Darkside Sophistication :: Interview With Venez :: January

NYC

(Hyperlinks aren’t working on this weeks’ articles, so the addresses for anything you see underlined will be at the bottom of the post)

Following on from last weeks’ review of “Hot Bitches/ Pankration Dub”, I managed to secure an AOL Instant Messenger interview with the mysterious Venez. I learnt many things. I discovered that Resist is a sublabel of Ohm Resistance, one of America’s longest running D&B labels, that Resist & Ohm have managed to seduce the likes of critically acclaimed avant-garde Jazz musicians to contribute to their projects, and that labelmate Scorn is none other than Mick Harris, drummer for 80’s hardcore thrash/punk band Napalm Death. The quality of the discussion was impeded by AIM’s refusal to allow us to post anything larger than two sentences at a time, and the fact that the production duo were on their lunch break and needed some grub. I too was hungry, what with international clock differences meaning it was teatime in the UK, but we persisted on. Incidentally no mention was made of the Ipswich murders, but then a suspected criminals’ first line of defence is usually to deny knowledge of the crime that took place. Somehow I get the feeling that Easyjet didn’t realise the beast they were unleashing when they offered cheap flights from JFK airport to Stansted….
I give you Venez:

The Haitian Sensation: Hi.
Zandor: Que tal amigos.
The Haitian Sensation: I am “The Haitian sensation”. Pleased to meet you. (The Haitian Sensation used a AIM username throughout the interview)
Zandor: I am Zandor, which is incidentally the name of my great great great grandfather who was a stage magician in Budapest. And that’s seriously true- you can’t really make shit like that up. (Zandor used a AIM username as well)
Darkside Sophistication: All right then, that clears that up (the identity of the Venez partnership), so who are the elusive Dr Israel & Kondo who appear on the tracks of Resist 001 (the former on ‘Pankration Fat Dub’, and the latter on ‘Hot Bitches’).
Zandor: Dr. Israel is a famous reggae singer. Kondo is Toshinori Kondo, the trumpet player. He plays with John Zorn, Bill Laswell, NYC crew etc… (Check the word Praxis at the bottom of the post for more info on these guys).
Darkside Sophistication: There was me thinking that you were getting into dodgy illegal sampling business, that stuff isn’t meant to go down too well in the States, what with major labels being pretty zealous in their persecution of copyright infringers.
The Haitian Sensation: Naw, totally original content here.
Zandor: We share a studio with Dr. Israel. And Kondo is heavily involved in live shows with Ohm Resistance Crew. (Authors note: Dr. Israel is also affiliated with Bill Laswell and his various projects)
Zandor: We just have cool friends.
Darkside Sophistication: I was thinking though, I’ve got a few questions I want to ask, how ‘bout you guys answer back, no one word answers please!
The Haitian Sensation: Shoot.
Zandor: Shoot.
Zandor: (five seconds later) Ah fuck beat me to it.
Darkside Sophistication: Question number 1: You’re obviously connected to the Ohm Resistance label; do you two produce under different names for that label?
Zandor: Yes but we’d enjoy it if it remained unclear who was who. There are clues on the vinyl itself.
Darkside Sophistication: Fair enough, bit of a dance music cliché if truth were told though- the unknown producer in his bedroom, possibly bald and of a moody persuasion.
Zandor: Nah actually we’re a black dude and an ex professional fighter, quite the opposite of that cliché.
Darkside Sophistication: All right, having established that, how did you guys discover Dubstep?
The Haitian Sensation: Well, me being from Tinidad, I’ve known Dubstep for years under real Reggae. Now it is just implemented as a genre or sub genre if you will. [I was] born into it sort of.
Zandor: Yeah I always made slow music by myself, now it has a name at 70/140 and slower.
Darkside Sophistication: Ah, so you obviously subscribe to the viewpoint that Dubstep is a bit like Dub Reggae for the noughties. PS. isn’t Trinidad miles away from Hispaniola?
The Haitian Sensation: Yeah my roots are actually from by there as my other half is Haitian; it’s [Trinidad] close to the Dominican Republic, sharing an island.
Zandor: I’m a Brooklyn mutt.
Darkside Sophistication: The Big Apple being the big melting pot, nice. But when was it that you were first exposed to the sounds from the UK that is often referred to as ‘Dubstep’.
Zandor: For me it was because my good friend is Ennis, Moldy. That was when it was codified for me as that specific genre name.
Darkside Sophistication: About what year was this then?
Zandor: Early last year for me. But I was a tour DJ for Scorn for a few tours also. The earliest was around 2000 for that.
The Haitian Sensation: Actual UK sound Dubstep for me was about 96-97. 2-step and Garage… but to get to the actual genre [as a name] not much more than last year. Running into D&B DJ’s at shows who kind of dropped the D&B mentality to go straight Dubstep.
Darkside Sophistication: I seem to remember Garage circa 2001-3 reaching places like Chicago, Minneapolis, a few other cities I can’t remember, but New York didn’t seem to play a big part in that, strange considering it’s prominence in the Dance music world.
The Haitian Sensation: In ‘96 I was in Germany when Techno and odd stuff like The Prodigy was hitting hard.
Zandor: Reid Speed used to play Garage a bunch in NYC; she had her own night, another buddy of ours.
