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| DJ Irie, turntable master |
How come you started DJ-ing at the age of fourteen?
I grew up in a small town called Heerenveen in a building complex. Over there we used to have a dance crew. And I started to make cassette tapes for us so we could practice. My parents used to have a turntable and a small record collection with stuff like the Beatles. That’s where I heard my first breakbeat (Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band). Me and the crew loved to dance to that part, although we had no idea that it was called a breakbeat at all. It just made us move.
Around that time there were also 2 dj’s living in our neighborhood and one of them took me under his wing. We played 45’s of popular music like 2 Unlimited, Snap and other top 40 like that. I remembered always being more interested in the b-sides. The songs that were not so popular, remixes and such. One day this dj took me to play at a school party and when he left to go to the bathroom, he asked me to take over the decks. One guy asked me if I had any Public Enemy. At that time I had a copy of “Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes Back” so I played “911 Is A Joke”. This totally killed the party and my mentor fired me after this! This is when I realized that commercial music is not what I wanted to do.
I actually started taking dj’ing more seriously when I joined my first rap group at the age of 16. But what really felt as the beginning of my career was when I entered my first dj battle in 1999 (Turntablized)
You won many a DMC Battle( Supremacy and Solo).
How come you prefer the Supremacy battles?
How come you prefer the Supremacy battles?
What I used to love the most when it comes to battling is being in someone’s face to diss him. I used to play a lot of basketball and I loved it cause I could trash talk and annoy my opponent in a direct way. So when I started battling I applied these same principles. In the solo battle there is no direct opponent, you battle everybody in one set. So I couldn’t diss anyone, look someone straight in the face while doing a scratch or beatjuggle, be intimidating. With the Supremacy battles it’s totally different since you do have someone to stand up to. I feel this is how a hip hop battle should be. One against one, man vs man.
We were utterly gobsmacked when we recently saw your enlivening audio visual scratch show. Do you start with a certain concept or does it grow along the way? How much time does it take you to make an entire show?
There was a time when I was a little fed up with turntablism. I had practiced my ass off to reach a certain level but the crowd most of the times wasn’t feeling it. They had no idea what I was doing and that got me really frustrated. So when I first heard that you could scratch with visuals I thought it was a great way to get the crowd more into my stuff. At first I started working with a visual artist because I didn’t had a video background. This process wasn’t a great success, mainly because the artist I was working with was quite lazy and didn’t share the same passion. After we split up I was really down to the ground for 2 days or so. Then I decided to take all that negative energy and transform it into positive energy. I started to cut and paste pieces of video’s, hip hop movies and youtube movies. When I first showed it to my friends they where pretty amazed by it so I kept on doing it and that’s pretty much where I am now.
So to answer your question: I do have a kind of concept and that is to give the audience something entertaining to watch and listen to. But I also heavily rely on mistakes and accidents. So the content of the show grows along as is goes. To make a show takes forever. It’s actually never finished. I’m always working on it. When I watch a movie I always have pen and paper in hand just in case I would hear a cool sample, so I 'd be able to write it down, look it up later and maybe incorporate it into my show.
What's your main aim when you're performing as a DJ?
I guess the main aim is to entertain people. I really hate it when artists go on stage and don’t consider the feelings of the audience. If you’re an egocentric maniac who wants to show off how good he is, I think it’s better if you just stay in your house and do art for yourself and don’t bother others with it.
As I grow older I find myself doing a little bit of teaching too. Although that’s not my main aim, it’s something I do feel strong about. It’s cool to show people a piece of movie or music that they might like and maybe look it up later. It’s a nice feeling to be able to broaden someone’s horizon. We live in a time of sharing knowledge. So with my art I try to share a little bit of mine.
The recent sequel to your first Hectic Eclectic mix(2008) consists of old school, funk and soul tracks as well as the uplifting Monty Python classic Always Look on the bright side of Life. Why did it take three years to release this Hectic Eclectic 2.0?
A lot of things happened after the first Hectic Eclectic. I started doing the whole video stuff, started to play with a jazz band called Electric Barbarian and did a lot of shows with theatre group Ish from Amsterdam. This took a lot of my time and energy so I wasn’t thinking of doing mixtapes at all. Although the guys from The New Worck (they released both of the mixes) kept asking me when I was gonna do a new tape again. I wanted to deliver a quality piece and not just a random mix. This year the time was right to do so.
Can you tell us more about your collaboration with DJ Friss?
I met DJ Friss 4 years ago. He sent me an email saying he was a turntablist from Leeuwarden and that he had been following me for quite a some time. He asked if he could come to my studio so I could teach him some stuff. By that time I was working a lot with DJ Milton. So we all hooked up and got an instant click. Milton and I took Friss under our wings and started to train him for DJ Battles. Unfortunately DJ Milton stopped DJ’ing for a while. So Friss and I remained practicing. I felt he needed some real life dj experience so I started to pass gigs and workshops I wasn’t able to do to him, so he could grow more and more. Which he did. He’s an actual scratch beast at the moment, scratching way better than I ever did. He also performed well at this years Online DMC Battle.
At the moment we are doing a weekly online dj show on ustream. This is a good outlet for us where we can share our love for music. The show gives us a focus to come up with a new dj set every week. It’s also a good way to expose ourselves without leaving our studios.
All time favourite hip hop track(s)?
This is one of the worst questions you can ask a dj! You always feel like you forget a track…but anyway:
I love OC’s “Time’s Up” The lyrics he spits are like a small hip hop bible.
I love J Live’s “Them That’s Not”. It’s such an original track! He tells a story about a rapper coming up, getting famous but afterwards losing everything again. The cool part about it is that the beat goes faster when the subject is coming up and then slows down again when his carreer is going downhill. To top it all up the track ends where it starts creating a vicious cicle. What a masterpiece!
I love J Live’s “Them That’s Not”. It’s such an original track! He tells a story about a rapper coming up, getting famous but afterwards losing everything again. The cool part about it is that the beat goes faster when the subject is coming up and then slows down again when his carreer is going downhill. To top it all up the track ends where it starts creating a vicious cicle. What a masterpiece!
My favourite albums are: KRS One’s “I Got Next”, Dangermuse & Jemini “Ghetto Pop Life” and Madlib & J-Dilla “Jaylib”
Thanks to DJ Irie
More about this DJ:
http://thenewworck.com/genre/hiphop/the-new-worck-398-of-dj-irie
http://deejayirie.blogspot.com/2011/06/hectic-eclectic-20-behind-scenes.html
mixtape live on Ustream
http://deejayirie.blogspot.com/2011/07/hectic-eclectic-20-performed-live-on.html.
