Jon Cutler: Puts “Class” In Classic

Brooklyn has always loved to dance, whether it’s disco, hip-hop, rock, or the sometimes-ignored streak of house in the borough. DJ and producer Jon Cutler belongs in the last camp, spinning smooth-yet-relentless deep house that calls to mind the soulful, funky disco that spanned the city in the ’70s. While his 12″, “It’s Yours,” is a bona fide house classic–still getting played three years on and even mashed up with Usher’s “Yeah” by an anonymous white-label bandit–Cutler came to house almost by chance.

“I hung out in all the clubs, I knew all the guys there who kept pushing me towards the house side,” he recalls. “I was doing some DJ stuff in the neighborhood and it went from there. I was playing everything back in the day–hip-hop, reggae, all that stuff. When I started doing the production in ’96, I just started running towards house.”

Cutler’s love of house manifested itself in his Distant Music label, formed the same year he got behind the mixing desk. The label’s been quiet in the past year as Cutler engaged in jet-set touring and released 12″s for labels like Nervous and Milk ‘N 2 Sugars; no fear, Distant’s now on its 30th release and back with a banging compilation called Planet. And the excitement of dropping his own tunes in his trademark diva-laced mixes has got Cutler back in the swing of production. “It’s a love and hate thing with traveling,” he confesses. “But the thing with DJing [is] when you run into a guy where you know his records, you just always seem to hit it off. There’s a family community in it. Now I know the majority of the [international DJs and producers] around the world, and the ones I don’t, when we play together it just takes like a half an hour before you’re bonding.”

When DJs congregate, the talk naturally turns to records old and new and Cutler flies the flag of the ’70s, both in the mellow keys and soul vocals shot through his tunes and the dusty vinyl on his stereo. “I try to bring the most pumped stuff but still on a soulful vibe,” he explains. “I still haven’t gone past the point of just totally banging it out. I listen to all the ’70s stuff: Barry White, Crown Heights Affair, Chic. I was always drawn toward them–[but now it’s] for different purposes–for arrangements. Beat-wise, I’m always listening to the classics.”

Colossus: Honorary Oakland Funk

Back in 2002, the Bay Area became home to a 6’8″ Londoner named Charlie Tate, one half of the veteran jazzfunk/drum&bass duo King Kooba and former bass player with Neneh Cherry’s band. After four King Kooba albums for Second Skin and Om Records, Tate settled into the Oakland lifestyle like a soft couch. He started the laid-back weekly club night Slow Gin with Om’s PR man Gunnar Hissam (a.k.a. The Trout) and began cultivating friendships with old time blues players, new school MCs, and the fine folks at Kingman’s Lucky Lounge near Oakland’s Lake Merritt district.

“At one of my Slow Gin evenings there was an impromptu open mic session where I met emcees Regi B and Delphi,” says Tate, who has since relocated back to the UK. “Also around this same time I was producing the first Colossus tracks and making contacts with people such as [emcee /singers] Capitol A and Azeem. Before I knew it, my idea of harnessing some of the Bay Area’s favorite artists in one colossal package was on.”

After returning to London in 2004 and recording some tracks with Rodney Smith (a.k.a. Roots Manuva), the Colossus debut West Oaktown was finally complete–or so we thought. For Tate, it still wasn’t enough: “I decided to remix the entire record… I’m not sure why–it just seemed like a good idea at the time. [But now] you get two records for the price of one! For no other reason than that I wanted to!”

Lucky for us. Disc one (also available on double vinyl) is a jazzed out excursion reminiscent of those lazy, stoney Thursday nights at Slow Gin. Disc two is geared towards the clubs–or at the very least a sweaty pub on a busy night out. The first 12″ features two of the most jumping tracks–”The Tribute” and “Thripney Bits”–remixed by J-Boogie, Strange Fruit Project, and DJ Zeph. And after years of support gigs with legends such as James Brown and Roy Ayers, Tate is forming the Colossus band, with Tate himself on bass, cats on drums, Rhodes and turntables, and MCs Azeem, Delphi, Regi B, and Capitol A. Expect a tour of the US later this summer with possible European dates toward the end of the year–a big 2005 for the big man from London with a head full of Oaktown funk.

Scare Tactics

Adult. tell if they are onto a goth revival or pulling skeletons out of their closet. We also talk to Norwegian disko artists making the hottest thing since fog machines and laser rays. Director Chris Cunningham explains his work ethic, laptop artist Jason Forrest talks noise with producer Hank Shocklee, and K-Swift reigns queen of Baltimore club music. Also featured: ice cream and batty riders in Jamaica, Andrew Pommier, MC Turbulence, Kele Le Roc, and much more.

