Another Musical Match-up

Over the years as a DJ I often find out that an Artist that I am a huge fan of turns out to be the man/woman behind multiple projects. Sometimes I am aware of this connection, but sometimes it blind-sides me. Just a few minutes ago I tuned into Rhapsody and Amon Tobin was jamming along. One of the cool things about Rhapsody is they have these little blurbs about the artist you are listening to.

One of the interesting tid-bits they threw out was that Amon also goes by Cujo. Now, I was introduced to Cujo a few years ago by my friend Jillian. She and I where really into downtempo (ambient, illbient, IDM, WHATEVER) and she turned me on to a lot of different music over the years. So once again, what I once thought was two separate Artist are indeed just one man.

This happened a little while back with the whole K&D thing. I am a huge fan of these two producers, but I didn't know that Peter Kruder was Peace Orchestra and that Richard Dorfmeister was Tosca.

One of the questions that came out of my recent "OH MY GOD THEY ARE THE SAME!?!?!" situations was a tongue lashing by Maer wondering how the hell can I be so out of it when it comes to the artist I listen and/or spin as a DJ. It actually gets down to how I pick music.

There are certain artist that I will dwell upon. One current one is RjD2. I get interested in them and wonder "where are they from" so I look it up and find out that he is from Columbus, Ohio of all places. It just ends up that I know some people from Columbus and they informed me that music is huge there. The Deal sisters are from there and many other famous acts from there too. Apparently all you can do is drink, play sports or make music (feel free to mix and match as you see fit). Annnnyyyywaaay... I digress, back to what I was talking about.

It gets down to how I pick music. I often find out about new music through friends, but I mainly get new stuff at the record shop. When I dig for records I first look for artists I know, then labels but I always make sure to grab some random stuff by either the cover art or just feeling saucy. I have found that almost all my greatest scores have come that way. My number one (to this day) was Swerve aka Fresh Moods (allmusic seems a little confused and the cover does not clearly state who/what the album is by).

His first album is absolutely amazing. Every time I play "Jenny" or any of the tracks for that matter, I always get at least one person asking me who this is. I found the album because it was in the Downtempo section and the cover was cool. Hey, album art is still SUPER important. If someone took the time to design the cover it is often reflected in the music, but not always.

Because I get a lot of music this way I tend not to know all the artist I listen to and often I when I do learn them can't always find them again (one release, etc). Also, when you have 700+ records in your collection (which is small in DJ land) you learn to match the sound to the cover and not the artist or the name. This also helps to when you need to find a specifc track in a dark club/venue. Because of these habits this is how I memorize music. I need to learn more about the artist and the producers, but old habits die hard.