Plaadifirmad:Ohm Resistance / Obliterati / Sublight / Subtitles / Flatline / Big H / Cabal / jne.
20. Veebruar 2009 CRIME SCENE Depeche Mode Baaris Voorimehe 4, Tallinn, Estonia
Biograafia:
Even as drum & bass, this restless futuristic underground electronic dance music genre, pushes ever-forward ever-morphing into new daring permutations, Submerged aka Kurt Gluck is in the eye of a hurricane signalling the rise of a new D&B movement.
This offshoot of the breakbeat hardcore segment of the British acid house rave scene in the late ‘80s is defined by its energetic 1-2-(-)-+4 beat. As it adopts new influences, identifiers for each phase have been created such as ragga-jungle, intelligent, darkside, hardstep, jazz-step, jump-up, and tech-step, within the context of a build-up / climax / breakdown dance track format and a steady beat.
But free-form D&B - in which beat patterns shift more rapidly than a System of a Down song - is becoming a genre in itself which is changing the way we dance. Submerged, as a prolific composer of this new surge of D&B way outside the box, as the head of D&B labels Ohm Resistance and Obliterati, as a DJ and as a live musician simply by virtue of doing so much, is emerging as a nexus for growing the sound that he loves.
In the feisty, often combative niche community within D&B, in which new ideas are challenged as introduced, unassuming and resolutely tenacious Submerged has earned respect as a producer with a unique kinetic voice, and for the calibre of his collaborations. It’s not really necessary to defend music made with world class virtuosic legends such as Grammy Award winner producer and bassist Bill Laswell, Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders and Buckethead.
Submerged’s first solo artist album, “Stars Lights The End” (artistic license invoked re: punctuation), which might be described as a way beyond hard, way beyond dark, chaotic apocalyptic horror flick soundtrack, features contributions from Laswell, Japanese trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, drummer Guy Licata, film sound designer Mark Filip, and Corrupt Souls. It will be released by Sublight Records on April 29, the day after his 29th birthday.
Gluck was born in Rosedale, Queens. He and his younger brother are sons of a Brooklyn police officer dad and architect mom. He bonded with music early on: “When I was 8 or 9,” he says, “my mom had one of those keyboards with the accompaniment kinda techno thing on the left hand and you would play melodies on the right hand. Man, if that isn’t what I do now!”
Young Kurt never had private music lessons but he played clarinet and bass clarinet in his school jazz band and symphonic band. “I always took band classes because I loved playing music. I had my own metal band in high school. I wrestled (folkstyle) for four years varsity, but I was REALLY into music. I listened mostly to metal. I didn’t start to get into electronic music heavily ‘til my summer after high school. My favourite bands were Slayer, Napalm Death. Godflesh was huge to me, also.”
While he was in his teens his family moved to Maryland where he attended Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg. “I used to hang out with a bunch of older guys. I’d say I was going to sleep at a friend’s house and ride down to D.C. with them to see bands. But playing music on a stage was always what I wanted to do.” Following high school, Gluck studied two years at the University of Maryland. “Then I got an incredible job writing software that paid me out the ass so I left school to save up for five years for money to work on music with. I made it four.”
He named himself Submerged, he says, “Because I have no intake filter. I take in way too much information, take it all too seriously, and am drowned constantly with the amount of information I have to process walking down a street.”
In 1999 he founded Ohm Resistance, a collective of musicians and DJ’s spanning two continents, which was also a label that released exciting DC artists including Sinthetix, Impulse and Kiko, and Skynet of the UK. For one year, Ohm Resistance threw a Wednesday weekly at U-Turn called Tangent.
Submerged moved Ohm’s headquarters to Brooklyn in late 2002 to facilitate global distribution of its releases. In 2003 he co-created a second label, Obliterati, to pursue the darker and more experimental roots of Ohm Resistance.
In 1998, he met drummer Mick Harris, formerly of Napalm Death, at a show with Painkiller, a band with John Zorn and Bill Laswell. Submerged and Harris wrote two tracks together. Harris told Laswell about his friend Submerged who made D&B coincidentally around the time that Laswell’s good friend Robert Soares became convinced that Laswell should do a D&B fusion project.