Darkside Sophistication: What’s she doing now? It’s just that in the UK most of the old Garage set have moved over to House or R&B, but from what I could tell the American 2-Step pioneers seemed to have discovered the sound from just getting bored of D&B (authors note: a legion of UK producers took the same route a few years earlier in the mid 90’s), but they firmly preferred the bassline sound to the vocal stuff.
Zandor: She [Reid Speed] is actually doing her first artist album for Ohm Resistance. Which I am helping mix down in a week or so. [As for US DJ’s preferring the darker stuff]. I can’t really agree all the way with that. Reid as my best example, she just loved to play whatever rocked a dancefloor, and vocals did that, but I never break shit down into detail like that. I just do some music, it’s up to someone else to pay attention to it like that much.
Darkside Sophistication: More to the point, would you say that those American Garage pioneers have caught the Dubstep bug, or have they like the UK lot sort of went elsewhere.
Zandor: Actually I can agree with that. I don’t think there has been much crossover. I mean, I look at Dubstep like it’s 70 BPM, and not 140.
Darkside Sophistication: So the ones who were doing it in 2002 are the ones putting on the likes of Dubwar? Or has the darkness turned them off, i.e. like Casper, a groundbreaking Garage DJ stateside what with his Heavyweight Sound website, but now a convert to House?
Zandor: Dubwar is our buddy Cliff, you ever go to one of those shows? He also does Direct Drive.
Darkside Sophistication: Just to clear things up a bit, I see Dubstep as the 140bpm stuff and the slow half-step stuff as well, I know there’s a difference but it’s all the same genre really. It’s just the progression from UK Garage.
The Haitian Sensation: I think that in many ways Dubstep has become that “different” new thing that people grab onto.
Darkside Sophistication: For example, there would be people in the UK who would classify ‘Hot Bitches’ as Breakstep. We can be very anal over here when it comes to classifying things; supposedly it’s not as bad as that in mainland Europe.
The Haitian Sensation: Yeah, I can see that, like D&B in the early 90’s.
Zandor: Well, I mean, I don’t really care, nor have I ever thought of what anyone’s response would be when I make music, I just make what I like.
The Haitian Sensation: Hot Bitches is just music, whether it be Dubstep, Grime, Ambient, The more concentrated “Dub” tune is the flip. Darkside Sophistication: So what’s Dubwar like then, is it in a big club?
Zandor: Dubwar has done boat parties; they’ve done the chapel in Avalon. Decent size venues.
Darkside Sophistication: Also, are there any other nights that will put on Dubstep DJ’s, not necessarily Dubstep the whole night, maybe a mixture of different styles?
The Haitian Sensation: Camouflage here in NYC, Konkrete Jungle as well.
Zandor: (20 seconds later). Also Konkrete Jungle has been doing Dubstep parties sometimes also…fucker beat me again.
The Haitian Sensation: Dubstep is becoming accepted at a way faster rate than it took for D&B here.
Zandor: I was just shooting whipped cream into my mouth for lunch.
Darkside Sophistication: Sounds like it’s not too bad then. NYC is legendary for it’s territoriality (5 separate boroughs and all that), but are people willing to commute long distances to go to these nights? After all it can’t be too hard to travel, you have 24hr subways and everything!
Zandor: Fuck a borough, that shit is in the movies, you seen The Warriors too many times. Man, if there is a party people wanna go to they go to it.
The Haitian Sensation: Totally, the NYC scene isn’t really dependant on what genre, event, or where it is located here.
Zandor: Damn this whipped cream is good.
The Haitian Sensation: Shows fill up here because people want to party in Manhattan.
Darkside Sophistication: Never actually seen it [The Warriors], I’m just sitting here staring at a map of New York, looking at all these mad islands, must be irritating with all those toll bridges.
The Haitian Sensation: But the bulk of the parties exist in Manhattan, or Brooklyn.
Zandor: I rarely drive; I usually take a car service to and from the airport. I can’t stand cars.
The Haitian Sensation: He he, the trains go through the bridges here, barely anyone drives that I know. Subway is like where it’s at.
Zandor: Man if cars kept up with technology like computers did, shit would be like the Jetsons, but instead we’re too busy finding ways to blow shit up instead of making a quality vehicle that I can drive and not think ‘SHIT, FUCK THIS CAR’.
Darkside Sophistication: I’m asking this question really because when DMZ put on a monthly in Leeds you get people from London travelling up there just to see them even though they can see Mala and Loefah in their own town. Leeds is quite far away, about 200 miles.
Zandor: People go where the party is at, same here.
The Haitian Sensation: Oh I see.
Zandor: Kids travel, kids from outside the city.
Darkside Sophistication: Just out of curiosity, how seriously is Dubstep taken by the rest of the dance music scene in NYC. Is it a buzzword they would know about?
Zandor: Yeah it’s actually something that is starting to become almost like a genre on the level of everything else. I just hope the scene doesn’t gas out and then in 2 years later it comes back with a different name. That seems to be a pattern.
Darkside Sophistication: Because in the UK, even though there has been some coverage in the Dance music mags, even in some newspapers, it hasn’t really ‘blown up’ in a big way outside of London & Bristol. Everywhere else is just small parties really (perhaps with the exception of Leeds).
Zandor: Well these things take time.
Darkside Sophistication: Would Louis Vega know what Dubstep is!?
