorite albums. Really came into it through Reinforced Records and UK hardcore on labels like Moving Shadow. I followed drum'n'bass for damn near a decade (still loosely do) and enjoyed many of its periods - tech/hardstep, heavy breaks, jungle/amens, Certificate 18 weirdness, dubby stuff, you name it. I’m glad to see that I can still get away with playing drum'n'bass in my sets now. In a recent set I played NC-17’s “Slugpath”, Future Signal & Audio’s “Furyen” and new bits from Subfocus.

DCDNB: What makes for the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich?
Tittsworth: lotta love, a touch of hate and a hot iron.

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DCDNB: With you and Will Eastman’s new venture, what do you hope to see happen in DC’s electronic music scene (e.g. the all encompassing term, rather than the little pockets of genres)?
Tittsworth: I love playing different types of music just like I love eating different types of food or having friends from drastically different demographics. To me, I miss having a home to dance music. To some that was Tracks or Nation/Capital Ballroom, or Red.  I remember going to Buzz almost every week for years and years. I experienced so many talented artists from so many places in the world and in so many genres. Met so many good friends that I continue to consider family; gay, straight, black, white, Spanish, old, young, whatever. I miss that type of home for the various scenes I see scattered around town.

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Thanks again to Jesse for taking the time to do this Q&A for DCDNB! With the final preparations being done, I appreciated the time & thought Jesse put in to the questions and the answers. At the time of this posting, the sound system was just installed, and U Street NW might experience some seismic activity due to sound checks over the next week and a half. Opening night is marked for March 17, 2010. Best of luck once again to Jesse and Will Eastman on this!

Next on deck for the Five For Friday feature will be the Cannon Boyz, based out of Baltimore and playing at Club 24 in a couple weeks. We will catch up with where they are taking their sound in production, where they are traveling and information about their upcoming debut LP.

29 January 10

Five For Friday #06: Expansion Broadcast

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This week’s Five For Friday feature is with Eric Masiello, a.k.a. IllEffect, founder and main host of Expansion Broadcast, a weekly drum'n'bass & dubstep podcast that broadcasts live on Friday evenings and is distributed as a podcast the following week. Rather than talk about Eric’s own DJing (which is stellar, he is my favorite local drum'n'bass DJ of the past few years), we go in on the history, structure and plans for the podcast.

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DCDNB: When did Expansion Broadcast first go online with the show? How many versions of the website / blog (is it just a site? is it a blog?) have there been? And future plans?
EXBC: Our very first broadcast was in late September of 2003. I had just moved to College Park after taking my first real job out of college and I was looking for a way to network with the DC drum & bass crowd.  So taking a nod from ODJackson’s Dirtbox Radio, I figured starting up a drum & bass radio would be a good way to meet the local talent.  Luckily for me, Destroyer.net was just getting off the ground and was looking for shows.  Perfect!  So I linked up with my longtime friend Mike, MC insuWRECKtionist, and we got started.  September 26th, 2003 we aired our first show featuring myself tagging with my then roommate, DJ Direct Logic, and other close friends Whighzeguy (who is now a regular host on the show) and Bassmachine.  Mike/insuWRECKtionist naturally MC’ed and handled most the conversation on the air while I and whoever else worked the decks.

Stepan

After a few months we finally decided to get serious and put together a site where we would host the archives and post that week’s lineup.  The site was using a very crude CMS (content management system) I had actually programmed myself so that people other than me could update the site.  It went through a redesign at some point still using my janky CMS but this time it was built all in Flash and had some fancy animated boxes that sorta “unfolded.”  It was weird.

Ricky Ricardo

Expansionbroadcast.com pretty much became my playground for experimenting with different web technologies since being a full time web developer was my “real job” and other passion.  At some point or another, I finally decided to redesign the site.  I was about a day away from deploying the site when my coworker said to me, “why don’t you just use Wordpress to handle all your content?”  I looked into it and in about a day, I transformed my design into a Wordpress theme [and thus happily ditched my custom rolled CMS].  I suppose you could say that’s when the site turned into an actual “blog.”  I called that version of the site “3.0.” Since then it has gone through a couple face lifts so the latest version I’ve arbitrarily dubbed “3.75.”