Battles: Don’t Do the Math

Battles pencils in rock and roll so pristine and mathematically precise that a slight breeze might shatter it. Each guitar note, microtone, and beat is fixed like leaves on a tree branch that break off and continue the music as they skitter down the sidewalk. Just don’t call the New York quartet “math rock.”

“Is it fair to call a chef salad with a multitude of ingredients ‘lettuce?'” quips guitarist Tyondai Braxton. Battles does not play songs as much as they concoct loops, with three guitars blurting their simple parts into a grand argument. The instrumental band’s excursions range from mechanical trance-rock to noise-loop experiments that flow like amniotic fluid in the womb.

“The effect of it all could still add up to something that was complicated, but I wanted the phrases to be simple,” guitarist Ian Williams says. “From what I read about the band, people don’t always see it that way, but what you aim for and what you are aren’t always the same thing.”

Battles, originally christened Abomination Restitution, formed in New York in 2002 when solo guitarist Braxton bounced ideas off of Williams (of Storm & Stress and Don Caballero fame). Guitarist David Konopka (Lynx), and heavyweight champion drummer John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) later figured in. “The thing is [that] everyone in the band has a strong musical background already, so as far as that is concerned, we all knew the ingredients,” Braxton details. “It was just a matter of rehearsing and writing to see what would sift to the bottom.”

Earlier this year, Battles toured the States with Scott Herren (Prefuse 73), who later joined them for an encore at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona. Braxton mentioned that Herren defended his honor at a Florida gig by throwing his sandwich and a fist at a drunk who tried to strangle Braxton. The poor victim later counter-attacked a UK heckler who hated on his The Fall shirt. “Well, we’re a seminal British band and if you’re from Britain, you should be kissing my ass right now,” Braxton recalled lying.

As for Battles’ more peaceful side, their record covers typically strike the eye with simple, wordless photographs of pastoral fields and trees, heightening the band’s mystique. “The photos are really beautiful and that is the statement in itself,” Braxton said. “There is a sense of neutrality in the way we build our music and [we] wanted that same sense with our visuals. It lends itself to multiple interpretations.”

AlterNet: Sense And Nonesense

In the aftermath of the 2004 election, countless scribes have performed autopsies on the Democratic body politic–unfortunately they’ve emerged with a message that’s about as coherent as John Kerry’s vision for a New America. AlterNet‘s Start Making Sense:Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 Into Winning Progressive Politics (softcover; Chelsea Green Publishing, $12), edited by Don Hazen and Lakshmi Chaudhry, attempts to better address the myopia that has blindsided Democrats and progressives alike.

Taking a more pragmatic approach than the majority of post-2004 election books, Start Making Sense compiles interviews and essays from some of the brightest minds in the progressive camp. AlterNet bills itself as an “infomediary;” since 1998, it has served as a warehouse where one can find articles from the alternative press as well as valuable resources for grassroots organizing.

The book is organized into three sections–”Looking Back,” “Looking Forward,” and “Getting Active”–and includes analysis from people like Naomi Klein, Thomas Frank, and MoveOn.org co-founder Wes Boyd, among others. Take the example of Adam Werbach who, at 23, became the youngest president of the Sierra Club and who co-founded the Apollo Alliance, an organization devoted to ending US dependence on foreign oil. After the election, Werbach composed a November 3rd thesis and, in homage to Martin Luther, nailed his manifesto of grievances to the door of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington D.C. As he states: “When the Senate Democratic leader is defeated while spending $16 million to get the majority of 500,000 votes, the problem is not a lack of funding or effort.”

While the book includes diverse perspectives, a common theme is that the Democrats have little chance of success if they continue to pursue their current poll-driven, top-down managerial strategy–a strategy that has little connection to the Democrats’ historically grassroots base and offers nothing in terms of vision other than an anti-Bush platform.

A typical critique comes from commentator and California gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington. She argues that Kerry and his advisors drove his operation “straight over the edge of the Grand Canyon” by abandoning the tough language he used early in the campaign, when lambasting those “Benedict Arnold corporations” who outsource labor and hide their profits in tax shelters overseas. She believes that a cautious strategy designed to appease Wall Street and not alienate “swing voters” is a prescription for failure.

