Three posts in three days. It's a bonanza! Here's the interview verbatim. Apologies for the mistakes. I know you zinesters and webmasters like to use these kind of things, so feel free to reprint it as long as it isn't used for profit, coz I wrote it for the Brag.
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Me and Dsico's man-baby. Please don't judge my love. |
Dsico That No-Talent Hack (his full moniker) is The Shit. After years of downloading his stuff off the Internet, I finally got to meet my favourite DJ ever, fresh from his world tour and on the eve of some weird gig over in Moscow, Russia. It was a predictable affair; I was drunk and scarily enthusiastic. Two days later, I secured a phone interview and did my best to redeem my credibility in his eyes and maybe, just maybe, insinuate myself into his life; I desperately wanted to be his friend. Or have his man-babies.
Dsico (t0th) is the king of mash-ups: the art of mixing two or more tracks to create a song greater than the sum of its parts, with scant regard for the copyright laws of The Man. When you’re The Shit, The Man just doesn’t matter. Dsico (pronounced “duh-sik-oh”) is also the emperor of electrifying pop destruction; he fries those suckers into bleeps and rolls that crash pleasantly around your noggin like liquorice bumper cars.
DD: How did you go the other night (at the Brag relaunch)?
Yeah, pretty good. I had a couple of beers then took off. Everyone seemed to be clearing out pretty early.
What time did you leave?
I think it was almost 11:30pm.
Wow, that’s pretty early. By that stage I could barely see, so I don’t think I noticed if anyone was leaving. Did you have a good time?
Yeah, it wasn't bad. It was cool.
Did you see me shakin’ my booty?
I did. I saw you out there. I was impressed.
There was much enthusiasm involved. The Blink 182 tour that fell through: who’s idea was that and how did it come about in the first place?
Their tour manager from the US emailed me, and then someone from Michael Coppola Presents emailed me and said “Blink 182 are coming out in March, we’re thinking of getting you to do the tour with them and play between the bands” and so forth. They just wanted to know if I was interested in it at first. I think they thought maybe I’d just say no, I wouldn’t want to do it. But I just said “yeah, I’d do it,” because I thought it would be amusing, then I’d get paid quite a bit of money. Then a couple of months later, I get an email from Michael Coppola Presents saying “Sorry, we’ve decided to use a traditional support band. Your services won’t be required for the Blink 182 tour.”
Did they give you any clues as to why they thought you’d be good for it in the first place?
They tour manager from the US has just been out here with Queens of the Stone Age and heard about me when he was out here and just thought, you know, I’d be good for a laugh their tour. They thought I’d go down well. I don’t know. I didn’t ask any questions about it. I just thought ‘If they want me to do it then I’ll do it.’ It’ll be funny.
When you listen to pop music, do you hear the potential in it or the end in itself?
[Laughs] Well, sometimes you hear the potential, sometimes you just hate it.
Give me an example.
A lot of r’n’b I don’t really like, but occasionally you hear a track that is just great and if there’s an acapella of it around, then there’s something you can do with it. Or you’ll hear a track and think ‘that reminds me of something else.’ And you’ll be able to think, then, that this will probably work with this other song. Although then often it doesn’t. I was obsessed for a while that that Shakira song ‘Underneath Your Clothes’. Everytime I heard it I thought ‘this melody is exactly the same as the Bangles’ ‘Eternal Flame.’
Oh yeah. I can hear that.
So I got the two tracks and I started to piece them together in some weird way that made that evident. It just didn’t quite fit together well. It was slightly off. It was almost the same but the phrasing was slightly different. So it didn’t really work. Even though I thought it would. So sometimes your memory plays tricks on you.
In the process of making bootlegs, do you dig more dry wells that way? Are there more failures than successes and we only get to see the good ones on the end?
Yeah, there used to be. For a while I was just trying to do heaps. You’d do three or four, then only two of them [would work]. Or you’d start something and you’d think ‘this is so cool’ but it’s not working at all, and you ditch it right then and there. For every three times you started, you might finish, get only one track that worked.
What’s the ratio now? Is it better or just the same?
I think now maybe I don’t do as much before I think that it will work. I’ll listen to it a couple of times and mix them together roughly before I bother to invest my time in it. I think the success rate is a bit higher because of that. I just don’t do anything until I think that it’s going to work.
I’ve heard a lot about your karaoke nights [Dsico laughs]. I’m not hanging shit on karaoke at all. Have you heard of Extreme Karaoke in Melbourne?
