Quantic, Blockhead, DJ Vadim
Mezzanine
03/26/2015 09:00 PM PDT
$20.00
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Supporting Acts: Arms & Sleepers
Quantic
Quantic is an umbrella name for UK-born, Will Holland: acclaimed Producer, Musician and DJ for over 15 years evolving and involving styles like Funk & Jazz to Electronic & Folk music through to Latin, Reggae, Dub & Cumbia. Holland has released over ten full-length albums internationally through the label, Tru Thoughts, … across six different projects ranging from his DJ/Producer/Remixer moniker that has packed dance floors from Bulgaria to Buenos Aires, Quantic, to his Latin-tinged, reggae and dub exploration, Flowering Inferno, to a full-out soul band, The Quantic Soul Orchestra.
Based in the musical epicenter of Cali, Colombia since 2007, Holland has been exploring cumbias, salsa and Afro-Colombian music through his particular beat-focused, electronic and funk lens. His latest live band project, Quantic y Su Combo Barbaro, a carefully assembled international cast of musical creators including virtuosic salsa pianist Alfredo Linares and Pacific folklore singer Nidia Gongora, is a bold snapshot of an ever-evolving musical landscape in the Americas. Holland also works and exchanges with a cross-section of artists and producers innovatively shaping contemporary music from Latin America as we speak.
Blockhead
Tony Simon, a/k/a Blockhead, has been making and releasing utterly distinctive, funky and emotive music for the last two decades.
Blockhead grew up in downtown New York City. As the son of an artist, surrounded by visual culture, he early on found that his passion was for music, for the sonic. A fan of a whole range of sounds, especially hip-hop, Blockhead steadily built a tremendous collection of tapes and later CDs from innumerable artists, a quiet accumulation of knowledge and know-how.
After a brief stint as a rapper, he realized his calling was behind the boards and not on the mic – and from there he began to produce beats. Since making that decision, he's kept pretty busy: carving a niche as a sought-after underground beatmaker that people call when they want something special.
Blockhead produced nine tracks on Aesop Rock's critically acclaimed album "Labor Days." Additionally he produced half the tracks on Aesop's follow up EP, "Daylight." He has also worked with other indie giants Atmosphere, Murs, Mike Ladd and Illogic. In between, he found time to complete a break beat album entitled "Blockhead's Broke Beats," with ten hard-hitting instrumental tracks, which was released on Mush Records, the US home of cLOUDDEAD.
To understand Blockhead's Stateside presence and gravitas – look no further than the fact that he has also contributed three tracks (including the first single) for Cage's "Hell's Winter" on Def Jux. The other producers on the project are DJ Shadow, El-P and RJD2.
All this occurred simultaneously to his debut album on Ninja Tune, "Music By Cavelight," described as "one of the most fantastically good albums you're going to hear this year" (Sunday Telegraph) and "a beautiful record" (Metro), with Blockhead himself tipped as "definitely one to watch" (Touch.)
Blockhead returned in 2005 with "Downtime Science," another set of deep, emotional instrumental hip hop tracks, this time dedicated to the downtown area of Manhattan where he grew up and has lived his entire life, encompassing all the attitude, anger and edginess of the neighborhood. This expansive album also features some melancholy reflections upon failed relationships and the promise of future loves.
"The Music Scene," was released in 2009 to both critical acclaim and commercial success – launching Blockhead on a global string of headlining dates ranging from Pittsburgh to Poland – where he participated in the world famous Zubroffka festival, providing a live score for some of Charlie Chaplin's earliest films. Blockhead followed this album with "Interludes After Midnight," further showcasing his development as a solo artist with a unique voice.
This brings us to the present, and 2014 is the year of "Bells and Whistles," the latest release from Blockhead and a bold artistic statement unlike his previous work. According to Blockhead – the naming of the album speaks to emerging trends in music he is seeking to address: "The whole idea behind the album is that music has gotten so far away from just being music. I think that whole way of thinking, relating to music and art in general, is bullshit. I don't want to use those tactics to distract people or create a buzz that's separate from my album. I want to be judged purely on the music itself – just well constructed songs with no frills...thus 'Bells and Whistles.'"
The album unfurls to the listener deliberately, unspooling twisted melodies and building emotions through many of the delicate tricks Blockhead has loaded into his arsenal over the years. From the artist: "Some of my favorite moments are the more minimal ones. Like on "Sacrificial Santa," the ominous beginning really gets a mood across. On "FTW," the way it builds is exactly how I saw it before making the song. I think, in general, this album shows my slow but steady progression. I'm never going to veer off and start making trap music or dub step but I feel as though, with my last few albums, I've created my own lane, as far as sample based instrumental hip hop."