While Kerry’s capitulation is cause for despair, what sets Start Making Sense apart is its inclusion of activist success stories. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, a child refugee survivor from war-torn El Salvador and US Army vet, helped jumpstart the blogging revolution with DailyKos.com, a meeting site for activists who have helped organize against behemoths like the Sinclair Broadcast Group’nc. On the eve of the election, Sinclair ordered its numerous television stations to air an anti-Kerry documentary. By targeting the station’s advertisers, the bloggers forced the station to produce a more balanced documentary.

Start Making Sense makes it clear that the 2004 election has provided progressives with a mandate to get actively involved in changing the direction of the country. Whether it’s lobbying for voter machine reform, participating in the anti-war movement or starting your own activist organization, now is the time for a creative re-envisioning of possibilities. The book’s last section provides provocative suggestions on how to accomplish this.

Start Making Sense concludes with Barack Obama’s impassioned speech at the Democratic convention. In the address, he says: “It is that fundamental belief-I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper-that makes this country work.”

Adult: Hearts of Darkness

Adult. once said they made uncomfortable music. How fitting then, that I have just taken them to the most uncomfortable place on earth: New York’s Museum of Sex. And now I’m standing next to Adam Lee Miller, Nicola Kuperus, and their new bandmate–Tamion 12-inch guitarist Sam Consiglio–in a darkened room punctuated by canned male laughter and smacking sex sounds. Nicola and I are paused next to a screen flickering with an image of two men jacking each other off, while I feign interest in the accompanying text about this history of pornography. After what seems like an eternity–but is only really a minute and a half–Sam darts over and breaks the silence. “All I hear over here is shame,” he says pointedly, waving his hand toward the video.

I thought this place would have appropriately weird curiosities like shrunken pygmy penises in jars or the world’s first dildo, but the overall feel is of a sleazy adult bookstore–the exhibits include a re-creation of a gay man’s entertainment center from the ’80s (complete with lube and hair remover), a sex chair controllable via the internet, a porn flick called New Wave Hooker, and lots and lots of naked shlongs. I’m half expecting Adam or Nicola–who have written songs bemoaning “touching things touched by others”–to bolt to the bathroom for a bout of obsessive-compulsive handwashing.

Nonetheless, all three gamely proceed through the museum, pausing the longest in front of Real Doll, a life-sized sexual aid designed to look and feel like a real woman. As all four of us take turns feeling on a pair of breasts made out of lifelike silicone, Adam explains that Nicola once considered buying a Real Doll for her photographs–elaborately staged Hitchcockian tableaus that grace the covers of their Ersatz Audio singles–but declined when she found out the nearly $7,000 price tag. “Looking at it up close they have all these seams and stuff,” he muses. “It’s good we didn’t buy one.”

Catchers In The Wry
It appears Adult. has loosened up a lot in eight years. In their early days, Adam and Nicola (Sam was added to the line-up last year) came across as two chillingly clinical, at times angry, electro robots, an image reinforced by tense live shows and stark, blank-eyed press photos. When you meet them in person, you realize the photos aren’t a shtick–with their penchant for all-black outfits, angular hair, and stop-start sentences, the members of Adult. are like the weird kids at some record store in the late ’80s, the kind who used to slip Dead Kennedys records into the Debbie Gibson sleeves. As you’d expect, they are also much nicer and more personable than robots.

Initially, the couple–art school grads who met in Detroit in 1997–served up dystopian takes on Kraftwerk’s shiny future on singles like “Dispassionate Furniture” and “Nausea”; these themes that continued through 2001’s Resuscitation (a collection of early singles) and 2003’s Anxiety Always. Though their April mini-album D.U.M.E. and their new full-length, Gimmie Trouble (to be released on Chicago indie label Thrill Jockey), still find them soundtracking the anomie of the 2000s with wry, dark humor, they’ve become more outgoing in approach. There’s just a lot more to Adult. these days–more band members, more guitars, more angst, and more of Nicola’s Siouxsie & The Banshees-inspired caterwauling above analog voodoo beats and angular post-punk rhythms. Those expecting them to save electro again might be sorely disappointed–parts of both records are suited for dancing…in goth clubs–but fans of the band’s singular aesthetic will find plenty here that is quintessentially Adult.

“The one thing we’ve always had across the board is we take our own personal flaws–things like anxiety and social awkwardness–and sing about them,” says Adam when we finally duck out of the museum, through the monsoon-like New York rain and into an East Village café. “I think that’s why people identify with us. I mean, nobody really gets up on stage and is like (sings) “I’m socially awkward”…but we do. [The difference is that on our previous albums] you had the person who is like ‘I’m awkward quiet’ and now you have the person who’s like ‘I’m so nervous. Oh my god. Oh my god.’ And you listen to the album–the lyrics are like bah-bah-bah and the bass never stops and it’s this nervous energy–it’s still the same theme, just released in a different way.”

