DJ Spooky

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At the 2003 Sundance Film Festival

DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid (born September 6, 1970 in Washington, DC ; real name Paul D. Miller ) is an illbient and trip-hop musician, DJ and producer. As an author, he writes regularly in magazines and newspapers and has published two books so far.

He took his stage name from a protagonist in a novel by William S. Burroughs .

Youth and Studies

In his own opinion, Spooky grew up in a privileged home. His father was the dean of Howard University and represented the Black Panther Party as a lawyer , but died when Miller was only three years old. His mother brought handicrafts from all over the world into the household from her travels as a designer, but also took the young Paul with her on trips around the world. His grandmother was militantly involved in the lesbian movement . In his youth, Spooky took an interest in punk and go-go music. He studied in Maine , where he obtained degrees in French literature and philosophy. He wrote his master's thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach and Richard Wagner . During his studies, he put on records on his college radio station and began to learn the double bass .

After completing his studies, Spooky moved to New York , began writing science fiction, and founded the Soundlab collective with several other artists . At the beginning of his career, thanks to his parents, he already knew and valued a wide range of music, but was still working almost exclusively as a hip-hop DJ.

First publications

In the mid-1990s, he began recording a number of singles and EPs. His first album Songs of a Dead Dreamer , released in 1996, is now seen as a formative influence on Illbient music. He is also considered to be the creator of the term Illbient . Riddim Warfare was an underground hit that included Dr. Octagon and other well-known figures from the indie rock scene collaborated. At about the same time he began writing articles for the New York city newspaper The Village Voice and remixed albums by Metallica and Nick Cave , among others .

He retained the technique of working with others for the rest of his career. He sees himself as a sound nomad and says:

“My story is in the mix. In the past, the blues musicians looked for their inspiration on the mythical crossroads, I find my intersection on the internet. "

In the course of his career he worked with avant-garde jazz musicians, Iannis Xenakis , Yoko Ono , Metallica , Slayer , Sun Ra and MC5 .

After working in collaborations for a number of years and publishing mix CDs, another mix album, Modern Mantra , was released in 2002 . In the same year he released the album Optometry with avant jazz musicians Matthew Shipp , William Parker , Guillermo E. Brown and Joe McPhee . He also improvised with Thurston Moore and Ornette Coleman .

His next album was released in 2005. On Drums of Death there are pieces that he recorded with Dave Lombardo from Slayer , Chuck D ( Public Enemy ) and Vernon Reid ( Living Color ). Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto co-produced this record .

Author, multimedia artist and lecturer

He first appeared as a book author in 2004: Rhythm Science was published by MIT Press . In the book he tries to place the fascination of sampling in a broader cultural-historical context. For him, sampling is a subversive cultural technique. In his words:

“We live in an experience economy where you can buy into certain identities and experiences. Everyone hears the same soundtrack to their life, lies at the feet of the same consumer deities. Sampling cuts out radical splinters, brings utopia back into play. "

On behalf of the Lincoln Center Festival, the Festival d'Automne a Paris, the Spoleto Festival USA and the Vienna Festival, he produced the film / music / multimedia performance DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation , with which he through the World toured. The project is a remix of the famous racist film The Birth of a Nation by David Wark Griffith (1915). In 2015 a DVD and an album recorded by the Kronos Quartet for the project were released.

He now processes samples from Merzbow or Oval, for example, in a prominent place .

Between 2007 and 2014, Spooky focused on Antarctica . He traveled to the continent in 2007, published the Book of Ice in 2011 , followed in 2013 by the album Of Water and Ice , which was made during a residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is available free of charge from Jamendo under a Creative Commons license . His election to the National Geographic 2014 Class of Emerging Explorers is also in the context of this project .

Within the exhibition FAVT ( Future Africa Visions in Time ) on Iwalewahaus Bayreuth he showed together in November 2015 the Anglistin and Africa researcher Susan Arndt and the artist and spoken-word -Performer Philipp Khabo Koepsell installing Beyond Wagner's futures , dedicated to Richard Wagner's influence on German colonial history is concerned.

Spooky offers a free iPad app DJ Mixer , which users can use to scratch , remix songs and add electronic effects based on their music collections .

