Alex: “Baltimore, Maryland 1978.”
Chris: Christopher Devlin was born at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in 1978.
Ronnie: I was born in a hospital in Annapolis, Maryland also in 1978 - holla! - and I`ve lived in Glen Burnie all my life, which is about 15 minutes outside of Baltimore in the suburbs. It`s like the suburbs, like strip malls and malls and Taco Bells.
FAMILY
Ronnie: “I was a rambunctious child, I was always... Read moreBORN
Alex: “Baltimore, Maryland 1978.”
Chris: Christopher Devlin was born at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in 1978.
Ronnie: I was born in a hospital in Annapolis, Maryland also in 1978 - holla! - and I`ve lived in Glen Burnie all my life, which is about 15 minutes outside of Baltimore in the suburbs. It`s like the suburbs, like strip malls and malls and Taco Bells.
FAMILY
Ronnie: “I was a rambunctious child, I was always hyperactive And I had two older brothers and stuff would happen, and they would deny it so I would always get the beating. I spent a lot of time in time out. I don`t think my parents really listened to music much, but we used to go camping a lot so during our travels we were always listening to the radio so I was privy to listening to a lot of old Motown and Archie`s and a lot of the fun old stuff on the radio. So I was always listening to everything. My older brother was listening to heavy metal but we were all just listening to hip hop when we were younger.”
Chris: “I`m the middle child of three boys. My mom was always into education and my dad did carpentry and public service. So, you know, they were younger when I was growing up, they grew up through the 60s and they were involved in a lot of social movements. So growing up I had a lot of Beatles, Paul Simon, Richie Havens, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel. But my shit was like Michael Jackson `Thriller,` Beastie Boys `Licensed To Ill,` and I was really into Aerosmith for a while. My brother was real big into Led Zepplin, so I was definitely real into rock too. But I was always into hip hop and rap music, but mostly just off the radio til, you know, I paraded off into the world of the underground ”
Alex: “My parents were both visual artists. My mom was a professional painter of, like, paintings. (laughs) And my dad taught sculpture at the art school in Baltimore. They had pretty bad taste in music. My mom listened to a lot of classical music but it was all pretty bad romantic classical music ”
MUSICAL ROOTS
Chris: “I had a Michael Jackson routine when I got `Thriller;` I had the gloves and the socks, and I had the dance down. My older brother also had the Beatles` (sings) “run for your life if you can little girl ” I had this whole routine with the sunglasses and everything. So I had an early performing career, just in-house, you know, on Kaiser Road, doing my little thing. After that I didn`t get turntables until well, I got a plastic set of turntables in 1994 and I sort of had a mixer for a little while. But I didn`t get a proper set of Technics until like 2000.”
Ronnie: “Well, I don`t really have a musical background, my story`s a lot like Chris`. I think I always wanted to have turntables and eventually went and bought a cheap pair
Chris: “It all changed when I saw Beatstreet when I was like 7 or 8. I remember seeing that and being like “this is the coolest shit I`ve ever seen.”
Ronnie: I was always into scratching, so once I got my turntables I was like running both records back and trying to do everything. I think the musical background question is all Alex, because he`s the one that`s actually trained.
Alex: “I got really into music when I was 9 or 10 maybe, got into the same shit that everyone else was into, like Guns N Roses and all that. I took piano lessons and the piano teacher told me that I should be a drummer. I think it was an insult but then I did actually start playing drums; I played drums for about 10-15 years. I went to music school for college, playing the drums. I was practicing drums all the time and I got tendonitis, so I started doing stuff on the computer with my left hand (which was uninjured). That was actually good timing because one of my friends at school had just played me some Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and all that, so I got really excited about it. I was into a bunch of stuff on Warp, Autechre, Funkstorm. I was listening to a lot of the early kinda glitch stuff I guess.”
FIRST PROJECTS
Chris: “Ronnie and I met at a fateful meeting at a famed record store in Baltimore ”
Ronnie: “I was gonna DJ at a Halloween party and we had flyers made so I went to ”
Chris: “ Music Liberated.”