IllEffect

I’m pretty much settled with the site for the moment.  I’m always making little tweaks here and there but no major changes are planned at this point.  Maybe in a few months I’ll revisit it and try to fancy up the bio pages.  Right now they’re kinda plain Jane (and that bothers me).  I was also thinking about developing a web based soundboard for playing various drops during the podcast.  I’d probably design the soundboard for the iPhone and then I could just use [my wife] Hyun’s old 2G iPhone to trigger the drops.  It’s super nerdy but I love that sorta stuff.

DCDNB: How difficult was it to establish the show as a podcast, available on iTunes? And are there any obstacles or major benefits to putting in the work to do this?
EXBC: Somewhere around the time that I converted the site to a Wordpress powered site, I really started getting into podcasts.  Most of the podcasts I was listening to at the time were really tech and web focused.  There weren’t too many drum & bass or dubstep podcasts around then.  So me just trying to scratch my own itch, decided that I should take all these archives I have and convert them into a podcast.  A little research ensued and I discovered it’s actually not that difficult at all - particularly if you’re using Wordpress.  There’s a nice little Wordpress plugin you can use called Powerpress (although I used to use Podpress) which will convert your posts into an iTunes ready feed.  Mix that with a little magic from Feedburner and register your podcast on the iTunes store and you’re pretty much in business.

IllEffect

As for the benefit of being a podcast - I think it’s really just another way for your audience to get to your content.  While I do put a considerable amount of work into the design of the site, I’m totally content if people never actually visit it and just grab the sets we release each week from iTunes or whatever podcatcher they prefer.  The point is to just make the content easily accessible.  In this day of iPhones, Zunes, and iPads - you really need to be hitting the music consumer from every angle possible.

DaveJ

DCDNB: If Expansion Broadcast was an actual cloud, what kind of cloud would it be?
EXBC: I’ll go with cumulus.  I really don’t have any good reason other than that’s what our logo mostly resembles.  Well, it’s kind of an 8-bit cumulus cloud - the kind that that annoying guy that throws those spiky shelled creatures in Super Mario Bros would live in.  But hopefully we’re not annoying… or kill you and cause you to restart the level.

Harry Ransom

DCDNB: How important do you feel visual design is to the message / prominence of EXBC? Elaborate on this if you can / would like to.
EXBC: I think it’s important that any website looks professional.  But more importantly, the content needs to be highly accessible.  In our case, our primary content is mp3s.  Ultimately I try to take what I learn from my day-to-day life as a web developer/designer/super-nerd and apply it to Expansion Broadcast.  I want the site to be highly user focused.  That’s something I really tried to concentrate on particularly with the latest redesign.  I know people just wanna hop on, scan the latest podcasts; and if they see anything, click the download link, and move on with their lives.  Hopefully, that’s what the site delivers.

Encryption

DCDNB: What is it like being "internet famous” for the 404 error page (http://www.expansionbroadcast.com/404)? Have you noticed any increase in traffic & listeners outside of the usual drum'n'bass or dubstep fans, due to the notoriety of that 404 page?
EXBC: Yeah, it’s funny.  Every now and then I’ll see this random spike in traffic.  I’ll check the logs and its almost always pointing to the 404 page.  That’s almost ironic when you think about it.  But as for the back story on that one – a while ago Smashing Magazine did a spotlight on useful/funny/clever 404 pages for websites (for those that don’t know, a “404” is a server error that’s returned when you try to visit a page that doesn’t exist).  Smashing Mag picked up ours which drove a bunch of traffic to the site.  Every now and then some other web design blog will do a spotlight on 404 pages which will cause a little uptick in traffic.  I’ve never really tried to correlate that to podcast subscriptions but I’m sure it at least helps a little bit.

