Mofomatronix

I first heard of Mofomatronix when Jackmaster (the guy who runs the Dress2Sweat record label, Numbers club night and many, many more things) played me some of their tracks when he came to play my night. He tore it up that night but that is a different story.

I was really impressed by the production style they displayed and looked them up online to discover they are a couple of producers and dj's operating from Montreal. They run the Turbo Crunk night in Montreal and Toronto with their pals Megasoid, Blingmod and Lunice and also the Many Brain blog.

They took some time out from making crazy beats to answer some questions for me and you.

EB: What is and was the club scene like where you guys grew up? Did your night start because you were following suit from other hip hop nights or were you starting from scratch with it?

MFMTRNX: The club scene is Montreal is similar to most other big cities nowadays. The serato-DJ plays the same artist remixed by the same producer at the same horrible bitrate, and that phenomenon is very much present here. However there is a subculture of interesting club nights with considerable draw that have been around and were popping hard by the time we got our first monthly going proper dumb. The like minded homies would be Ghislain Poirier and his infamous Bounce Le Gros nights, Khiasma and his Baile MTL super-eclectic parties, and of course the Megasoid dudes. So as much as we weren't exactly following suit with the club scene of the city, it'd be a lie to claim ownership on what we did or say we started from scratch, as it was a select few monthly parties all individually pushing more diverse interesting sounds that made it good for everyone.

EB: How is your sound recieved in Montreal and Toronto where you run your nights?

MFMTRNX: To our surprise, our "thing" has been accepted as a legit club sound. whether pushing obscure Hyphy tracks, the latest Atlante club anthems, our own sounds or those of our friends and peers around the world like Lazer Sword, we've always been amazed at how it has not only kept clubs popping, but has often dragged people out to dancefloors. Curiously enough this has happened a few times when we were playing on bills alongside techno/electro DJs, and a few hours at 130bpm, we'd come on and play what is even to us at times the weirdest club music imaginable, people got to the dancefloor and really "get it". It's great.

EB: Are there any local mcs that you work with or plan to work with in the near future? (I ask because there are loads of mcs here but the dj scene is so far from the mc scene that the two rarely mix and when they do there are differences due to djs being more geeky about what they listen to and mcs having a hard time grasping where they fit in the hip hop food chain)

MFMTRNX: The thing is, there aren't many MCs in Montreal (at least since Giovanni Marks moved!), and truthfully we haven't really looked. However we have a few people in Chicago, LA, Texas and San Fransisco that we are supposed to work with in the near future. Hopefully we can hook up with some UK peoples as well. Though that's definitely a good point about producers and MCs often being on different wavelenghts, the scope of our beats covers many grounds and we have our secret stash of straight up rap beats that we could possibly throw at an MC, get the acapella back and flip it from there.

EB: Which producers have inspired you so far past and present?

MFMTRNX: Kraftwerk, Traxamillion, Bangladesh, Pinch, Droop-E, The Neptunes, Timbaland, etc. Anything from a banging strip club Collipark Snap beat from the southern States to a solid german Ellen Allien techno tune will inspire us tremendously.

EB: Have you thought about taking that leap and making uptempo music using the same production style? I mean that Common tune is at 120bpm and the Ne-Yo tune is even faster.

MFMTRNX: We don't force any tempo on our tracks and just come up with a melody and see at what speed it would work, otherwise with remixes we'll start from a rap we really like and work around its tempo. We have a few 110+ tracks, and I believe our set goes up to 120bpm right now, but then you gotta do something with it... like make all the verses 60bpm, some polyrhythms, fuck with the dancefloor a tiny bit. Fast bpms give us headaches. And for what it's worth it's not entirely unusual for rap or hip hop to reach those speeds whether full on or half time. My Love and Gossip Folk are both 120bpm.

But essentially if you're going in that bpm range, I bloody hope it's just a vicious transition towards 65bpm hahaha.

There you have it, bass heavy hip hop that works for the dancefloor, check the remixes from them and their fam.


