With her first film, director Amy Grill brings techno and heartbreak to the big screen.

When bi-coastal filmmaker Amy Grill set out four years ago to make a documentary about the untold successes and hardships of underground techno DJs, she never intended to add her own story to the mix. Juxtaposing sweaty warehouse scenes with quieter intimate moments, Speaking in Code explores the price of an obsession with music while challenging many stereotypes. Here, we talk to Grill about glimpsing into the lives of several contemporary techno DJs (Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Monolake, and XLR8R scribe Philip Sherburne), and how she unexpectedly documented the unraveling of her own marriage.

XLR8R: What inspired you to make this movie?

Amy Grill: I felt like there was a real need to humanize electronic music, especially in the States. There are just so many over-the-top, nauseating stereotypes. I wanted the film to be as accessible as possible, without betraying or boring the true techno fans. Not everybody in techno is making $20,000 a gig; they are doing it for the love. It is a community that’s only possible because people make sacrifices to follow their dreams, to make incredible music. That may sound very “Oprah Winfrey Book Club,” but it’s true. A lot of people have told me they think this is a “converter film,” and I don’t know that I’m as religious about it as that, but I’ll take it. I love electronic music myself and I wish more people would give it a chance.

At one point in the movie you refer to the idea that people “love to hate techno.” Why do you think that is?

I think that people love to hate what they think techno is. They love to hate the idea of a bunch of guidos and black people and homosexuals on the dancefloor; it has its roots in racism and homophobia. I think that it’s seen as un-American in a lot of ways because it’s not the traditional band, which is as American as apple pie for some reason. This idea of a rock band with a lead singer and a guitar and drums is something that people are familiar with. That image has been glorified for decades because of the baby boomers’ stranglehold on mass media. So I’m waiting for the old white guys to die, basically. I think that once most of them die that we’ll be in better shape. I’m totally not kidding about that.

How did you choose which DJs to include in the film? Did you know them before or did you contact them specifically for the film?

Some of the people I knew were going to be characters, like David Day, who is my ex-husband now, and Philip Sherburne, who I’ve known for awhile. They were key in getting access to the rest of our characters. I was pretty sure that as long as Modeselektor was receptive, which they were, I definitely wanted them to be in the movie because they’re just so hilarious and charming. The Wighnomy Brothers we met during a camera test and they were just irresistible.

Were there any other people that you wish you had included in the film?

Not really. We did one interview with Richie Hawtin and we tried forever to set up an interview with Luciano. But, frankly—and, no offense to them—they’re successful. What’s interesting about that? I was looking for people that had something big at stake, or who were after something and on some kind of trajectory. So making Richie Hawtin a character would have been very flat. It’s like, “Yup, things are still great!”

The movie appears to be part character study, part travel documentary, and, largely, home video. At one point you even ask David, “Are we going to have kids?” which seems pretty personal for something packaged more as an electronic music-focused movie. So why and when did you decide to include this more personal element?

Along the way I started to realize that David was becoming much more of a character in the film than I had anticipated. I envisioned him initially as a sort of a tour guide, somebody who would show us this world and introduce us to different people. Then I realized that he was actually a really compelling character because he was probably the most obsessed with techno out of all the characters. I always wanted the film to be self-reflexive in a way, to show the process of us making the film.

It seems like the movie was actually a primary factor in the deterioration of your relationship with your husband, but also your catharsis in the end. Would you say that’s true?

It might have taken us longer to break up—I don’t really know. But certainly the film brought us to a breaking point. I think that the film allowed me to see David more clearly. It made me realize that he made a better character in my documentary than he did a husband. The hardships that we went through to make the film were directly linked to what was happening in our relationship, but I wasn’t consciously creating that story line. It really took a lot of time and distance for me to be able to tell the story that I did. I think moving to San Francisco, being thousands and thousands of miles away from David, was a big part of that. Once I had enough distance from the whole thing, all the footage made sense suddenly. It became obvious only in hindsight that we had to include [our story] in the film. That was a really difficult decision for me to make, and I sort of made it kicking and screaming, but I felt like if I didn’t include it, I wouldn’t have been telling the truth.

Do you prefer David with a beard or without?
With, for sure!

Do you think you’ll make another film after this?