Ronnie: “Okay, so the place in Baltimore where all the club music was played called Paradox, and that`s where I was gonna be DJing. And then the ONE record store in Baltimore where everybody goes to is called Music Liberated, where the guy would just overcharge you for records and you had to pay because it was the only place there. And I ended up meeting Chris there and we got to talking so I gave him a flyer. Then he came out to the party that I was DJing at and I started hanging out with him ever since. He still remembers stuff I played, like little routines and cuts I did We were all intertwining around the same time because we all knew Chris, and Chris lived at a place – I can`t remember the street, but it was apartment 320. He lived with two other dudes and they would always throw parties. So I would go round Chris` house for the party but I remember seeing Naeem and talking to him once in a while. I met Alex because he was always interested in DJing and I`d be DJing at some of Chris` parties. So everyone was always around.”
Chris: “It started to coalesce around `98-`99. Alex and Naeem started to work together around 2000, `01, just fucking around, making remixes. Alex was doing whatever, like jazz drumming and working for that rock band that was kinda out of the box for him at that time. He was doing a lot of cool remixes, like Lil` Kim `The Jump Off` remix - I think that was the first time it hit me that Alex was gonna be huge, or at least a really respected producer - that beat was amazing. It was around that time that we started playing pop music, like jiggy hip hop and stuff, instead of just keeping it underground. We started playing more commercial music and people responded to it more, we`d have more girls dancing.”
Alex: “When I was in college, I joined this band Zero Zero. They were one of the first bands that was produced by DFA, except they were an old punk band that got into music. They sort of brought me on, I was hired to play drums. I was interning at DFA at the time. So I was really excited about that, I left school and went on tour. That was the first time I thought “maybe I can actually do this – I won`t have to be a music teacher!” (laughs) It was also really fun because I`d been sort of more on the academic side of things, you know what I mean? So to go from playing at a jazz club in front of 16 dudes scratching their chins to go play a really big punk show with 800 screaming kids it was kind of like “oh yeah, that`s why I`m doing this!” That band was really well produced so that lead into me learning more about production and using Pro Tools. Gradually it turned into the Spank Rock thing, I guess. That band broke up and I was out of school by that time, so I had to get a job. I got work in New York as a bike messenger for a few years. The guy from Zero Zero sold me his Pro Tools set up for $500, which is not a lot. So I was working on that and I made a lot of the music during that time that turn into the Spank Rock stuff, this was like maybe 2002-2003. And then I had been working on and off with Naeem but nothing too serious. He was enamoured with all the stuff that was on Rawkus at the time, and all the indie hip hop stuff.”
Chris: “Naeem was working with other producers at the time too, he was doing his own little things and then working with Alex from time to time. And I think the more interesting stuff started coming out from Alex.”
Alex: “So after Zero Zero was over and I started making new music on my own, he came up to Brooklyn for whatever reason and heard some of it, and we ended up collaborating. And it turned out really well so we just ended up making more music together. We met in Baltimore, we were introduced by Chris.”
Chris: “I remember when they (Alex and Naeem) got a phone call (from Big Dada), and then I got a phone call from Alex, like “dude, the record got signed, so we`re gonna have to do some shows – wanna DJ?”
Alex: “When we got into a position that we had to do shows, we got Chris to DJ for us because we knew him from a long time ago; he was always DJing. At the time, when we first stated doing shows, I couldn`t DJ at ALL. I was just producing. I just got a second turntable last year!”
Ronnie: “When all this was happening, I didn`t know about any of this. It was Naeem and Alex and then Chris got involved, but I didn`t know anything about it. Chris comes out of nowhere, like “oh yeah, I`m DJing in this rap group” and I was like `what the fuck are you talking about? You guys are all rapping and making a band?!` I was invited up to New York with Chris to help him out which was good, because he ended up having some big rotary knob mixer which was crap, so I set my little turntable up and everything.
LABELS & PRODUCTION
Alex: “We did the record pretty much all at my house, we didn`t think that we were really gonna put it out. Naeem gave the CD to Diplo in Philadelphia – Naeem was living in Philly at the time, I was up here in New York – and Diplo sent it to Big Dada, cuz I guess he was excited about it. And they called us up like, “hey, you guys wanna put this out?” We didn`t even think about shopping it around or anything, we were just like “ah sweet, somebody wants to put it out?!” It never even occurred to us that we would get a record contract. So we signed up with Big Dada and finished the record and then they sat on it for a year. So that was really frustrating. And then it came out last year. Then all this touring and crazy stuff happened, a lot of remixes for me, which has been nice. So I`ve been staying home from tour a lot doing lots of remixes rather than go out on the road. Recently, I did a remix for Beck (“Nausea”) and I did one for Thom Yorke`s “The Eraser,” and all sorts of stuff like CSS and I did one for Wes (Diplo) you know, all kinds of stuff. Like, a year`s worth of stuff.”