Nas - Made You Look (Mofomatronix Remix)

Kinfolk - So Krisy (Mofomatronix Remix)

Busta Rhymes - Whoo Hah (Lunice Remix)

There are loads more delights to be sampled over at the Many Brain blog so get on it.

Also Mofomatronix are playing at The Ballers Social Club night, in Glasgow, at The Ivy with Rustie and Eclair on Saturday the 8th of August.

I Is Bored

I have been so bored today it is ridiculous. I staved off the boredom for a while watching stupid youtube videos. Lasagna Cat is good as it really shows how shit Garfield was.


Also Clark and Michael held my attention during the hours i could have been doing something worthwhile. Michael Cera the star of Arrested Developement and his buddy Clark Duke's internet show is pretty funny and has a few cameos.

I am really enjoying Santogold at the moment, especially the Creator track. Baltimore's Dj Scottie B did a cool bmore version of the tune that i am gonna be spinning out n the coming months. I hope this gets an official release soon.

Santogold - Creator


Santogold - Creator (Scottie B Remix)


The DFA remix of Paper Planes was leaked online this week as well. I wasn't really blown away by the original version, i thought it was alright but not worthy of the reception it seemed to get from the critics. This one is more my sort of speed with a spacey, cosmic vibe that i could imagine sounding good next to some Italians Do It Better release.

MIA - Paper Planes (DFA Remix)


Also hip hop heavyweight Dj Premier has remixed Grammy winning Dj and producer Mark Ronson. The remix of the Radiohead cover is quite a nice spin on the original, putting a hip hop slant on the funk version by scratching in the horn sections and keeping the whole thing mixable.

Mark Ronson - Just (Dj Premier Remix)


Well i am off to watch some more mind numbing television until i feel like commiting suicide.

Some Deviant Tracks

Antix makes mashups and remixes and is based in Falkirk in Scotland. His remixes get regular spin by DJ Muggs and on NYS radio, he also releases stuff through the Crooklyn Clan's website. He has won a bunch of, like, mashup competitions and stuff (including one on something called MTV) and he even made a special mashup for this very blog. I asked him a few questions about stuff and whatever and he was all like, answering and stuff.


EB: you seem to get more love over in the states, why do you think this is?

Antix – I'd say it's mostly to do with the intake of hip hop music in America. Fair enough, the UK is starting to build itself up and is progressing nicely with artists / lyricists like Akala, Sway and Lady Sovereign but generally speaking, the UK isn't even in the same league when it comes to playing the game. Unfortunately a lot of it is to do with the money the artist's labels have behind them, yet again, we're not even in the same league here. The promotion the same music gets at each side of the Atlantic is totally different as well. We get a single playing for a couple of months on MTV here, whereas in the states those same artists are on the news, doing radio & TV talk shows and meeting fans every day. So like anything, the music has much more of an impact when its constantly being rubbed into the public's face. It boils down to the artists / listeners over there doing my promotion for me. There's just more of a market in the states so people such as radio DJ's are more prone to playing material that they just know is good, material that they haven't panicked about whether or not its considered OK to play since its made by wee Antix from Scotland, ya know?

EB: Would you say that Grime and Dubstep are the Uk's equivilant to the Hip Hop scene in America? Certainly Lady Sovereign and Sway come from that background as do Wiley and Dizzee and these artists are generally more accepted as homegrown talent.

Antix - Not exactly. I'd say Hip Hop, just like any style, has mothered a lot of smaller, more locally produced variations, but I wouldn't class any of them as equivalents. Its like a spider-graph with Hip Hip placed firmly in the middle. The aim of the game for a lot of people is to find a new sound, or something that they can market as their own which means each week there's some new label or artist trying to advertise themselves as having created the next hot sound. Truth of the matter is, the general creation of “artists” these days is pathetic. There's no sound on the planet that hasn't been heard already so people are clutching at straws trying to find something to market....since that's more or less all it is now to most.

