“Saying that I’m a living music encyclopedia is an exaggeration,” stresses Gerardo Frisina when asked about his wealth of music knowledge. I was not in a position to argue–Frisina does not speak English and I was conducting my interview through a translator. Nonetheless, there’s no debating Frisina’s music smarts; they were the catalyst that led him to launch the Schema label alongside Luciano Cantone, Davide Rosa, and fellow jazz-dance heavyweight Nicola Conte. Frisina’s work at Schema has since helped shine the spotlight on the Italian jazz scene while changing the sound of Latin and traditional jazz as we know it.

Inspired by Latin, Brazilian, and African records of the past 60 years, Frisina explains his approach to making music. “I concentrate on these styles to carry out my productions,” he says. “The objective is to make the sound contextual and contemporary by the use of determined sound effects. But I keep the application of electronic equipment to a minimum–I think the contribution of real musicians is fundamental to my productions.”

It is this unique approach to the jazz sound that makes his latest album, The Latin Kick (Ishtar), so progressive. The first single, “Gods of the Yoruba,” has sold well from Amsterdam to San Francisco, appealing to house heads and jazz enthusiasts alike. Originally written by jazz composer Horace Silver, “Gods” gets reworked for the dancefloor with live Afro-bossa drumming and a full horn section–all underscored by Frisina’s trademark thumping house beat.

In the 20-plus years that Frisina has been making music, he’s released two compilations, three full-lengths, and numerous singles and remixes, but in the last few years things have really kicked into high gear. His remix work for the likes of Sun Ra, Dizzy Gillespie (for the Verve label’s Impulsive project), and labelmate Nicola Conte have given him increasing notoriety in nu-jazz and broken beat circles, with tastemakers Gilles Peterson, Danny Krivit, and Jeff Mills playing his tunes. His popularity only looks to increase later this year, when Schema will release Treated Notes, a compilation of Frisina remixes, and the third volume of his Metti Una Bossa a Cenna series.

Not surprisingly, Frisina’s talent for combining sounds and rhythms has also led to a healthy international DJ career. But don’t expect to hear wildly futurist sounds from this archivist. “I love to mingle music of the moment with music from the past,” he says. “But even when choosing new records to play, I select productions that are connected to the past.”

“I don’t need to attach to any scene, trend or place–I’m about making 100% what is true to me,” says 34-year-old George Evelyn, better known as Nightmares on Wax. One of the first artists on the pioneering Warp label, Evelyn helped bring touches of old reggae and soul into techno before unwittingly spearheading the trip-hop movement with 1995’s luscious Smoker’s Delight.

The latest effort from this Leeds, UK-based producer, In A Space Outta Sound, contains 12 thoughtfully constructed slow burners, fusing elements of black British soul, dub, and classic hip-hop with straight-up good vibes to soundtrack the perfect stoned summer day in the park. Evelyn’s got his hands full with developing up-and-coming young artists for his Wax On label, but we asked him to take a trip down memory lane and reminisce about his most important musical moments.

Bigger Bass
“The first record I ever bought was Third World’s ‘Cool Meditation’ in 1997; I was seven years old. At the time, Bob Marley was exploding all over the world, but Steel Pulse and Third World were kind of like the underground reggae. When I got to nine or 10 years old, I really started buying records. When I was nine years old, my best friend at school had a brother who owned a reggae soundsystem called Messiah. We used to go after school to their lockup, where they kept their sound. All I was learning at this time was: bigger speaker boxes equal bigger sound and bigger bass. And the bigger the bass, the better the track. Along with this were dub albums by The Scientist; they used to use them to test the sound. Besides the bass, it was the cartoon artwork that attracted me to them. One that sticks in my head is Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires; the cover was all ghouls, zombies, and Draculas and it fascinated me.”

Buffalo Soldier
“The biggest record to me in my life is Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Buffalo Gals.’ This was 1982 or ’83. It was the first video footage of breakdancing and graffiti and people body-popping with white gloves on, these guys with turntables making these weird noises. It was mind-blowing. It debuted on Top of the Pops on Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. Go to school the next morning and everybody on the playground was breakdancing. Before you had people you hung out with; then breaking came out, and you had your crew. You started venturing out of your neighborhood to battle other people and your horizons spread. You might only be going half a mile from where you lived, but that’s farther than you used to go before. You cannot deny the fact that McLaren educated us. ‘Buffalo Gals’ probably wasn’t a landmark record if you came from the Bronx but it was a landmark record if you came from anywhere else in the world.”

Tribe Vibes
“In 1982, I was 12 years old and I went to a 12 Tribes dance–[named] after the 12 tribes of the Rastafarian culture–in Manchester. It was a coach trip with me and my close friend and her mother, who was part of the 12 Tribes. We didn’t know at the time who was in concert at this gig but it was Bob Marley. We were running around and he was standing out in the crowd like normal; the next thing you know he was on stage. I wasn’t in awe–I was too young to be star-struck. It wasn’t until I got home and told me brothers and sisters and they were like, ‘You saw what?!’ that I realized.”

Secret Haters
“I proposed to my wife in Koh Samui, Thailand; it was at the big Buddhist temple on a Thursday at sunset. On Friday, we sorted the location out; Saturday I had a suit made; Sunday we went to meet the monks at the Buddhist temple, and we got married on Monday at half past nine. There was nobody DJing–all the music we had was an old ’80s mix CD that I had lying around. Our wedding dance was to a record that we actually hate, ‘Secret Lovers’ by Atlantic Starr. We decided to dance to it because we hate it so much. That record, and Ashford & Simpson’s ‘Solid.'”