Absolutely. I’m already starting to work on research for my next film, but I really don’t want to start making [it] until my focus is completely finished with Speaking in Code. The next film is going to be the same kind of format, in terms of following a handful of really fascinating characters over a period of two to four years, but this time it’s going to be about people who are obsessed with religion. I’m thinking of asking my dad to be a character. But, we’ll see how that goes.

Eschewing the consoles for a quick fix of online gaming.

While the consoles and PC get most of the glory in the world of games, there is an ever-growing culture of small-time indie companies and homebrewed flash titles that, while tiny in scale and retro in presentation, play on big ideas that sometimes even games that cost millions to produce gloss over. XLR8R takes a gander at some of the best on the net.

Bloody Fun Day
urbansquall.com
This simple strategy title hearkens back to 16-bit sprite goodness. It puts you in the position of one of three variations of Death him/herself as you harvest the souls of various creature types without letting your own lifeforce (deathforce?) dwindle. Ultimately, Bloody Fun Day begs the question, “Can even the Grim Reaper resist the adorable allure of cute and cuddly critters?” The answer is yes—yes, he can.

The Majesty of Colors
ludusnovus.net
About as weird and wonderful as they get, The Majesty of Colors starts off with the following prologue: “Last night I dreamed I was an immense beast, floating in darkness. I knew nothing of the surface world until I fell in love with the majesty of colors…” Heavy. Playing as an undersea leviathan, you must guide your tentacles to either help or harm everyone on the beach—from children in floaties to divers out to kill you. With a hauntingly simplistic soundtrack and multiple endings, Majesty of Colors will leave you scratching your head in wonderment for some time.

Don’t Look Back
distractionware.com
If you can imagine Pitfall, but way more somber and creepy, then you can get an idea of what Don’t Look Back is all about. Playing on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, you must take your little pixel man to the Underworld as you avoid many snakes and spiders along the way. However, you may be your own worst enemy, as the designers took the title of the game very seriously. Bonus: This one can also be played offline.

You Have to Burn the Rope
mazapan.se
You Have to Burn the Rope puts a twist on the 8-bit-esque platformer. You take the role of a bowler-wearing, marshmallow-like little gentleman who throws axes and must traverse one short dungeon to defeat one boss, the Grinning Colossus. There are a couple ways to do this, but the easiest is to just pay attention to the title of the game (sensing a pattern here?). The game presents text hints to you the whole way through and you can’t die. Simple, addictive, and weird. It’s also worth mentioning that this dev offers a Dance Dance-type game that features a Viking with his cock out and a title that involves not making direct eye-contact on public transportation.

Don’t Shit Your Pants
kongregate.com/games
Yet another game that takes its title seriously, Don’t Shit Your Pants is both the name of the game and about all the instruction you are going to get with this one. Playing similarly to old Sierra titles, DSYP puts you in the role of a schlub resembling Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force who is only 40 seconds away from a deuce disaster. The only things you have to work with to accomplish your goal are a door, the clothes on your back, and good old common sense. So, like the old Sierra games, looking around and trying everything is the only way out of your backdoor problems. The game offers several different achievements that reward different outcomes. Get them all and you become the Shit King. Really.

From runnin’ with shottas to inciting ghetto youth to rise above, Mavado tries to overcome his violent past.

You can take Mavado out of the gully, but you can’t take the gully out of Mavado.

For dancehall’s reigning king, the impoverished environment in which he grew up remains his foundation and source of inspiration. Success “is nice,” he says over the phone from Kingston, Jamaica, “but it doesn’t change me as a person. It change as a lifestyle… Having money alone can’t make you happy,” he explains. “Even when me seh, ‘Our dream come true,’ I’m still there in the gully with my friends.”

Coming up in the hardcore environment of Cuba, an infamous section of Kingston’s Cassava Piece neighborhood—a slum within a ghetto within a city—the singer, born David Brooks, spent his early years focused on survival.

“’Nuff youth grow up without a family,” he says, his voice surprisingly soft-spoken. “Me growing up, me have just fe do what I do. Something daily a gwan.”

Living in the ghetto, he says, “You have wrongful things and you have rightful things… We grow up knowing you haffi fight for what you own.” The undeniable reality of Cuba’s tenement yards and corrugated aluminum shacks surrounded him; instead of denying it, he accepted it as a birthright.

“Youth on the corner, we go through a whole heap a fight and a whole heap a tribulation, and we always come out on top,” he says, matter-of-factly.