Deinfamous

Thanks again to Eric for taking the time to answer our questions about the Expansion Broadcast podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes and leave a rating and comment on the iTunes page. Hopefully some of the information here will help give others some insight on setting up their own podcasts, or even the general idea & feel behind a webcast or live event. Be on the look out for some EXBC x DCDNB event collaborations (I know, I know, I run the blog and I am one of the rotating DJs on the show…), our first event at Thanksgiving time was a great success!

Next week we are going to interview Hyx, he just doesn’t know it yet. Also, I want to get in an interview with ODJ about Dirtbox Radio, which is the area’s granddaddy of drum'n'bass webcasts. And some time in February we should have a Q&A with Tittsworth sorted out; he has been playing a lot of drum'n'bass again, incorporating it in to his multi-genre sets that take him worldwide and we will get some insight on why he’s going to stay grounded in DC for at least three months.

Don’t forget to follow @DCDNB on Twitter if you use that site, and add our Facebook fan page as well.

18 December 09

Five For Friday #02: CJ Weaver (Tech:Noir / Buried Audio / Alphacut / Broken Audio / Dust Audio / Influenza Minus / Golden Age / Digibeat / Absys)

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CJ Weaver is part of a new generation of drum'n'bass producers that have cropped up in the DC area in the past few years. He has been active in the local scene for several years, but at just 22 years old, he had a few years where getting in to shows was near impossible with 21+ entry requirements. With a heavy focus on production and experimenting with sound, CJ Weaver’s name is popping up on release schedules for several established and up & coming labels, including Tech:noir, Buried Audio, Alphacut, and many more.

To check out CJ Weaver’s work, check out his soundcloud.com page (check out “Bioluminescence” which he just put up for free this week) and myspace.com page. He also has free tunes available on absysrec.com and nerverecordings.co.uk, plus a recent mix done for the Translation Recordings podcast.

Here’s the Q&A between DCDNB and CJ Weaver for this week’s Five For Friday:

DCDNB: As a relatively younger dnb artist in the DC area, how did you initially get in to drum'n'bass?
CJ Weaver: Well, the short answer is Pendulum. A friend showed them to me right around the end of high school, and I thought it was fairly interesting. Not my favorite, but I got into it enough to find Noisia right when they were launching Vision. I loved that stuff, and kept looking for more on through my freshman year of college. Soon I found all the old school neuro I had missed when I was 12, like the old Teebee and Polar stuff. I also have a clear memory of the Buzz tent at the HFStival, always used to stop by there to jam. Hearing dnb in a “rave” setting really got me into that sound. I was into more house and generic alternative rock at the time, so this was like nothing I had heard before.

DCDNB: Has your family been supportive of your music production and DJ'ing? Did you have to make any assurances or deals regarding university work?
CJ: Oh yeah, my parents have always been really supportive. I was interested in production (got into that first actually) and DJing since I was like 12, so they always used to take me to Guitar Center or old audio retail shops just to look around. My first set of decks were actually my 13th birthday present from them (one of those Numark DJ in a box things). Even my sister was supportive in that my studio was directly beneath her room, and I was never shy about the volume. I don’t know how she could stand it.

I am usually pretty good about school work, so my parents were generally not worried about that kind of thing when I got to college. Music was pretty for down on the list of things that screwed up my grades. I always found a way to separate music and school; I was on campus in Williamsport, PA, so it’s not like there was a huge dnb scene to get lost in. I will be off to get my masters soon, so I will probably have significantly less time for music then, unfortunately. There is also a distict possibillity that I will be moving away to a research station on an island off the coast of Panama for a little while. Hopefully I’ll be able to fit music into whatever the hell I end up doing over there (some jungle actually made in the jungle perhaps…).