EB: Last question, you and i are driving home after a gig out of town, it was a pretty classy affair with free buckfast and miniture mince and mealie pie canapes. So we are in a dialogue about whether the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album sounds better on vinyl compared to cd or not and you don't notice that a man has stepped in front of the car. Unable to react quick enough, you mow him down and when we go back to see if he is okay we realise that he was killed by the impact. It is about now that i recognise him as my baby mother's new man, who i was videotaped making death threats to after he voiced his opinion that i should pay some child support. I am not really keen on hanging at the scene any more and want to leave and just pretend it never happened, what would you do?

Antix – Giles, I sincerely hope this is a rhetorical question and you're not looking for the perfect way to murder the Ex's new partner. I think torching the car would be the best solution, with every possible character witness for the prosecution stuffed inside somehow. No case, no charges. We continue drinking and they all lived happily ever after.

Shop Boys vs Who Made Who - Satisfaction (Antix Masup)
This was made on request especially for us, how cool is that?

Akon vs Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe & Chingy - Smack That Shorty (Antix Remix)

Queen vs R. Kelly Ft. The Game - Playaz Only Bites The Dust (Antix Remix)



Antix has a EP coming out soon called '6 of the best' which has one side dedicated to club remixes and the other to more dangerous remixes. He is also starting a night in Falkirk to try to blur the lines between hip hop and dance music. We will be watching him.

Check his Myspace or one of his two websites for more on Antix.

Blog Blog Blog Blog

I had a hectic weekend, first i was playing in Birmingham at the Carling Academy with Alex from Uncle Buck, which was a good laugh. It was a good laugh until i had to fly back at 7 in the morning, to then drive out to Ellon to dj in a mansion that had a castle in its grounds. I was pretty wrecked but i had a good time, even though i had to then drive back into town to play at The Flava with a young girl named Tor. She ruled. She has featured on the Bugz In The Attic album (on the Move Aside track) as well as doing stuff wth Dj Wonder and a bunch of other stuff that i can't be arsed typing. Check her myspace for all the details.

It was not a bad weekend apart from the fact someone snapped one of my mates mic stands and poured a glass of red wine into the pitch fader of one of my decks at the mansion party. I found that i am unable to do any of the cool shaking hand type things all the folk at The Flava night were doing, also when i left i accidentally did the black power fist to everyone, which even now makes me shudder with embarassment.

I also learned a few things.

1. Rich people are just better looking than the rest of us and we will have to deal with it.

2. Hip Hop isn't actually dead and is quite fun to play still.

3. Man cannot live by bread alone, nor by every word.

4. If you turn up to an airport looking and smelling like a tramp you will be taken aside and searched, i had to take my shoes and belt off which meant my trousers fell to my knees.

5. You cannot sleep in an economy seat on a plane.

6. It turns out that the A trak remix of Kanye West's Stronger rocks a bit harder than Diplo's remix in a straight comparison on the dancefloor.

Here is Kanye West's version of Young Folks which means i can now play this tune at hip hop nights as well as everywhere else. Is it uncool to admit i really like Kanye?

Kanye West - Young Folks

A Trak (Kanye West's tour dj) did this coolass remix of Digitalism, which uses bits of their other tunes in it as well. I like him as well.

Digitalism - Idealistic (A Trak Remix)

A nice dubstep remix of Pepe Braddock's Deep Burnt track which is an absolute, stone cold classic deep house record. It hasn't fucked it up as well, although i like dubstep so i am a bit biased.

Pepe Braddock - Deep Burnt (Wascal Dubstep Remix)

And finally that Wale freestyle over the Justice track, which also bridges that gap between hip hop, indie and electro.

Justice - D.A.N.C.E. (Wale Freestyle Version)

So it seems we have gone back into the straight music piracy game here at Electrique Boutique. I guess the industry loses again. Maybe see you at the night this blog is meant to be advertising, i'll be the one behind the turntables struggling to hear my broken headphones.

Yazoo!!!!