Now 27, Mavado navigates around the details of his sordid past cautiously. However, a hint at his back-story emerges in his lyrics, as he reminisces about shootouts with enemy crews and police. When Mavado mentions “heartless killers” who “a Christmas never talk ’bout dem a sorry,” it’s unclear whether he’s referring to others’ misdeeds or his own.

So Blessed
Born on Christmas Day, 1981, and raised by his spiritual-minded grandmother, Brooks was expected to go to church on a regular basis as a child. Even after he began to trod the path of a young shotta, avoiding this obligation was not an option. “In Jamaica,” he explains, “if your grandmother go a church, you go a church.” He found sanctuary from the streets within the pews, and was captivated by the gospel choir—an influence that can be heard in his sound to this day.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the church was where he first developed his appreciation for music. “Me grandmother, she was the first person wha mek David Brooks really love music,” he relates.

Music is Mavado’s biggest obsession, he admits; once introduced to the deejay business by his mentor Bounty Killer, his competitive nature drove him to overcome any and all obstacles in his path. Like the luxury watch from which his name is derived, he’s kept steady and accurate time, becoming as predictable as Swiss movement once he started to impact Jamaica’s dancehall scene.

“Each time Mavado do a hit song, it just influence me to do a next hit song,” he says (referring to himself in the third person, which is typical of dancehall DJs). “Me just believe inna me music. It just always get to the next level.”

The Line of Fiyah
After a five-year climb to the top of the reggae industry—an ascension furthered by big tune after big tune, from 2006’s “Wha Dem a Do” to 2007’s “Touch the Road” and “Top Shotta Nah Miss” to 2008’s “On the Rock” and “I’m So Special”—he’s become the genre’s brightest international star, and its most controversial.

A self-proclaimed “Gangsta 4 Life,” Mavado’s unvarnished tales of life, death, and struggle amidst the backdrop of Jamaica’s outlaws, criminals, and top shottas have focused attention on a side of the island the tourist board would just as soon have you forget. As the Jamaica Gleaner wrote in 2008, “his often violently graphic lyrics [have been] deemed in various quarters as just about the closest thing to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.”

Mavado’s hardcore persona isn’t just an act. Numerous run-ins with the law have only added to his outlaw appeal: Gun charges have prevented him from getting a visa to enter the United States until recently, and on one occasion, he was pushed through a glass window at a Jamaican police station. His father was murdered just before his 2007 debut album, Gangsta 4 Life: The Symphony of David Brooks, was released, and Mavado’s name frequently comes up when allegations of dancehall artists inciting violence are raised. (In 2008, Red Stripe withdrew its sponsorship of the Reggae Sumfest and Sting festivals due to these concerns). His 40-deep entourage has frequently had friction with police and other dancehall crews alike, and his conflict with Vybz Kartel has been the subject of much gossip, rumors, and chatty-mouth talk.

Tropical Storm
Yet attempts to curtail Mavado’s popularity and influence have proven as effective as stopping a tsunami with a sieve. It’s not uncommon to hear four or five songs by the “Gully God” in a row in dancehall sessions from Brooklyn to Tokyo, and high-profile collaborations with G-Unit and Jay-Z (as well as Hot 97 airplay, an appearance on Grand Theft Auto IV’s in-game dancehall station, and a VP Records-Nike collaboration with Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell) have introduced him to mainstream listeners outside of dancehall’s core audience.

Asked how he linked with Jay-Z for “On the Rock,” Mavado says, “Real music, y’unnerstand? He hear the track and he just start saying something on it, because I’m saying ‘On the Rock.’” (It’s also worth noting that Jay-Z’s label is called Roc-A-Fella.)

Comparisons have been made between Mavado and late American thug life icon Tupac Shakur; the parallels go beyond just hyperbole. Like Tupac, Mavado sounds like he’s continually wrestling with inner demons, fighting a tortuous battle between good and evil in his own mind while living in a world in which survival trumps morality every time.

His pained, almost haunted, delivery—often augmented with minor-chord melodies—comes off as both unflinchingly brutal and undeniably authentic. “The place I am coming from [is] being a real youth from the gully,” he explains. “The people can feel the struggle,” he adds.

Mavado didn’t invent gun talk in dancehall music—far from it—but he’s redefined rude-boy lyrics with riddim-driven testimonials that are part confession, part boast, and part plea. Unrepentant to the point of defiance, Mavado has an uncanny ability to channel raw emotion and transcend the limitations of both dancehall artists and rappers with similar lyrical themes.