[Enthusiastically] No I haven’t.
It’s on at The Laundry on Wednesday nights [Johnston St, Carlton]. They’ve got all the latest songs and more obscure hits from the 1980s and hip hop and stuff like that. This guy there just sources all the cool karaoke CDs.
It’s so hard to get decent music for karaoke. When we did it the first time, I went out to the karaoke hire shop, and you go through the discs that you can get for the karaoke machine. It was all really bad music mostly. Then I got on the ‘Net and managed to find more obscure 1980s tracks and things that would actually big in that sort of indy scene in the 1980s.
There must be some karaoke underground, like guys in leather jackets selling CDs on street corners, because that guy has just got really cool stuff. Like, you can do Iron Maiden karaoke there.
Oh, no way!
Yeah, yeah, it’s really good. There’s ‘Aces High’ and ‘Run to the Hills.’ It’s so good.
That’s crazy.
What happens at your karaoke night?
I collected a whole bunch of tracks and we ran the karaoke line, the singing and the backing, through two laptops and mangled it up in real time. You know, we had a bit of a laugh and ran it through [indecipherable] and stuff.
When you say ‘mangled it up’, what did you do?
Distortion, remodulation and effects on the laptop. We had it rigged up so the singer wouldn’t hear what was coming out of the speaker. They had a clean mix where they were standing, or mostly anyway. Then what was going out to the crowd was stretched, repitched, distorted version of what they were singing. It was more of an art sound piece than… whatever. Everyone had a really good time.
That sounds really good. Are you going to do another one anytime soon?
I did one in Brisbane. I went up there for a gig in October last year.
Was that for Straight Out Of Brisbane?
It was a couple of weeks before that, unfortunately. I went up to play a Team Plastique album launch and then did this little karaoke night at Rick’s Café on Sunday. It went pretty well.
It sounds so awesome. What was the highlight of your European tour?
It was probably just hanging around in Germany. I went to Berlin and hung out there and hung out for a week, then ducked out to Hamburg for this gig for a couple of days. I played at the Golden Poodle, which is down at the wharf in Hamburg. There’s a whole bunch of cool people in Hamburg and I had a great night there. Also going to Sonar in Barcelona [Spain].
What’s good about those two places?
The people were just more friendly and the atmosphere was relaxed and chilled out. London was a bit oppressive I thought. All the other parts of England I went to were grey, dreary.
Is the scene more competitive in the UK? I kind of get that impression.
There’s even more DJs than there are in Sydney and Melbourne. There’s just a lot more people to elbow out of the way when you trying to get on the decks.
You were saying the other night at the Brag thing that there was some rivalry. What was that?
I don’t think it’s really a
rivalry. There is probably a bit of rivalry, I mean everyone wants to do the next big track that everyone loves and all that. There’s just a few people that I’ve never really… I’ve just had no reason to get in touch with them. Like Go Home Productions, I’ve just never really chatted or anything. With him, he’s there and you just don’t interact. A lot of the other guys I have had interactions with, like French Bloke and Freelance Hellraiser and Richard X, I’ll sort of talk to them a bit and basically they’re friendly. I don’t know.
What about legal threats? I’ve read on your blog and whatever you’ve had to move things off server. Do you get the threats very often?
Every six months or so I’ve had to move everything off the server because some legal representative or someone has noticed it. Then I got in trouble with Ministry of Sound because of the
Ministry of Shit album, which was a compilation of mangled pop songs. The cover art was the Ministry of Sound logo smeared in faeces and red texta drawn over it. They were very angry with me for that, and threatened to take me to court and everything over that. They accused me of criminal offences and emotions were involved. It was okay in the end; it was a really small run and they didn’t push it that hard.
What form did the legal threat take? Did they send you a letter and you said what?
The Ministry of Sound? They were just hassling me about the trademark violations, or what they
claimed was trademark violations for using their logo on the artwork of the CD. The didn’t care about the content. The content was Justin Timberlake and Beyonce and Kelis and whatever. Nothing that they had any, um, deal with.
Are there any permanent fixtures in your set?
Lately I guess it’s Olivia Newton-John. I love Olivia Newton-John, I did this mix of her with NWA and then I did this cover of ‘Let’s Get Physical’, which was this dirty little electro track. So I always play a bit of Olivia in some form. She’s one of my favourites.
What the feedback been like on The Herd collaboration?
I haven’t really heard much about it. Generally positive. I did the mix for them just a couple of days before I went overseas and they stuck it on the little tour sampler. They liked it enough to use it and I’ve heard that‘s gotten a bit of radio play. They have a following that’s more into hip hop so, I don’t know.