Troubled Times
Adult.’s newfound desire to tear down the barrier created by vocoders and monolithic synth lines is no doubt a reflection of the events of the last two years. Following the release of Anxiety Always on their own label, Ersatz Audio, they embarked on a grueling tour (20 shows in 26 days) and, despite actually being from Detroit, found themselves having to fend off the “electroclash” label. Nicola and Adam, who are married, bought a historic old house and built an attic studio in it where they would record Gimmie Trouble. Perhaps most surprisingly, they decided to divide the creative brain of Adult. into threes by working with guitarist Sam, who adds a rogue element of flamboyance to the pair’s at times austere framework (what one Russian journalist dubbed “librarian chic”). “I’ve never worked with anybody whose music was a more direct reflection of their personality than these two, that’s for sure,” says Sam.

By all accounts, the process of making Gimmie Trouble was intense. “We calculated that we worked every day from January 2nd to April 4th, except for five days,” explains Adam of the band’s restrictive recording schedule. “The first song we wrote was ‘Scare Up the Birds’ and it came out immediately. Then we had an 11-day dry spell–you’re talking 10-12 hours a day where you’re just coming up with like, a sketch, a little doodle.”

“And then I drank coffee and it happened,” says Nicola, laughing. “I mean, I’ve never been in any other band so I have no perspective. I assume most people don’t just get together [like we do] and go, ‘Okay, we have a blank piece of paper here. Let’s fill it up.'”

On prior albums, Nicola and Adam would go through and clean the house before recording, giving themselves a sort of pristine mental slate. That became impossible on Gimmie Trouble, as they were living in a place that Adam calls “totally destroyed.” Instead, the three worked out tensions by watching Curb Your Enthusiasm and Strangers With Candy and playing endless games of racquetball in an impromptu court they created. (“I would just like to state that I don’t like jockiness and when we played racquetball it was not, like, real,” Adam is quick to mention. “Yeah,” concurs Nicola, “it was actually more like trying to inflict pain on anyone but yourself.”)

Voodoo You
Somewhere along the line, an album coalesced and was mixed in the two weeks Adult. had scheduled in between US and European tours for their six-track mini-album D.U.M.E.. Nicola says that D.U.M.E.–whose stand out tracks include a Christian Death-ish remix of “Don’t Talk” and the catchy death dirge “Hold Your Breath” (“Hold your breath now/for a long time/hold your breath now/for a lifetime”)–was intended as a way for audiences to catch up to their new sound. “It had been a long time since we had had a release and it was a way to kind of foreshadow that the times, they were a changin’,” she explains. “As for the goth club you hear,” adds Adam, “we were very conscious of that, thus the very over-the-top cover art and the name of it–Death Unto My Enemies. It’s from a voodoo candle. As soon as we collect all our enemies, we’ll light the candle and they’ll die.” He pauses with a sly smile. “We’re still working out the list though.”

Though they don’t name names, most of the content on both records is a sharp poke in the eye to their outspoken critics; Gimmie Trouble is both a mission statement and a description of what they’ve endured as they’ve tried to move away from their electro pigeonhole. “People are sometimes unhappy with change,” sighs Nicola. “They forget that as an artist you don’t want to repeat yourself–you want to grow and you want to discover what else is in there. ‘Gimme Trouble‘ was written [based] on an email where some guy was like ‘You just really need to stay focused on dance music and electronic stuff and your roots. You need to get rid of the guitar and the bass.'”

“I was a punk kid who started in 1985 playing bass, so that would be my roots,” says Adam, frowning. “Besides that, there was bass on Resuscitation and guitar on Anxiety Always. You get these people who want you to sound like when they first heard you. What they don’t remember is that they liked us because we didn’t sound like everything else.”

“Adult. was such a good idea when it started,” Sam recalls. “It was like, look we’re not a rock band. Nicola wasn’t going to shout at you like she was in a rock band. But there’s a singer, so it was obvious [they] weren’t a techno band either. [They] were nothing.”

“I think our intent has always been to not be a part of anything,” explains Nicola. “We’ve always worked really hard to kind of not really know what we’re doing. And then everybody’s always like ‘You sound like an ’80s band, you sound so retro.’ A lot of it is because we’re using keyboards from that time, but are you listening to them in the context of now and what we’re trying to do with them? We’re trying to pick up where it stopped and continue on. I think a lot of times people forget that.”

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