He chooses not to speak on his beef with Kartel (a former comrade in Bounty Killer’s all-star crew, The Alliance), but he does address the topic of competition in general. To him, there’s no distinction between the rivalries he’s encountered “in music, in life, in people out deh.” Such conflict is inevitable, he says stoically: “Each time Mavado fight…that is a part of it.”

Tomorrowland
Mavado’s second full-length album, Mr. Brooks… A Better Tomorrow, doesn’t sugarcoat his criminal past nor dilute his unique phrasing, delivery, or sound. But it does frequently attain an inspirational tone (and, his label VP hopes, the same kind of crossover appeal as labelmates Sean Paul, Shaggy, and Elephant Man).

“A better tomorrow—it means that me just keep up the struggle and the fight,” he says. “I’ve been through whole heap a things.”

On Gangsta 4 Life, Mavado reflected on his everyday hustle, his slightly off-key, half-sung ad-libs adding texture to the lyrical pictures he painted over hot stock riddims. His sophomore effort finds him musing not only on his past activities, but also on the effects of Mavado’s fame, fortune, and notoriety on David Brooks.

“Money don’t change we/We change money,” he sing-jays on “Money Changer.” On “So Blessed,” he emphasizes, “I will survive/Dem want me stressed.” Urgent, Jah Cure-like crooning informs “Don’t Worry”—a declaration of allegiance to the streets—while the “hey-hey-heys” of the percolating Rai Rai riddim underline razor-sharp rebukes directed at haters and rivals on “So Special.” In Mavado’s hands, what could have been a by-the-numbers track turns into a poignant, motivational discourse on the will not only to strive but to succeed:

Dem seh dem want me head pon block
But me bun di fire til it spread pon dat
Dem better help poor people with dem bed pon block
If you see a dutty heart you a go dead from that
Now dem seh a dat me fi mark fi death
And each time we walk dem seh we walk with death Dem lock me down but me cyaan forget
Charge it over didn’t die I seh me nah regret

Uprising
It’s probably no mere coincidence that this interview—postponed for a day after VP’s staff was initially unable to locate Mavado in Jamaica—eventually happened on Feb. 6, the birthday of another famous youth from the ghettoes of Kingston, Bob Marley.

What Marley was to the roots reggae audience in the ’70s, Mavado is fast becoming for today’s more urbanized version of the genre. For his part, Mavado fully understands Marley’s significance as the first global music superstar to come from the tiny Caribbean island. “We should always honor Bob Marley,” he says. “He made a certain international link. Bob died 30 years ago, and look at [the reggae industry] today.”

Having reached role-model status for ghetto youth all over the world as well as being a symbol of dancehall’s contemporary appeal and pop-cultural viability, Mavado remains focused on his mission to “take the root from out of the gully.”

In conversation, Mavado—whose recent hits include “Overcome” (a reworking of the Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome”) and an Obama tribute, “We Need Barack”—appears much more conscious than his detractors have made him out to be. However, he says, stopping the violence that continues to plague Jamaica isn’t as simple as him voicing some positive tunes and declaring a ceasefire on his own.

“We can’t bring change until we change ourselves,” he says. “Even if Mavado seh he want peace,” he explains, “the same people out a road, dem gwan with the same thing. We need 100 more Obamas and then we can have peace.

“Music don’t determine nothing…” he says, pausing for emphasis. “People do.”

Ever Blazin’
Three DJs on their favorite Mavado tunes.

Matt Shadetek
“My favorite new Mavado track right now is probably ‘Inna Di Car Back.’ The combination of Mavado and Stephen ‘The Genius’ McGregor, who is probably one of the most exciting producers out right now in any genre, is killer. I love Mavado’s funeral-singing vibe generally, but this one being more of a gyal tune makes it a nice DJ tool as well.”

Dennis Shaw
“Right now, ‘So Blessed’ is definitely my number one Mavado tune. There are so many in rotation but this one just stands out as something that’s going to last. Seems like when Mavado and producer Stephen McGregor link up, they just take dancehall to a next level.”

Max Glazer
“My favorite Mavado song right now is ‘I’m So Special.’ It’s a feel-good song, and I love playing it and singing along with it in my sets. It gets the crowd going.”