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Words: kicking_k
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Photography: Cat Stevens
Tourist Information: this chaotic, trash-talking
and bass-heavy online radio show mutated into
a production duo, and have already fly-posted
assorted grime heads all over their bubbling
dancehall bounce music. I spoke to Johan and DJ
Tron (Etienne) entirely via their MySpace page.
How would you describe the Radioclit sound?
Etienne: “It started with a big love for bass music,
eurodance and Dirty South hip hop. Sampling
a lot of traditional Asian music, Moroccan stuff,
traditional southern African stuff, pow-wow music.
We’re having a lot of fun with that.”
What kind of tech d’you use?
Johan: “We keep it pretty simple. Mac computers,
Ableton, ProTools, soft synths, a shitload of
samples, loads of hitting things with other things
in the studio…”
What’s the ethos behind ‘ghettopop’?
Etienne: “Ghettopop is the easiest way to describe
our music as a sound system and as a production
team. We’re heavily influenced by music coming
out of rough places from all over the planet,
whether it’s Atlanta or Rio or Luanda or Paris –
and pop music at the moment is as well. We’re
trying to illustrate the connections between those
worlds. World music is the new pop music – the
hybridisation of Western pop and the other
continents is where it’s at.”
How’ve you found it coming into grime from
outside? How d’you feel about that scene at
the moment?
Etienne: “All the artists we worked with – Ears,
Trim, Ruff Sqwad – have brought us a lot, musically
and on a human level. Everybody seem to think
grime is dead right now, but we still think the vibe
of that scene is incredible. We don’t really care if
those artists get to have hits in UK or elsewhere,
all we’re excited about is that they keep their
originality, rawness, freshness. We truly love
those kids.”
You went to Lisbon to check out the kuduro
scene…What did you find? Any particular
artists we should be looking out for?
Johan: “It’s weird. In Lisbon, everyone knows
kuduro, but a lot of them don’t know it as
the Angolan rough ghetto music. There was
a commercial ‘kuduro’ hit in Portugal a few years
ago and I think it gave a lot of people the wrong
impression. But Buraka Som Sistema [of internet
hit ‘Yah!’ > are changing that.
“Conductor, Kalaf and Petty from Buraka are
all Angolan and grew up there, so if anyone is close
to whats going on, it’s them. We haven’t been to
Angola, so I can’t really talk about it. I think Buraka
are getting more attention than the original artists
because Angola is still pretty unexplored.”
…and just what is it you like so much
about bass?
Johan: “We like clubs. Loud music in clubs.
Loud bass in the club. At home. I’ll put on
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Cornelis Vreeswijk,
Ali Farka Touré, classical music or something
like that…”
www.myspace.com/radioclit |
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