Ronnie: “I just did a remix for The Secret Handshake, `The Summer of Love` or `The Summer of `98.` I did a little remix and I just did a new Scion CD for Ninja Tune, it`ll probably come out end of Feb/March. I basically just chopped everything and re-edited it all. Chris and his buddy Chip do a whole bunch of remixes and I think that`s where we`re trying to get at now, making remixes, re-edits and mixtapes.”
Chris: “Chip and I have made a couple bangers for the clubs – `Racerider on the Dancefloor,` that`s a track that me and Chip made, Naeem got involved. Hopefully that`ll be the next song that he puts out. Chip`s a guy I`ve known for a long time, he played bass in Naeem`s original hip hop band back when we were in high school, I was scratching in that band too.”
DJING
Alex: “At the beginning, I had to go on tour because nobody else knew the raps - some of them were really fast so Naeem needed a second guy to kind of bounce off of. So I had to go. But I felt pretty uncomfortable cuz I`m not a rapper and you know, it was just a little awkward. I was trying to rap and then we got this guy Pace, who`s touring with us now, and he took over that job. As I was saying, when we first started, I could barely DJ so we had Chris (Rockswell) come on tour. So I really don`t have anything to do with the shows anymore unless it`s like doing sound or sound effects or something. I don`t really have to go, which is nice for me, cuz I like to stay home. Unless it`s somewhere really cool, like Australia or something. (laughs) This year I started doing gigs. I did some at the beginning of the year that I was kind of unprepared for, but now I`m starting to do a monthly in New York and I can actually DJ a little bit now, so it`s not so embarrassing. But I really enjoy it. And I`d say it`s definitely added to my production, brought another dimension to it. I like more electro stuff these days, and I like disco stuff.”
Chris:” I like dirty-ass clubs that are kind of grimy, with about 200 people. We like to play everything from techno to doo wop, and sometimes it`s hard to keep everybody. Some clubs have younger kids, but my deal is kind of 21-30 years old, people that are ready to go.”
Ronnie: “Our thing is we just like to play good music. So it could be a song from back in the day but it could be the same song that they sampled in the hip hop song you like or it could be the old 70s soul song straight outta Motown, which happens to be the new Baltimore club remix you`re mixing in to ”
Chris: “Just good music across the board.”
THE MIX
Alex: “We didn`t really map it out at all. I gave fabric a wish list, and a lot of the stuff happened to clear so that was lucky. Usually when we`ve done mixes in the past, me and Chris will just sit down and start with a record or like a small mix of 5 songs that we`ve already played at a club at some point. So we`ll start with that, and just add on to it gradually. But this mix was a different format for us because the last mix we did was 70 minutes but it was closer to 100-150 tracks, instead of 25. So it was a little difficult to decide which ones we were gonna let play out – because we have to let some of them play out, you know? With 25 tracks, they have to each play out for an average of 2-2.5 minutes or something. So rather than totally abandon our pace that we like to do, we sort of did a quick pace at the beginning and slowed it down towards the end. In that way, it was a little bit of a puzzle, we couldn`t just do whatever the fuck we want. (laughs)”
Ronnie: “It was supposed to be all of us, but I was busy working on that Scion CD. And then Chris met up with Alex and started working on it.”
Chris: “In Brooklyn, Alex and I did like 4 15-minute sections and then Alex was like `Allright, I can get this finished.` I was only out there for 3 days. Then I came up an extra day and did a little more work on it, the day before we left for Australia.”
Ronnie: “I came up for a day and did a small amount of work with Alex and then we had to leave for Australia. I thought it was mostly Alex, I didn`t realize Chris put that much participation into it.”
Chris: “Yeah, and the way that we did it was really cool. We did a lot of stuff just having fun, where we did like singing on it and me and Alex made claps, like (does a few varieties of claps) We`d do four or five takes of that. We got Tyler from !!! to come in and play guitar ”
Ronnie: “ on one sample, so Alex could just remake them.”