Zandor: Possibly. I’d say he might have heard of it.
The Haitian Sensation: I know the people in the hip hop world like Pharrell of the Neptunes and guys like Outcast know what Dubstep is.
Darkside Sophistication: So do you guys ever play out Dubstep stuff, under pseudonyms perhaps?
Zandor: Nah we’re doing a Venez live show at Bembe in the coming month with our other compatriot who could not be here, the Pakistani Chill.
Darkside Sophistication: What’s Bembe then?
Zandor: Bembe is a club in Brooklyn that hosts live musicians playing and reverse engineering dance music. It’s run by a really good drummer who I’ve played with a bunch before named Guy Licata (who’s also worked with Laswell).
Darkside Sophistication: You got a definite date for that event, or a website or something?
Zandor: No definite date yet [but] I can find the myspace for that party [called No Selector]. The live DEBUT of Venez. The outfits will be unmanageable.
Darkside Sophistication: So did your connection with Ohm Resistance make it easier for you to come up with the Resist label?
The Haitian Sensation: I’d say so.
Zandor: The Ohm guys are totally into new shit.
The Haitian Sensation: We dont persay run Resist either, the good guys at Ohm kinda took our idea by surprise. They dig music for what it is.
Zandor: Plus they love the fights, so I was an easy in.
Darkside Sophistication: Was Resist 001 pressed up in the UK or the US, cause it was very cheap (i.e. same price as the UK stuff), no import tax.
Zandor: UK pressing through Nu Urban Music. Nu Urban has finally wrapped their heads around Dubstep thankfully.
Darkside Sophistication: It’s probably the same situation with Drop The Lime & Mathhead’s label TroubleandBass. How can people get hold of it in America then? NYC is noted for it’s record stores. How’s it like getting Dubstep stuff, and European tunes in general.
Zandor: Internet. Everyone buys vinyl online these days.
Darkside Sophistication: It’s not much different here to be honest; tons of shops are going bust because it’s that much easier to find what you want on the interweb. Perhaps not in London so much, but in all the smaller cities that’s the case. It’s funny though cause before garage went dark the biggest producer was Todd Edwards, who is from Belleville, New Jersey, and his 12”s were always about £9, as they were classed as imports and so warranted a higher price tag.
Zandor: Yeah we work directly with the UK cos I think more Venez shit gets sold in the UK/Europe than the US.
Darkside Sophistication: These Todd tunes were shrink-wrapped and all, that was an American trademark. Then you had London producers putting shrink-wrap on their tunes to pass it off as an import and charge you more fucking money!
Zandor: Ah damn man that’s fucking wack. And if you shrink-wrap you cant listen in the store.
Darkside Sophistication: Well in the shop there would be a wall mounted record rack, and the tune at the front would be unwrapped for the customers to listen to. Once all the shrink-wrapped ones at the back were sold out you’d have to buy the copy with loads of fingerprints and scratches that every fucker had put over it. Talking about Todd and NJ, there happens to be a Dubstep night on Saturday the 20th in New Brunswick (a southern suburb of urban New Jersey) with Joe Nice playing; can’t really see Todd Edwards showing up to be honest.
Zandor: Anyhow it’s about lunchtime for us clowns.
The Haitian Sensation: Fuck that.
Zandor: So I wanna tell u about our next record.
Darkside Sophistication: Ok, I’ll make this quick and you can tell me about your next record.
Zandor: The B side is ‘A Lumbering Beast’, with a serious distorted b line and us playing the better killer game with the new member of Venez, the Pakistani Chill. And the A is a work in progress. But we are working with Moldy to make the Salt n Pepa tune ‘Push It’ into a Dubstep track all mangled, wait till you hear. And that’s RSIS03.
Darkside Sophistication: One thing about Resist 001 was that it sounded like it could have come from the UK, but the tunes of Drop the Lime & Mathhead have a very American feel to them.
The Haitian Sensation: Zandor can’t tell the difference but I can, and I must say I aggree it does sound UKish.
Darkside Sophistication: Do you happen to know the likes of Joe Nice, Starkey, DTL & Mathhead.
Zandor: Joe is a supporter, the others I don’t know.
Darkside Sophistication: DTL & Mathhead are fellow Brooklyn boys, run the TroubleandBass label.
Zandor: Damn, does Moldy know them? Mathhead… I think I was on a Hymen (German Electronica label) comp under my real name with him. (Authors note: Drop The Lime did a remix for Hymen in 2005 so maybe Zandor’s getting them mixed up).
Darkside Sophistication: OK, one last question and I’ll let you guys have your lunch.
Zandor: I ate some whipped cream but the black man needs some chow.
Darkside Sophistication: How did you hook up with the UK producer, what’s he called, can’t remember… I know Lethal (a Londoner who has tracks forthcoming on Resist) does stuff for OHM so that’s where that connection came from but the other one, from Birmingham… Scorn, that’s it.
Zandor: OOOOO SCORN, I know Micky from a looooong time ago as I loved Napalm Death and used to go to ND shows when I was a kid, and Mick quit ND and did Scorn. I wrote to him when I first started DJing D&B, and he took me on a few tours with him! It was unreal for me; I used to have a poster of the guy on my wall when I was 14!
Darkside Sophistication: Fair enough. That’ll wrap it up then. Be sure to give me all the info about upcoming releases.
Darkside Sophistication: I’m off to have my dinner, bye.
Zandor: OK cool.
The Haitian Sensation: Cheers man. (rubs tummy)

