Sixtoo
w/Blockhead, DJ Signify
Tues Sept 7, Chop Suey, 8 pm, $10 adv.
Underground hiphop has never been stronger. We live in absurd times with regard to releases pumping robust blood through the genre’s veins. Tip of the iceberg examples: MF Doom, Madlib, Dalek, Danger Mouse, Blueprint, and most of Mush, Lex, Big Dada, and Def Jux’s output. You could go broke trying to keep up with the left-field goodness filling bins right now, although you have to dig deeper to find gems amid the glut of mediocrity. (There’s just too much music being released now, period.)
Two figures bringing fresh slants to this old game are Montreal-based Sixtoo and New York-based DJ Signify, currently touring with Blockhead (ex-Aesop Rock beatmaker who’s also promoting a solid instrumental disc on Ninja Tune, Music by Cavelight). For this tour, Sig and Six will be performing together with Kid Koala collaborator P-Love on Rhodes, trumpet, melodica, and stylophone, and Matt Kelly on bass.
Sixtoo’s Chewing on Glass & Other Miracle Cures (Ninja Tune) and Signify’s Sleep No More (Lex) represent career highlights for both artists. Formerly of anticon and Cincinnati’s revered 1200 Hobos crew, Signify conjured the classic mid-’90s mix discs Mixed Messages and Signifyin’ Breaks. Like the finest hiphop DJs, Signify’s all about the funk and strange juxtapositions (his collection will give you vinyl envy). He equally values scratching prowess and weaving in humorous/profound spoken-word snippets and psychedelic atmospheres. The pan-stylistic joy permeating Signify’s mixes is absolute. Sleep No More is Signify’s first full-length of his own productions, and it’s a deep head fuck that submerges stark funk rhythms into a psychedelic soup that’s eloquently stirred by MCs Sage Francis and Buck 65.
Sixtoo, a masterly wax sampler and another anticon alumnus, decided to record Chewing on Glass live and then edited the results on his computer. The disc’s sprawling, cinematic post-rock and avant-funk opuses–with aid from Godspeed You! Black Emperor members, Kelly, and legendary Can vocalist Damo Suzuki– should broaden Sixtoo’s appeal beyond the underground-hiphop ghetto.
Chewing on Glass also illustrates my pet theory: Hiphop–at least as represented by its most forward-thinking artists–has entered its prog-rock phase. Shit is getting more complex, densely layered, baroque, allusive. Indie hiphop in 2004 = rock circa 1970. Boom-bap beats with braggadocious lyrics just ain’t enough anymore, are they?
“I think [Signify and I] both wish that was true,” says Sixtoo, “but, unfortunately, there is very little music that for us evokes the same responses with the same intensity, although both of us are suckers for overproduced club bangers.”
The fantastically morose Sleep No More boasts no club bangers, but it does abound with awesome samples of obscure musicians that will test the geekiest head’s knowledge. Six and Sig view their music as an educational tool as much as a vehicle for listening pleasure. “Whether we sample or not, a lot of our music is firmly rooted in past musics and cultural movements,” says Signify. “There is a nod of respect to the influences that we do wear on our sleeves as producers and engineers, and [that] comes from a digger’s perspective first and foremost. When we were younger, both of us made mix tapes, and in some ways we still do.”
Diggers are notoriously competitive. Do Sixtoo and Signify feel cutthroat toward their peers in the underground scene? Or is cooperation more common?
“There is always competitiveness/animosity in underground musics,” replies Sixtoo. “However, we both find ourselves more concerned with actual contributions of artists than the sum of their record collections. Being around for more than a year or two, you learn that attaching yourself to that notion is a waste of time. We [mainly] compete with our own demons: hippie speedball–coffee and weed.”
Those substances will certainly enhance your listening experience with Chewing on Glass, which seems to reflect exhaustion with hiphop conventions. Or was Sixtoo just itching to do something unprecedented?
“I don’t think that is the case with me or Signify,” Sixtoo counters. “The blueprint is there: hard drums, minimal aesthetics, rolling bass. I think more than anything, perhaps it is a matter of hiphop actually becoming a post-music, and not referencing itself as heavily as a lot of the so-called ‘true-school’ artists out there do. When we were young and listening to the second wave of hiphop, the number one rule was originality, and with that we feel our records are as true to form as anything out there.”
