“It’s the most beautiful ugly sound in the world” are the first words spoken on DJ D-Styles’ (birth name Dave Cuasito) 2002 turntablist album, Phantazmagorea. These words allude to scratching, a style that D-Styles, who will be educating ears tonight at Pipe, is a virtuoso at.
While many DJs can chirp, flare and crab scratch like maniacs, D-Styles’ understated manner and ability to manipulate music is more like free jazz.
“My sound is a hybrid of hip-hop influence and the approach of a jazz musician,” D-Styles said in an e-mail interview with the Taipei Times.
Photo courtesy of Dave Cuasito
“I have always been a fan of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. I always wished I could scratch with the same freedom that they played their instruments,” he said.
It would be difficult to get a physical copy of Phantazmagorea today, but the full album can be listened to on YouTube. D-Styles said that putting out music now is kind of sad because few people buy vinyl or CDs.
“I have learned that you need to have a live show and that is how you will survive if you want to be a musician. Being a musician is not a career that I would tell my kids to get into. It’s an ongoing and never-ending hustle that is very tiring. But if you love playing music live then that is the best reward and the best high ever.”
To make an impression on D-Styles, DJs must do three things — have a good ear, be technically skilled and be willing to take some risks.
“DJs need to be able to listen to and know what sounds work well with one another, they need to have the basic skills of sounding clean with mixing and simple scratching, and they can’t be scared to play music that is outside the box. It’s the DJs job to open the listeners’ ears to new sounds,” he said.
Over the years, D-Styles gained a lot of this knowledge from being part of two groups who were pioneers in the turntablist movement, the Beat Junkies, where he learned the business side, and the Invisible Skratch Piklz, who taught him “all my technical skills like how to scratch and how to make turntable music,” he said.
Now, D-Styles is part of a collective of DJs who run a weekly party in Los Angeles called The Low End Theory. With resident DJs Gaslamp Killer, Nobody and Daddy Kev, the experimental electronic music played at The Low End Theory has helped artists like Flying Lotus, The Glitch Mob and Nosaj Thing get international attention.
D-Styles, who says his set in Taipei will resemble his Low End Theory sets, loves the party because “I learned how to get back to my DJ roots and just play music that I like.”
Ill Ken (real name He Hsiao-kai, 何紹愷) has been watching scratching videos since he was a teenager and decided to get D-Styles to stop by Taipei for his first attempt at organizing a party.
“He’s like every DJ’s favorite turntablist,” Ill Ken said. “A couple years ago, I bought his mix CD for The Low End Theory Japan tour and I found he’s not only good at scratching but his mix is also freaking dope. I hoped more people in Taiwan could experience this, so I invited him.”
■ D-Styles with Puzzle Man, Sonic Deadhorse, Chicano and Fresco play tonight from 11pm to 4am at Pipe, 1 Siyuan St, Taipei City (台北市思源街1號). Admission is NT$800 and includes one drink.
Many people noticed the flood of pro-China propaganda across a number of venues in recent weeks that looks like a coordinated assault on US Taiwan policy. It does look like an effort intended to influence the US before the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) over the weekend. Jennifer Kavanagh’s piece in the New York Times in September appears to be the opening strike of the current campaign. She followed up last week in the Lowy Interpreter, blaming the US for causing the PRC to escalate in the Philippines and Taiwan, saying that as
Nov. 3 to Nov. 9 In 1925, 18-year-old Huang Chin-chuan (黃金川) penned the following words: “When will the day of women’s equal rights arrive, so that my talents won’t drift away in the eastern stream?” These were the closing lines to her poem “Female Student” (女學生), which expressed her unwillingness to be confined to traditional female roles and her desire to study and explore the world. Born to a wealthy family on Nov. 5, 1907, Huang was able to study in Japan — a rare privilege for women in her time — and even made a name for herself in the
Would you eat lab-grown chocolate? I requested a sample from California Cultured, a Sacramento-based company. Its chocolate, not yet commercially available, is made with techniques that have previously been used to synthesize other bioactive products like certain plant-derived pharmaceuticals for commercial sale. A few days later, it arrives. The morsel, barely bigger than a coffee bean, is supposed to be the flavor equivalent of a 70 percent to 80 percent dark chocolate. I tear open its sealed packet and a chocolatey aroma escapes — so far, so good. I pop it in my mouth. Slightly waxy and distinctly bitter, it boasts those bright,
This year’s Miss Universe in Thailand has been marred by ugly drama, with allegations of an insult to a beauty queen’s intellect, a walkout by pageant contestants and a tearful tantrum by the host. More than 120 women from across the world have gathered in Thailand, vying to be crowned Miss Universe in a contest considered one of the “big four” of global beauty pageants. But the runup has been dominated by the off-stage antics of the coiffed contestants and their Thai hosts, escalating into a feminist firestorm drawing the attention of Mexico’s president. On Tuesday, Mexican delegate Fatima Bosch staged a
RSS