DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid
(Knitting Factory Works)
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New York’s DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, who makes his Chicago debut Saturday at the Double Door, has pushed the redefinition of the DJ to the extreme. Much as garbagemen became “sanitation engineers,” in Spooky’s world DJs have become “recombiners” and “custodians of aural history.” In a recent magazine interview he went so far as to proclaim: “We’re really talking about the migration of human values toward the electronic age, and there’s nobody better equipped to do that than the DJ at this point.” This self-appointed savior of modern music has spearheaded the ascendance of New York’s “illbient” scene (the term was coined by DJ Olive in response to a characteristically twisted Spooky set), which has managed to push sound art into the realm of nightlife.
A listener can lose himself in illbient as easily as in ambient, but if he’d rather pay attention there’s lots to hear. Though illbient is far removed from hip-hop and club culture despite sharing its tools and vocabulary, the rhythms of hip-hop and drum ‘n’ bass, as well as snaking dub bass lines, leave tracks all over the dense soundscapes. The haunting flutter of Carnatic flute or skating-rink organ might overlap electronic squelches, forlorn strings, or glowing vibraphone, and Spooky might further distend these strange juxtapositions by manipulating turntable speed and direction.
Luckily, if we just listen to the music we can ignore his cluttered thinking. Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and to a lesser extent Necropolis, envisions a world where sound is paramount. Spooky writes, “The style a DJ uses is their imprimatur, their way of appropriating the psychological environment that the people that made the records put into their mix, and sharing it with those who attend the performance,” but I find it difficult to differentiate between many of the turntable-only illbient acts. But the musical distinctions between Byzar, Sub Dub, We, and Naut Humon, among others, seem less vital than the continuities in their often gorgeously amorphous constructions. Illbient is meant to flow in a constantly shifting liquid mass that ends only when the club closes or the CD runs out of space.