As 2015 gears up, and Blockhead charges on, keep your eyes online as he updates his fans daily through all means of Social Media – whether on his blog www.phatfriend.com, or Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. This aspect of his career has become more and more important – and isn't something Blockhead takes lightly: "I don't have that thing in me where I feel I'm above just shooting the shit with people. With things like Twitter and Facebook, I'll respond to most questions. I'd like to think it makes the fans form more of a connection and recognize you as a normal person, as opposed to a foreign being who makes music they like."
DJ Vadim
Certain high-end consumables such as whisky, wine and cheese are said to improve with age, undergoing many complex processes to enhance and improve the flavour, colour and appearance. In the same vein, DJ Vadim has defiantly and soulfully been fermenting and malting his global musical elixir for coming on 20 years now, and can now well and truly be described as vintage.
DJ Vadim has become well respected as an innovator in a number of areas during his career, "a veteran presence in the DJ community as well as one of the foremost producers in too many communities to count, Vadim is never running out of ideas" (URB Magazine). In 1994, Vadim founded his own independent record label, Jazz Fudge and signed to Ninja Tune the following year. So begun Vadim's adventure that is now approaching its twentieth year and has seen him tour across 69 countries and perform over 2500 times, with shows at some of the world's most prestigious events such as Sonar, Glastonbury, Big Chill, V Fest, Fuji Rock, Roskilde, Exit, VInarock, Moscow Street Ball (to over 40,000 people), Notting Hill Carnival and Shambhala…To describe the man as an internationalist almost seems to sell him short.
Hard to put a peg on because he sticks to no rule-book, Vadim's sound is not easy to describe, but it's electronic, hip hop inspired and tinged with reggae, trip hop, soul, funk, grime, dub and bass, with elements of African rhythms, house and boogie. Vadim has produced numerous solo and group albums across these genres, recording in the studio and on his travels around the world, melding flavours and rhythms to create globally aware music with global appeal; he has been responsible for seminal underground classics such as The Terrorist, Black is the Night, Kill Kill Kill, Soldier, Talk to me and Bluebird and has worked with a variety of breaking talent and established artists, musicians, singers and groups, including Wretch32, Foreign Beggars, Alice Russell, Aaron Jerome (SBTRKT), DJ Krush, The Herbaliser, Belleruche, Killa Kela, Fat Freddy's Drop and The Super Furry Animals. He is an evolutionist in sound, described once as 'the John Coltrane of Hip Hop,' always pushing boundaries, always collaborating.
For an artist with such a long recording pedigree it would be easy to sit in cruise control, knock out music by numbers, and stay in the box, or just reproduce or re-hash earlier ideas. This however isn't Vadim. One look at the discography and Vadim was there before people coined phrases for genres...making dubby bugged out 'step' music years before people even had heard of Croydon musically, creating future beats before people called it trip hop or headz, distorting basslines and drums before Glitch or Diplo and running his own record label (Jazz Fudge) before the advent of indie music. However it hasn't all been clear sailing. In 1999, the US broadcast commission (FCC) decided absurdly enough that a pro-women empowerment record (Your Revolution featuring Sarah Jones) was too 'crude' for radio whilst allowing countless records that promote negativity to go. The decision ended up in court several years later under appeal with several leading Ivy league English professors coming to the defense of freedom of speech, freedom of expression and to argue the double standards of the ban and fine.
In 2007, Vadim was diagnosed with Ocular Melanoma, a very rare eye cancer. Fortunately for us, it wasn't his time. Vadim has more music to make, and more shows to play; 6 solo albums to date, 1 remix album, 5 group albums (The Isolationist - 1999; The Bug - 1994, One Self - 2005; The Electric - 2011), countless mix cd's and remixes. Hardest working man in show business? Trouper? Tireless? However you want to put it, be sure of one thing, when DJ Vadim first heard the phrase "Don't sleep" he obviously took it literally.
With so much under his belt, what does the future hold? Not content with being uber busy, Vadim has taken it upon himself to film and direct music videos for his new album project, developing his eye as a budding photographer. Music aside, there is even word of a possible pop-up restaurant and bar. If the music is anything to go by, it will be very fine tasting stuff.
'Some men see things as they are and ask why others dream of things that never were and ask why not'
Bernard Shaw
Venue Information
Mezzanine
444 Jessie St
San Francisco, CA 94103
http://www.mezzaninesf.com/calendar.asp