DJ/rupture

Uproot

[The Agriculture; 2008]

by Chizzly St. Claw

For over a decade now, DJ/rupture has released some of the most bangin’ and fast-paced adventures on record, mixes that make you feel like a secret agent on a jet-powered rickshaw navigating a Malay market. Uproot is not that. Instead, this album -- DJ/rupture's first solo mix since 2005's Low Income Tomorrowland -- is smoother and creamier than most of his other work, mixing in artists like Ekkehard Ehlers, Professor Shehab, and Clouds.

But if the press describes it as “listenable,” it’s a cipher. This is not going to appeal to a wide swath of people, but DJs who take advantage of the late hours of a petering-out dance party to play dubstep and spacey ambient techno will surely appreciate the vibe here. Weed heads, black light fetishists, booming stereo systems, and club junkies should know what to love, too. There is depth and complexity in spades, with so many of those robo-dog bow-wow bass notes that drive dub nerds wild. An added bonus is an “Ingredients” disc, which includes the tracks used to mix Uproot.

The Jamaican dub sound, the roving soundstation experience that flourished with original DJs like King Tubby or Studio One’s Coxsone Dodd, is clearly the precedent for this mix. The only real ingredients necessary for appreciation of this music is patience and chilling the fuck out. First time I put it on, my housemate said ““BORING.” For those whose musical world exists solely in booty-grind crunk music and sing-alongs, leave this one alone. Uproot is the soundtrack for a haunted house in a tenement hall decked out in skeleton palm trees, forests of neon bones that thump and swell then contract while you breathe easy. If you chill enough to notice that this is a bass martini, a bona fide big-city bass Bentley, then you probably also don’t like Lone Ranger.