>>PREVIEW
THUNDERBALL
Performing with Alex Gimeno a.k.a. Ursula of Ursula 1000
Monday, November 13
Hifi Club
Fresh from the stages of CMJ, musical mastermind, stereophonic thriller and turn-tablist extraordinaire DJ Thunderball (a.k.a. Steve Raskin) is eager to hit the road. Again. This time around, his touring companion will be the indefatigable, sampledelic DJ Alex Gimeno of Ursula 1000 fame. Seasoned collaborators and steadfast friends, the two artists make their happy home at Eighteenth Street Lounge (ESL) Records (run by D.C.’s Thievery Corporation), a label that understands and appreciates the avant-garde styles of these two diverse, yet astonishingly complementary, electronica-based acts.
"We’ve been working together for a long time," explains Thunderball. "Just like anything else, the whole electronic music scene goes in cycles. During the whole rave day, things were pumping hard and like everyone else we wound up reacting to that in our own way. Soon we were saying ‘No more fast music!’ and we just wanted to play funky groove stuff. Now it’s going the other way and people want to hear the harder, heavier beats again. It’s great being part of a group of friends who get to collaborate and mutually influence each other. Alex Gimeno is a fantastic musical manipulator, his latest Ursula 1000 album is truly an amalgamation of who he is today."
Effortlessly layering cinematic dub, sophisticated down-tempo vibes and infectious dance floor break-beats, Thunderball knows exactly what it takes to set his audience off. Latin funk, Indian dub, Mediterranean soul, hip hop, reggae, electro-pop and Afro rhythms all mix and mingle freely within the ever-broadening boundaries of Thunderball’s eclectic scope.
His latest source of inspiration is drawn from integrating live instrumentation into his sets, a relatively new manoeuvre for the Thunderball sound system, but one that has infused their sound with an appealing organic component rarely found in what tends to be an overwhelmingly technological style of music.
"The concept of Thunderball has come a long way from our kitschy lounge beginnings. For the most part, we start producing something in the bedroom and then take it out to the people in the clubs and see how they respond. Our biggest concern with our latest album, Cinescope, was to not repeat what we did with our last album, Scorpio Rising. We are constantly in the studio writing and recording, over the course of the past five years since Scorpio Rising was released we’ve put together enough material to put out three more albums, but we didn’t because we felt like it wasn’t evolving. The last thing we wanted to do was to put out something that sounded like Scorpio Rising Revisited."
Whether he’s toying with exotic rhythms in the studio or boogying down on the frenetic Miami club scene, Thunderball is the first to admit that the general public generally perceives the entire genre of electronic music to be a straight-from-the-can affair. Referring to his live music background on the D.C. punk scene, he is quick to point out that DJing is a misunderstood art form and that the turntable is an instrument like any other. Having rubbed bows with some extremely talented DJs, Thunderball takes a very pragmatic view of the turntable, which he describes as a tool to be used like a Volvo – it gets you from A to B safely and predictably. What drives him crazy is when people stand around the turntables wanting to see every flick of the DJ’s wrist rather than listening to the music and dancing.
"From Ambassadors of Style to Scorpio Rising to this point, there has been a clear evolution in our sound. My wife Miss Johnna M., Afrika Bambaataa and Mustapha Akbar have all contributed vocals to the new album, it’s a very vocal album compared to our previous CDs," DJ Thunderball says with a note of pride.
"We really tapped into that whole blaxsploitation, retro funk thing with our previous recordings. We’re always looking for a new sound, when you hear something fresh it can inspire you to bring two obtuse concepts like jazz and techno together."
Thunderball explains that the evolution of their sound came from touring as an eight-piece ensemble.
"We don’t use any samples on our new album. We used to rely on samples but now we’ve turned inward for that source of information. It’s more fun that way. We’ve finally made Rob Myers, the sitarist from Thievery Corporation, an official member of Thunderball. We all play our own instruments and sample ourselves directly. If we want a James Brown line or an Iggy and the Stooges riff we play it and then sample ourselves. It lends uniqueness to our sound, we may be vibing off somebody else, but the samples are all original." |
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