In 2003, Laswell met with Submerged to discuss working together and said he owed John Zorn a record. Submerged came up with eight compositions to which Laswell added more music and live bass. This first historic Bill Laswell vs. Submerged collaboration, “Brutal Calling,” a harrowing anti-status quo screed, was released on Zorn’s Avant label, in the first half of 2004, during which time he also remixed Herbie Hancock for Sony, and toured Eastern Europe.
In the second half of 2004, Submerged was savagely mugged, hospitalized for five months, in a coma for four weeks, pronounced dead, and came back to life. Submerged credits Laswell with keeping him positive and working on music throughout his difficult recovery. In 2005, Laswell and Submerged as Method of Defiance triumphantly put out a 9-track album, “The Only Way to Go Is Down,” a fitting title for a guided tour through Hell, on Sublight Records.
Submerged’s debut artist album, “’Stars Lights The End,’ is a follow up Sublight release. “Bill plays on two of the nine tracks. Kondo plays on four. Guy Licata gives me a breakbeat on one that I chopped up. I wrote a tune with Corrupt Souls’ Josh Clark a long time ago that I finished for this and it came out one of the better ones. My friend Mark Filip who’s worked on movies like ‘Robots’ and ‘The Sentinel,’ gave me some incredible sounds for one track. D’nee, a guy I toured with in Russia, and I wrote a tune for the album while on tour. We used samples from everybody’s favorite movie character, Frank Booth from ‘Blue Velvet,’ Dennis Hopper. I’m really happy. This is my first huge project like this for myself and I’m really proud of what’s on it.”
This explosive, ferocious stunner of an artist CD is just the tip of the iceberg, however. Other current Submerged projects include:
“Inamorata” by Method of Defiance: An important groundbreaking jazz-D&B fusion project featuring 12 tracks commingling the talents of virtuoso musicians (Bill Laswell, Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders, Buckethead, John Zorn, Toshinori Kondo, Pete Cosey, Craig Taborn, Graham Haynes, Byard Lancaster, Bernie Worrell, Dave Liebman, Nil Peter Molvaer, Masada String Trio) with D&B’s most progressive producers (Paradox, Amit, D-Star, Evol Intent, SPL, Black Sun Empire, Corrupt Souls, Fanu, Outrage, Karsh Kale, Submerged), due out later this year.
“Torn from Black Space” by Death Cube K: “I always liked the project Bill and Buckethead and his band did called Death Cube K, which is an anagram of Buckethead. I told Bill when I was younger I used to listen to a Death Cube K album called ‘Dreamatorium’ as I was going to sleep and it would give me the most beautiful nightmares. The last record they did was maybe 7 or 8 years ago. Bill remembers when you tell him things and I wound up on the new Death Cube K record doing strange turntable manipulations, like slowing them down with my hands, using effects and just creating ambience. It sounds like this vivid nightmare, staring into the void sort of thing, but it’s sparse, not heavy, a lot of air and space. We were inspired by a lot of Sun O))), four guys playing guitar riffs at about 5 beats per minute, and some of the new drift or drone projects happening.”
“Breakdown” by Reid Speed: “An artist album, not a mix. Reid’s been making tracks for years and they’re really good. She’s got a street sound. She makes banging party tracks, not lightweight. Anything with Ohm Resistance is heavy. It will probably come out after the summer. Our working relationship evolved out of a mutual friendship with a DJ and guitar player named Lauren Flax who’s now hitting it big. They were best friends and I hung out with Reid at Lauren’s house. Once or twice we tried to write a track together but we’re both pretty intense people in the studio and there’s not a lot of give so it didn’t work so well, but me helping her with mastering her own material ended up being a better way for us to work together.”
“Therapy Sessions” CD/DVD by Technical Itch aka Mark Caro: “Mark is giving us a mix-CD to promote Therapy that Ohm Resistance will be releasing. We’ll see a bunch of well-known people on there: Tech Itch, Limewax, Dieselboy, Dylan, Raiden, Gein, everybody else recent in their camp doing stuff. It’s going to have video from therapy. We’re also doing a DVD like we did with the ‘Dubplate Killaz’ CD/DVD project which we released in the U.S. We have the right distribution mechanics for it and it’s a huge CD and it makes no sense that stuff like these and Pendulum aren’t readily available here. I’m at least trying to take an active role in making those things happen. My relationship with Mark is kind of like hero worship, I’ll be straight. (laughs) In my shelves at home I’ve got sixty of that guy’s records. He’s one of my favorite D&B artists. What he’s doing with Therapy is really good, a show where there’s this expectation of this dark, Halloween scary sort of thing which is fun that’s turned into something huge and I want to help him promote that.”
