DJ Spider selects vinyl for this NWS Cast #17

"Who is Spider?"

Well, we first heard of DJ Spider through Anton Zap when he was visiting Denmark some time ago. I remember standing on the dancefloor at the Dunkel Bar thinking: "What is this deep stomping tune?" So I asked Anton and with a smile he said: "Dj Spider out of New York." I looked to the floor and saw the Spider tune working its magic to the crowd.

  Spider is from the Bronx in New York City, a city that in the 80's and 90's was on the forefront of house productions and still continues to innovate it's musical creativity, reflecting passion for dance music i.e. music you are supposed to dance to. Spider - being unknown to most people in Europe - is far from new to the game. He has been working hard for several years with his crew from New York hosting underground parties and releasing records under several monikers and collaborations on his imprint Plan B Recordings. Plan B is run by him and his good friend and also producer and DJ, Lola aka Dakini9. This guy is truly doing it himself! He is a passionate producer and DJ who is loved and supported by all the "New York artists" such as Jus-Ed, Levon Vincent, DJ Qu etc. 

  I (Samuel "Sapriori") played a track by Spider on one of my radio shows some months back (the track was Jungle Juice, also featured in this mix) and a friend from Aarhus and also a NWS Cast DJ, Anders Vendelbo, happened to also have a profound love for Spider and since then I have seen nothing but growing knowledge in Denmark about Spider and the Plan B crew.

I am happy to say that NWS will host more casts in the future from this crew. I had a talk with Spider about his history, the underground scene in New York, his passion and asked him to explain to us what he and his crew is about.

Q: Is there anything we should know about the mix?

A: I did this mix in my studio, here in the Bronx, New York. This is an all vinyl mix so I played on my Technics 1200MK2's & all in one take. When I record podcasts I basically play the same way that I do when I'm in the club. I usually play loud & I tend to envision a crowd of dancers in front of me who would be dancing to the beats. This keeps me in the mood & helps me stay focused on delivering my message through the music. Also, I always play a lot of tracks from myself & my peers. My crew is always sending me music that they make & we all share our songs with each other, so I have a lot of original material to present to my audience. This has helped me mold my style over the years, because I always play unreleased material in my sets.

Q: With NWS we want to promote vinyl. Why do you play vinyl?

A: I love vinyl & I have thousands of records! I grew up in the 70's, so that's all we had & I was obsessed with music & my records! 8 track cassettes were around too, but they faded quickly & then the cassette moved in it's place. All of my youth I was collecting records & cassettes, so when I began mixing house music I gravitated towards vinyl only DJ sets. I do play a few CD's now when I DJ, but only to play music that I make which I haven't pressed up yet onto vinyl, or I play other rare tunes on CD. The true art form of the DJ is physical & playing vinyl is also a very rewarding experience too. Vinyl sounds the best to me & it also lasts forever, if you take care of your records. Also, I love to be in control of the speed of the record as it spins & I enjoy digging through my records when searching for the next one to play. I remember tracks better when I see the label on the record & even the grooves on the record. I form a bond with every record that I own & they are all a part of me, so I share many feelings with each record. As well as being able to see the music by looking at the grooves on the record you can see where you are when playing a track, the break, vocals & more are all there for you to see in the grooves & it takes many years to perfect the craft. Also, it's like any other true art form in the way that you can always learn something new when you DJ with vinyl!! In this present day of DJ's, you have the choice whether to play vinyl, CD's, files off of your laptop, tape or even set up any number of musical tools & machines to play electronic music live on the spot, so there are a lot of options to choose from to create something special through your DJ set. I'm sure I'll continue to include vinyl into my sets for many years to come & I encourage new DJ's to explore the art of mixing records too.

Q: You produce, master, promote and release stuff yourself. What do you gain by doing it yourself?

A: Yes, I produce, master & engineer music as well as promote & release music on my three imprints. Dakini9 & I run Plan B Recordings together, but I run a sub label called Sublevel Sounds, which is where I release my other tracks on full length CD albums. I also have an ambient, industrial noise label called Beneath The Underground Music (BTU Music), which I also run on my own. I currently record under 5 names, DJ Spider, Kuru, Alarma!, Spider Bites & Bomb Site. I have a few other projects in the works, but I haven't released music under those monikers yet. All of my projects have a very distinct sound & I love to experiment with recording techniques, equipment, ideas & concepts. There are many things to gain by doing it on our own, but we are all in this together as a community. I have help from Lola aka Dakini9 with Plan B Recordings & we deal with our distributor directly who is just like us in the way of serving the music & the scene because we all love it & grew up around & in it! I also, like to know what's going on with the releases & I always have an opinion on the music, so we hand pick every track & idea for the releases. We put the artwork together ourselves with the artists to manifest their ideas for each release too. We have an amazing web designer who maintains our www.planbrecordingsnyc.com website & then we do all of our own promotion & networking. It is my full time job, so I basically do it every day.