Coincidentally the Moldy they talk about has already released a dubstep track on his own label, Heavy Pressure recordings. HPR001 features his own tracks ‘Windmill Dub’ & ‘Black Forest (Part 1)’, and I’m thinking of reviewing them when they finally arrive through my letterbox because they are quality tunes. Sadly few shops seem to have any copies left (this equally applies for ‘Hot Bitches’), so if you type in the word’s Moldy and “Windmill Dub” in Google you should find at least one dealer. Don’t sleep on this, get it while you still can. His collab with Venez should prove interesting.

Unfortunately my interview with Venez was shorter than I would have liked. I could have asked them a heap of other questions. They didn’t get the chance to describe their strange concept of music for insects: ‘If the lifespan of the insect is so short, the time it processes audio information must SEEM significantly faster. Human music must sound so slowed down to the short lifespan of a cricket or wasp. Unselfconsciously, this is our attempt to recreate to our own ears, what normal music sounds like to the insect’. Ummmmm… deep. Check their Resist Myspace for more info!
Interview by Owen Griffiths

Links:-

Resist: http://www.myspace.com/resistdub
Ohm Resistance: http://www.myspace.com/ohmresistance
Dr Israel: http://www.myspace.com/dreadtoneinternational
Kondo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshinori_Kondo
Scorn: http://www.myspace.com/mjhscorn
Lethal: http://www.myspace.com/lethal_injection_uk
Moldy: http://selectormoldy.com
Heavy Pressure Records: http://heavypressure.com

Reid Speed: Heavy Pressure: http://heavypressure.com/
Casper: http://www.heavyweightsound.com/