DJ/Rupture & Matt Shadetek

Solar Life Raft

BY Dimitri NasrallahPublished Oct 25, 2009

If you look back over DJ/Rupture's (aka Jace Clayton) discography this decade, the consensus is that he's been consistently ahead of the curve when it comes to bass music, so much so that before the mainstreaming of dub-step came along, he was mostly out in a musical wilderness of his own making. That's often the cost of the visionary musical pastiching that goes into both Clayton's DJing and productions. Fortunately, he struck a chord with last year's Uproot mix, and Solar Life Raft is very much a companion set to that mix in its blend of leftfield bass music with unlikely contenders from the pages of music history. Teaming with frequent collaborator Matt Shadetek, the pair mix down newcomers like Timeblind, Jahdan Blakkamoore and Matty G alongside the avant-garde tape experiments of Luc Ferrari and the Finnish psych of Paavoharju, holding the whole set together impeccably via a number of the duo's remixes of tracks by Gang Gang Dance, Shackleton, Telepathe and others. At 29 selections, Solar Life Raft moves quickly and is filled with surprising left turns, doing for bass music what DJs like Optimo and the Glimmer Twins have been doing for dance floors. Rupture and Shadetek turn a DJ set into a history lesson, and have some fun along the way.

How does the partnership work between yourself and Matt Shadetek on a mix of this sort?

Rupture: Well, the label and I were happy with how Uproot turned out, and so we started talking about another mix. But I didn't want to just repeat myself, so I invited Matt to do it with me, knowing that we had this big body of tracks we've produced together, and that his energy would change the vibe in a cool direction. On top of that, I set about asking some musicians whose work I admire if we could do remixes: Gang Gang Dance, Telepathe, etc.

Any plans to go back to working the full-length format with your material?
Yes indeed! I'm working on a Rupture full-length for spring 2010. And I'm happy to say I just finished recording a new Nettle album. Nettle are a band project I started in Barcelona, which has expanded to four members. The main guy is a violin and banjo virtuoso named Abdelhak Rahal.
(The Agriculture)

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