Ohm is reviving its Ohm Wreckers “more danceable” vinyl series in conjunction with their new Ohm Wreckers 2nd Mondays monthly club night in New York City with Konkrete Jungle. Residents are: Submerged, Enduser, SilentKiller, Breaker, and React, and they plan to host friends including the Therapy Sessions crew, Lethal and Khanage from London, and Identity and Cable from Brazil. It kicked off April 9 with hardcore out-of-towners. “A guy from Albany hit me up on MySpace and said he’s buying new rims for his car so he can show them to us when he comes for the show. We said, well, if you’re buying new rims for your car, we need to go for a ride with you.
He’s a Russian guy who builds serious sound systems for cars. People are coming from Virginia Beach and Connecticut, too. We’re happy to have our own thing. Thankfully, Dean Barker/Breaker and Sean Shah/SilentKiller are handling a lot of the work.”
Current Ohm singles include “Orgy” by SilentKiller and “Identity”/”4Pro” by Lethal and Khanage. On Obliterati (04), the EP “Everything You Feel is Laced With F----ing Lies” includes Temulent, Enduser, Lethal and Khanage, with collaborators including Submerged, Breaker, and Silent Killer.
A funky D&B Method of Defiance off shoot album involving Finnish producer Fanu, Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, Karsh Kale, and others is also in progress, as well a “a pretty heavily anticipated album by Enduser with a working title of ‘Left’ as in ‘Left Behind.’ He’s master of lots of styles, breakcore and idm and D&B, and he manages to use them all together in one coherent musical picture.”
All of the above is in addition to Submerged’s DJing across North America, Europe, Asia, and South America, live PA’s on turntables and Ableton Live with the Method of Defiance band, and even ideas for independent films and new t-shirt designs.
Asked about the future of D&B in the U.S., Submerged replies, “Hip-hop had initial resistance when it got played on the radio but eventually people figured out that it was going to make money and they took it on, but it took a long time for that to happen. Maybe D&B will take that long in America, too, but it’s already permeating everything you hear - TV, radio, movies, videogames. I don’t really worry. I don’t see it as rooting for a sports team. I want to make music and if it gets heard, it gets heard. I hope it stays around long enough for me to make a good living out of it because I’ve put a lot of time and expectation into it, but you know what, if I don’t, there’s always real estate. (laughs)
“To be serious, I like the music and the people who make it, but it’s really up to us. I’m doing my part to get D&B CDs and vinyl released and distributed in North America, putting up money for an office for Nu Urban over here. I’d like to see other bigger name artists step up and do their part, too. It’s not like we’re fighting against anything but ourselves. If we want to get heard, we have to find a way to make that happen. That’s on our backs, not anyone else’s.”
Clearly Submerged has evolved into a vital link in the D&B ecosystem. Considering the history he’s already made expanding the reach of D&B with his projects, it’s not illogical to ask how he envisions his legacy, but typically Submerged’s response is philosophical and grounded.
“I don’t know, realistically, if I will have any legacy in music. But I always wanted a family, and Ohm Resistance is what I made to make a family, a pirate crew, if you will. If that’s all I ever get, I’m happy with the people I’ve gotten to meet, the places I’ve had the chance to visit, and the love I have had in my life. I always want more, but I work for it, and if I don’t get it, I don’t get too disappointed. Life is too short to think too much about what your future translates into in someone else’s past.
This offshoot of the breakbeat hardcore segment of the British acid house rave scene in the late ‘80s is defined by its energetic 1-2-(-)-+4 beat. As it adopts new influences, identifiers for each phase have been created such as ragga-jungle, intelligent, darkside, hardstep, jazz-step, jump-up, and tech-step, within the context of a build-up / climax / breakdown dance track format and a steady beat. 