Catalog raisonné

Albums as DJ Spooky

  • Necropolis (March 1996; Knitting Factory Works)
  • Songs of a Dead Dreamer (April 1996; Asphodel Records )
  • Synthetic Fury EP (February 1998; Asphodel Records)
  • Haunted Breaks Volumes I and II (October & December 1998; Liquid Sky Music)
  • Riddim Warfare (September 1998; Outpost-Geffen)
  • Optometry (July 2002; Thirsty Ear )
  • The Secret Song (2009; Thirsty Ear)
  • Of Water and Ice (June 2013; Jamendo), free download

Singles / EPs as DJ Spooky

  • Galactic Funk (1996; Asphodel 101)
  • Object Unknown (August 1998; Outpost / Geffen CD; Asphodel vinyl), with remixes by DJ Spooky and Kut Masta Kurt
  • Peace in Zaire (April 1999; Outpost / Geffen), with remixes by Ambassador Jr. and The Dub Pistols; promotional / White Label Only
  • Subliminal Minded EP - Peace in Zaire Remixes (October 1999; Bar None Records)
  • Catechism feat. Killah Priest (August 2002; Synchronic)
  • Optometrix 12 ” (June 2003; Thirsty Ear)

Albums as Paul D. Miller or other names

  • Death in Light of the Phonograph: Excursions into the Pre-linguistic Asphodel Records (September 1996), CD for installation in the Annina Nosei Gallery
  • The Viral Sonata Asphodel Records (1997), installation CD for the 1997 Whitney Biennale
  • Another Forensic Charade (September 2001), CD for the exhibition catalog in Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden, September – December 2001 (limited edition)
  • ftp> snd> untitled> (October 2001), CD for the November issue of Nest Magazine

Collaborations and mix LPs

  • DJ Spooky and Totemplow Template 12 ” (1998; Manifold Records)
  • DJ Spooky and Alan Licht 10 ” (1998; Manifold Records)
  • DJ Spooky and Totemplow Kaotik: Transgression (June 1999; Manifold Records)
  • DJ Spooky and Arto Lindsay 10 ” (July 1999; Manifold Records)
  • DJ Spooky and Quoit 10 ” (2000; Manifold Records)
  • DJ Spooky and Merzbow 10 ” (2000; Manifold Records)
  • DJ Spooky vs. The Freight Elevator Quartet File Under Futurism (1999; Caipirinha Productions)
  • DJ Spooky and Scanner The Quick and the Dead (January 2000; Sulfur Records)
  • Anodyne (Main, core and Peripheral mixes) (October 2000; BSI Records), Picture disk w / Sound Secretion
  • DJ Spooky w / Killah Priest Catechism (June 2001; Blue Juice Records / UK)
  • Under the Influence (September 2001; Six Degrees)
  • Modern Mantra (May 2002; Shadow / Instinct)
  • Dubtometry feat. Mad Professor, Lee “Scratch” Perry et al. (March 2003; Thirsty Ear) - Remix album for Optometry
  • Riddim Clash with Twilight Circus (April 2004; PLAY Label)
  • Celestial Mechanix : a label mix for Thirsty Ear Records (June 2004)
  • DJ Spooky vs. Dave Lombardo Drums of Death (April 2005; Thirsty Ear)
  • Creation Rebel: Trojan Remixed (2007; Trojan Records)
  • DJ Spooky performed by Kronos Quartet Rebirth of a Nation (2015; Cantaloupe Records)

Film music

  • Quattro Noza (Fountainhead Films); Finalist at the Sundance Festival (2003)
  • SLAM (Offline / Tri-Mark); Grand Prize at the Sundance Festival (1998); Cannes, Caméra d'Or (1998)

Multimedia and web projects

  • Marcel Duchamp remix, LA Museum of Contemporary Art (2002)
  • Stuzzicadenti DJ Spooky and Diego Cortez (May 2000)

Books

  • Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid: Rhythm Science , published by B&T Verlag (2004)
  • Paul D. Miller: Sound Unbound , published by MIT Press (2008)
  • Paul D. Miller: The Book of Ice , published by Mark Batty Publisher (2011)
  • Paul D. Miller and Svitlana Matviyenko (Eds.): The Imaginary App , published by MIT Press (2014)

literature

  • Americans hate to think , interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from July 30, 2005.
  • Penguins as HipHop Stars Interview with care & click on July 23, 2008 [1]
  • W. Kampmann Reclams Jazzlexikon Stuttgart 2003; ISBN 3-15-010528-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Americans hate to think , interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on July 30, 2005.
  2. ^ Illbient on Allmusic.com, accessed January 31, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME DJ Spooky
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miller, Paul D. (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician, DJ and producer
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC , USA