Chris: “The mix, in a lot of ways, is a pretty straightforward mix but the kind of stuff that went into it – there was a lot of production that went into it. There was a lot of recording of vocals, like we all sang on it and shit The thing is, we fuck around a lot, all the time and I think a big part of the aesthetic of our performances and how we roll, as far as making the party, is debauchery and fun. And if something`s sloppy, you kind of own that a little bit, you know? So we just sort of carried that over into the fabric mix, we thought maybe it would be good to have a little bit of humour in it. And there`s some other stuff – we did a lot of recording, we made a lot of sound effects. For example, there sounds on there that sound like bombs dropping, which we made by mic`ing the sound of us picking up amplifiers and dropping them. There`s little stuff in there that took a while to make, and yeah there`s some stuff in there you gotta check for. It was really fun to make, and like I said, I got to do all the fun parts and then leave – and Alex was left to clean everything up. He did the large share of the work on the mix. We did our first section and through conversation realised what would and wouldn`t work from the beginning. For example, we picked the sample of a song that Diplo had used in his `Plantlife` track, `Love To The World` – but the original song `Love To The World` is by LTD and it`s an awesome disco song. We were thinking about opening up with that, but we figured that wouldn`t be best to do, so we switched over to starting it a different way. I think it works better now because it has a better flow to it: it starts kind of party-ish and goes into that weird `Hustler` remix did, and then goes into this sort of chill out bit
Ronnie: I came up with the idea that every person that does a mix after the last person always has to start with the song that the last one ended with. So that last song, the idea was we were gonna put it at the end so you listen to ours and it ends, and you listen to Diplo`s and that`s what it kicks off with – so they all have a connection together.”
Chris: “Or if someone else makes a mix first, we use their last song to kick off our mix at the beginning.”
FABRIC
Alex: “Our show at fabric was really cool, I really liked it a lot. Everybody at the club was super nice to us and Shaun got us lots of free drinks, which is always appreciated. It was a little weird cuz we were playing on a DMC night, which is a bit of weird crowd but after that was over it got really good. The Scratch Perverts played after us, and that was really good too. We went all around it, it`s really huge! We didn`t know too much about fabric before our first time playing here, I hadn`t been to London in years I knew Wes had done his CD but I wasn`t really sure what it was about.”
Chris: “It was so much fun.”
Ronnie: “Yeah, the fact that it was a DMC night was the most bizarrest thing in the world for me, it was pretty uncomfortable. We were kind of scared because we were thinking “These are all like backpack scratch turntable guys, they are not gonna want to hear what the fuck we are doing!” It`s hard to scratch at the BPM we`re at, so I knew the moment I started scratching the chin-strokers would think I`m wak or whatever. But once we were done, they loved it and it was great, a lot of people came down just to see us and were in the audience. And after that we were in the back stage area with a whole lot of Jaegermeister, and just drank and drank it was crazy. It was definitely one of the best places we`ve ever DJ`d at, it was one of our favourite gigs. The Perverts were on last that night, and I love them, really look up to them so it was great to actually get to see them do their thing. And they were DJing, they weren`t just doing routines, so that was cool. We got to walk around all the rave rooms, adventuring around to all these little cubby holes, random tables and crazy shit. And there are all these steps to go around different levels. It`s really fun. They don`t have a place like fabric anywhere else, so it`s pretty unique being a multi-level club with shit happening.”
THE FUTURE
Alex: “We`re gonna make another Spank Rock record and I`m working on some stuff with Amanda Blank. Me and Pace are starting up a little label, just for 12”`s, and that`s gonna be called Fully Fitted. That kind of corresponds with the monthly party that we do in New York too. So we`re gonna be putting out our old mixes and maybe some new mixes on that label as well.”
Ronnie: “I plan on DJing with Chris but elevating what we`re doing beyond past turntables, where we have a lot more toys, like loop machines, Danna on keytar, cowbells, a lot more electrical things so that it`s more of well, instead of just playing a record – we could play a record but then play all the things we have on the table into that record, and then break off from that record, so then we`re making something new, that`s not the record and people are still dancing and don`t even know we`ve gone past it and then we`ll bring more records back out of it so transitions building on top of things.”
Chris: “That sounds fun. I`m also gonna continue to work on being one of the best wedding DJs in the world.”
Ronnie: “More productions, more remixes ”
Chris: “And more wedding DJing.”Show less
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