DCDNB: What is your current production set-up and work flow for writing music? How do you like it and what would you like to do to improve it?
CJ: Right now I have a laptop with Vista 64 bit (which blows for music by the way) and FL Studio, with a NI Audio Kontrol 1 and a pair of JBL LSR4326 monitors. I’m for the most part quite pleased with my setup, it seems to fit my workflow well. FL Studio just makes sense to me, I really like how easy it is to get a basic Idea down, then elaborate on it afterward. With other programs the big pictures just get lost in the details for me.

My workflow is not particularly interesting, I can’t imagine it being much different from that of most other producers. I usually start with either a basic rhythm or some simple melodic elements, and add one hits or synth sounds until I have a decent 32 bar loop or so. Once I have that I generally stretch it out into a basic arrangement, adding textures and atmospherics as I go.

As for improvements, an operating system capable of playing and recording music without skipping, crackling, and generally losing its shit would be nice. I have a nifty little portable recorder coming in the mail so I can record random noises and textures, which should add an interesting element. I recently was given this old Yamaha mixing desk too, so I’ve been building up a collection of microphones to record my various odd instruments (lots of African drums and a few didgeridoos) and fit them into my music.

DCDNB: What influences your music, outside of drum'n'bass itself?
CJ: I draw inspiration from whatever music appeals to me most at the time. Before I got into dnb I was really into anything Ninja Tune and the more hip hop edge of Warp, so that I know had a large influence on me. Right now I’m really liking early Flying Lotus, Prefuse 73, and most anything J Dilla or Madlib had a hand in. Oh No’s Stones Throw compilation is up there with my favorites. Amon Tobin has been hands down my favorite artist for like 7 years now, I know I draw plenty from his stuff (If you don’t know him, get on that). Ive also been getting into some ambient stuff recently. Oh, and Babatunde Olatunji, the legendary Nigerian drummer. Some of the rhythms I’ve used are basically me trying to loosely recreate rhythms I’ve heard of his with my percussion and breaks. Rage Against the Machine is also very close to my heart, but I would have a hard time explaining how that comes across in my music.

DCDNB: What was your personal highlight of 2009? And goal(s) for 2010?
CJ: My highlight of this year technically happened at the end of last year, I think. It was meeting Gremlinz, who just contacted me out of the blue and asked for just about everything I had made. He signed a couple of mine for one of his labels (that was this year), Tech:Noir, which surprised the hell out of me at the time. He also sent my stuff around to some giants in the scene, like Loxy and D Bridge. That event really got things in motion for me. Soon after this, I started getting contacted by literally dozens of labels. My tunes started getting out there on various podcasts and mixes (like Loxy, Resound, ASC, Morphy, people I really respect). And these were tunes I had finished years ago. One of the ones on Tech:Noir is like four years old, I just had never sent it to the right people.

As for goals of next year, I mostly just want make more good music. I definitely want to get a solo record out at some point, and I think that that is entirely possible. I have a ridiculous amount of music coming out in 2010, so that should help put my name on the map. I also would like to distance myself a bit from the minimal dnb thing, and forge a distiction between it and what I do in my music. Some of it is alright but most of it is just way too bleak for my tastes, and I seem to have been pigeonholed into this style somewhere along the way. Another big goal of mine is to get some more bookings. I love playing out, but I’m still trying to establish my presence in the area as a DJ. I’ve played a few KJDC things in the past, Alec has been really supportive there and I’m quite thankful for that. Raul (RenderOne) has been booking me as well too, but thats just about it. I’ve always been a producer first so not too many people see me as a DJ, but I’m certainly no stranger to the turntables.

A big thank you to CJ Weaver for taking the time to do the Q&A! Make sure you check out his links, and come back to DCDNB next week for a Five For Friday with Translation Recordings.

20 November 09
By December, we might have an actual quote from a local drum'n'bass personality to put here.

The idea for “Five For Friday” just came up yesterday, and with short time I was not able to pull together some questions and people to interview. If people checking the blog out so far have any insight on what kind of questions they want to read answers to, or have any particular locals they want us to interview, give some feedback!

I have a good idea of who I want to hit up, I just want to make sure I have some interesting questions that I can ask.

Themed by Hunson. Originally by Josh