How did your upcoming gig in Moscow [Russia] come about?
I don’t know! This guy just emailed me out of the blue and said “Hey, do you want to come over and play this birthday party for this club in Moscow?” and I said “yeah, why not.”
Is it all expenses paid?
Yeah.
How long are you going over for?
I’ll probably be going over for three or four days. It’s really quick and in and out because I don’t really have any time off work, so I’m going to take a couple of days and go over the weekend.
I read that you’ve got a bit of a following in Eastern Europe. How do you account for that?
There’s a bunch of guys in Poland who have been trying to get me to go over for, ooh, about a year now. They just ran across me somewhere and got into it. I wanted to get over there this time because I’m in Moscow and it’s right there. I don’t think I can make it because I haven’t got anytime off work and just trying to get all the flights is too much fiddling around.
With your name, it’s pronounced “Du-sick-oh” isn’t it?
Yeah.
Did you know it’s also a computer term?
It seems to be some weird factorisation algorithm.
It seems oddly appropriate.
It sort of does, doesn’t it?
I just thought I’d share that. Is there a movie that sums up your life philosophy? At the moment, I thought maybe it could be Police Academy 7 because they go over to Moscow.
I don’t know. Jesus, that’s a tough question for a telephone interview…
Tuff Turf. [Note: a completely fucking excellent answer.]
Do you care if Michael Jackson is innocent? Like, is it okay if he’s a kiddie fiddler as long as he keep making good music?
Do I care if he’s innocent? I don’t think he is.
But does that matter? Just say if, yes, he is a kiddie fiddler, but he makes good music. So does it matter?
It has changed my perspective on playing the music. I’m reluctant to play it now. I think it’s in poor taste to play it now, but [musing to himself] people still do and no-one really cares… and I have played him a couple of times since it really blew up. It kind of leads a bad taste in my mouth. [Laughs] I so didn’t say that.
That’s going to be the pull-out quote. Do you have a goal you’re working towards or are you doing things on the fly?
Well, I’m working on some other music at the moment. I guess there’s the goal of just getting more stuff out, getting more gigs and cruising around and do another tour of Europe. Is that a goal? Yeah. And to get out of this finance job.
How many hours do you have to pull for that? Is it full time?
It’s not too bad. It’s four days a week. I’d prefer to do something else.
Is there more to mash-ups than matching tempos on two songs?
That’s all it is. Well, there’s a little more to it.
What more is there to it?
It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes you have to piece them together a bit more and try to come up with ways to make one loop a bit more interesting.
So is it an art or is it a technique?
I’d be inclined to say that’s a technique. But I’m that no-talent hack. I don’t believe in it that much.
You know the whole Danger Mouse Grey Album thing, do you think that’s going to lead to much of a crackdown?
No. But if someone were to do something as bold as that again, then yes. He was kinda asking for it. He just managed to get so much press so quickly, mainstream press, that you just know that he was going to get hassled by the law and wouldn’t get away with it. If you’re doing something that’s simple enough to explain in a major newspaper that it captures the imagination of an editor, then they’re probably going to step in and hassle you, if that makes sense. Because what he did was such a media friendly item, [Dsico puts on a mock surprised voice] “he mixed the
White Album with the
Black Album to make the
Grey Album then he’s selling it!” Two lines that will completely explain what he did.
Do you think the illegality of what you do means that you necessarily will have to stay obscure?
[Thinks about it] No, because Soulwax released one legitimate CD and, as far as I can tell, a whole bunch of bootlegs and unofficial releases of that 2ManyDJs radio Soulwax thingo, and yet they’re on sale at HMV. I don’t know how they managed to get around it.
What about McSleazy signing to Polydoor? What’s your stance on official kinds of bootlegs?
It’s alright. If he can get the work then good on him. I don’t think he’s actually done anything for them yet, not that I’m aware of, that’ve been released. I think Polydoor just thought ‘oh yeah, this could turn out’ and not much has come of it.
Okay, that’s it. Thanks a lot for your time. It was good to meet you the other night as well. I might see you at another gig while I’m up here in Sydney.
I might be playing at Next Wave in Melbourne during May.
Are you playing anywhere in the next week or so?
I’m playing not this Saturday but next at Club 77 for Bruhaha.
Well, I might see you there or, if not, I’ll definitely see you in Melbourne. Cool. Okay. Thanks a lot. Bye!
Bye!
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