Sunshine Music
“In the last four years I’ve been listening to a lot of old Greensleeves reggae records. I wanted to go back to the essence so I thought, ‘I’m going to listen to the shit I used to buy when I started collecting,’ like Eek-A-Mouse, Yellowman, Beres Hammond. This was music just for dances, for skanking. It was music that had sunshine in it. I’ve always tried to represent that feeling of sunshine or optimism in my music.”

The Parabuthus transvaalicus, responsible for five percent of all deaths in North Africa, is considered the deadliest of the entire scorpion species. Their tactic: to move in stealth and attack in darkness. Their victims never see them coming until it’s too late. Revered and feared, they are mystical predators of legend, known as “shadow hunters.”

Then there’s Breaf, Nongenetic, and Dream–three battle MCs spitting lyrical venom at unsuspecting bystanders within listening distance. Reppin’ America, Shadowhuntaz is a national affair, with Breaf residing in Chicago, Dream in Atlanta, and Nongenetic in LA. Though their only form of communication is via broadband and Nextel, distance hasn’t kept them from causing an underground ruckus worldwide with their unpredictable style. Lyrically, they string words and thoughts together like poetic freedom fighters staging their final war cry. Meanwhile, their music pushes the boundaries of electronic music and hip-hop, and they recruit new collaborators who long to pit their rhymes against the funkiest of basslines.

The group came about by “simple luck,” says Non. “Breaf approached me on the streets here in LA and asked me if I made beats. That was in ’96. Then he moved, brought Dream in; we got along from jump and things fell in line.” In late ’97, the crew cut a 12″ that got the attention of LA electronic label Plug Research. The label gave the group considerable exposure (and popularity) in Europe, which attracted the ears of Manchester’s Skam Records. Skam released Shadowhuntaz’s critically acclaimed debut, Corrupt Data, in January 2004, and its follow-up, Valley of the Shadow, last year; both were produced in collaboration with Dutch electronic outfit Funckarma.

“We are all from an age in hip-hop where doing things differently [gets] you attention in Europe,” states Non. “Nothing wrong with hip-hop in the US, but people here don’t really dig [us]–[we ‘re] too weird.” Weird indeed. Once scouted by Def Jam South, the label considered signing Shadowhuntaz if they could prove that they sold 5,000 units. “We didn’t, so that was that!” says Non.

“We like to do things that are risky to release,” he continues. “What we do is underground lyrics on IDM [tracks] and we’re cool with that. I mean, to this day, we don’t know nothing about electronic music–we’re hip-hop heads but we know what we like.”

When asked if the Shadowhuntaz plan on being electronic music’s ambassadors to hip-hop, Non demurs. “This is a task we dare not to take on, but to just be ready when it breaks is enough for now,” he says. “We are having a ball doing what we do now. Three deep inner-city kids getting to travel the world and influence kids in other cultures is dope enough.”

At an undisclosed location on the left coast, a makeshift craft fashioned with MicroKorgs, MPCs, and an endless cavalcade of blinking LED outboard gear has impacted Earth with the force of an atomic bomb. After years of intercepting radio waves from US hip-hop/R&B stations, its inhabitants have arrived to tweak the algorithms of urban music. Light years ahead of the curve and devoid of factory presets, the result is a new sound that references Parliament/Funkadelic, Kraftwerk, Vanity 6, and Soft Cell all in the same breath. At least, that’s the fantasy that J*Davey‘s newest song, “Touchit,” illustrates.

J*Davey’s first forays into uncharted sound weren’t exactly encouraged. “We finished ‘Mr. Mister’ and we were so amped about it,” recalls lead vocalist Miss Jack Davey of their first endeavor. “We called some people into the studio to listen, and the response was blank faces and crickets.” Whether it was the fact that the song clocked in at a hyper 140 BPMs or that the subsequent video featured Miss Davey getting hot and heavy with a crash test dummy, “Mr. Mister” was definitely the genesis of something different. “It was pretty revolutionary for us because it didn’t sound like anything we’d ever heard before,” concurs Davey. “We didn’t even know we were capable of pulling that off.”

Full of warbling synths, salacious prose, and angular rhythms, the J*Davey sound is as brazen a statement as Grace Jones crashing a ceremony at the Vatican. But bucking urban music archetypes inevitably subjected them to hating. “We got so much criticism,” Davey says. “‘It’s too dark,’ ‘It’s not structured right,’ ‘It’s not a real song,’ ‘Where’s the hook?'” Some years later, it seems these same haters are remixing; J*Davey bootlegs–bangers featuring the sleazy “Private Parts” and the electro/New Wave romp “Division Of Joy”–are getting major burn on the iPods of the most notable leftfield urban music heads. “I’ve had situations where some of those same people that had mad criticism came back to me and said that our shit is classic,” says beatsmith Brook D’Leau. “And that’s hard to take from fickle people that really didn’t understand it from the get-go.”

The get-go is L.A. circa 1999, when the duo began collaborating on tunes in D’Leau’s father’s recording studio. “I was an MC back then,” Davey remembers. “We made a crazy transition where I started singing more and my singing voice just took its own character.” Now after six years of fine-tuning their craft, dazzling crowds at last year’s CMJ, and doing shows with the likes of ?uestlove and The Roots, J*Davey is ready to do the damn thing. And if you think the tremors were dope, wait ’til you experience the full-on quake. “The songs that are circulating now are from when we first started,” reminds D’Leau. “People tend to judge off the first things they hear,” chides Davey. “But y’all ain’t heard shit yet.”