Q: Tell us about your business, I get the impression you are a very busy man working all sorts of stuff?

A: Yes, my official business is SM Productions, which stands for Spider Music Productions. I live in my studio, so I run my business from my studio & I work 7 days a week. Most of my waking hours are spent dealing with music in some way or another. I produce my own music, I'm a musician & I engineer at my studio by mixing down & mastering peoples music & recording live sessions there too. Music is my life & I live it everyday. It truly is a lifestyle & a culture. I am a struggling artist who makes due with what he has. It's the same with most other full time musicians. I grew up in & around poverty, so I'm used to it. This is one of the most expensive cities to live in, so in order to maintain, you have to work your ass off & it's especially hard for us, because when trying to sell underground music is much harder than selling popular music! I love my work, so I'm happy every day & I plan to do this for the rest of my life. I also promote for other labels & parties too, so I'm out in the clubs several nights of the week networking with people in the scene & that has always given me an edge I believe.

Q: How is the scene in New York? You do some parties there right?

A: The underground scene in New York is good & it's pretty busy. I'm very grateful to be in such a busy musical environment where one can go out & hear underground electronic music almost every night. The clubs have changed over the years in some ways, but there are still lots of parties daily here. Sometimes you do have to travel into uncharted territory to get to a few of the warehouse parties, but at least there are a lot of people throwing underground parties with some cool music & good DJ's. There have been many regulations on the clubs in the last 10 years that have pushed promoters out of the night clubs & back into warehouses & lofts, but that has made some of the parties more raw again. I do still throw parties here in New York & now I have a new party that I put together with label mate Dakini9. The party is called "Moldavite" & we did one last month with our good friend Keith Worthy from Detroit (Aesthetic Audio). The next one is Friday, January 20th, 2012 & our friend & crew member Hakim Murphy will be here from Chicago. This will be his first time playing in New York & he just released an EP on Plan B Recordings called "Sampled Dreams", so we will have those for sale there too. We plan on building this party around our crew with myself & Dakini9 as the resident DJ's. We always play vinyl & we plan on incorporating some live sets in the future too. Our parties are geared towards the heads who know the art form & culture of DJ's & Dancers in the underground house & techno scene. Lastly, we always have merchandise available, so anyone who visits our party from anywhere in the world can always be sure to leave with some great music of ours to take with them.

Q: Tell us about your crew and what they mean to you?

A: My crew is based around the artists on my labels as well as the Vanguard Crew which is Myself, Amir Alexander, Chris Mitchell, Dakini9, Hakim Murphy, Miles 'Mauser' Holt & G. Marcell. Here in New York I have Dakini9, Marshallito & DJ Courage from the Plan B label, but I work with & support nearly everyone in the underground in some way or another, but my close friends who I work with & help out are all family to me. This is a community of like minded individuals who all love deep, underground, electronic dance music! They mean everything to me & I couldn't do all of this without them! Also, this culture has spread worldwide, so I have friends & artists all over the world who I communicate & work with. 

  I plan on doing some traveling overseas in 2012, so if anyone is interested in booking me or anyone in my crew, feel free to contact us at smproductionsnyc@gmail.com

Here are some other sites to check out too: spidermusic.bandcamp.com planbrecordings.bandcamp.com planbrecordingsnyc.com sublevelsounds.bandcamp.com btumusic.bandcamp.com vanguardsound.com machiningdreams.net DJ Spider (nyc)

A big shout out to Sapriori, Chris Cheops & the whole NWS Crew!!!

Peace, Spider
December, 2011

Tracklist:

All vinyl NWS Cast (1 hr. & 29 min.)

1 - E.M.P.B. (white label) - Hakim Murphy
2 - Jungle Juice - DJ Spider
3 - White Rhino - Amir Alexander
4 - Sound Of Thought - Rod Modell
5 - Solomn Days - Levon Vincent
6 - Wicked Priest - DJ Spider
7 - Black Ops - Amir Alexander & Dakini9
8 - I Didn't Need You - Carter Brothers
9 - Sharp Senses - Hakim Murphy
10 - Tribal Mechanism - DJ Spider
11 - Recovery Idea - Mike Huckaby S Y N T H Remix
12 - Mountain006.2 - Mountain People
13 - Storm - Jeroen Search
14 - Get Sum - DJ Qu
15 - Gesloten Cirkel - Ratsnake
16 - Dancin - Mauser
17 - Untitled (white label) - Ryan Brogan
18 - Was A Dog A Doughnut - Cat Stevens
19 - Untitled (white label) - Millie & Andrea
20 - A Diet Of Speed & Beer - Wolf Eyes

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