Brent Lippincott (left) and Ben Fuller are Tactic.
Submitted photo.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
If your ghosts wanna dance, Tactic is who you gonna call. The DJ duo sets off the party at clubs like Fatso’s and Nara and Glow (Kansas City) with a discriminating selection of underground and overground dance joints. Seamlessly mixed and earthshakingly amplified, Tactic’s DJ sets have a knack for loosening the stiffest of joints. The duo also stirs the producing pot with sexy remixes of songs by artists like M.I.A. and Blaqstarr, canvassing the underground for hot new trax and giving them their own unique spin. The duo—Ben Fuller and Brent Lippincott—drop by our platinum podcast studio with three new remixes, a mix tape, and oodles of insight about forward-thinking club music.
- Download MP3 for this episode (right-click and save)
- Subscribe to The Dog and Pony Show in iTunes
No-fi highlights from the podcast
lawrence.com: How did remixing Blaqstarr’s “Superstarr” come about?
Fuller: The original version is very minimal with almost no bass line, and it’s very short. We liked it, but there were elements that we thought we could add.
How does one delve into being a remix artist? Do you need to get some type of permission?
Lippincott: No, it’s a total open forum these days. If you’re an aspiring producer, one of the best ways to start networking is to pick up tracks that you like or you think you can do something with and just get ’em done and get ’em to people.
Fuller: It’s a total free-for-all out there these days. With some of the recent software that’s come out, it’s allowed people to do things very quickly. Not always to a good result necessarily, but right now that whole culture is really booming.
DJs Tittsworth + Tactic
- When: Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007, 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.
- Where: Fatso's, 1016 Mass., Lawrence
- Cost: $5
- Age limit: 21+
What sort of software?
Fuller: Ableton Live is the main one. It’s been on the scene for a couple years. It essentially does a lot of stuff automatically for you that in the past would have to be done manually using pretty expensive gear, like time stretching. You can basically beat-match any two songs together. The whole mash-up culture stemmed from almost this one program. That’s why it got so crazy so fast.
So basically being able to make a song faster or slower without changing the pitch?
Fuller: Essentially, yeah. Or just making a really slow rock song match up with a really fast rap song and doing these sometimes terrible things. But, used right, it can sound good.
Do you play mash-ups when you DJ?
Lippincott: Yeah, we play any style of music. Honestly, you can’t deny that that’s an actual style of music now. But out of any style that we play, we try to pick the best interpretations. We play some mash-ups, but they’re tastefully done.
And why are you laughing at me?
Fuller: We don’t like the term. It’s a dirty word.
Is there a better term?
Fuller: No, not really.
Well, like anything, there’s bad ones and good ones.
Lippincott: One of the ones that in all honesty has been working for us for awhile—and every Saturday I play it at Fatso’s—is a mash-up of Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” over Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” beat. It sounds like a horrible idea, but whatever the dude did—it’s crazy.
Fuller: Chicks dig it.
So what did you guys do to M.I.A.’s “Boys”?
Lippincott: We got an a capella and totally constructed a beat from scratch.
Fuller: It’s a style of music called grime or dubstep. It’s a big thing out of England—Dizzee Rascal was pretty big a couple years ago. We did it for a label out of Philly. We were commissioned to do it by this cat named Starkey, and I think it turned out pretty interesting
It’s getting an official release now?
Lippincott: Yeah, “Street Bass Anthems Vol. 2,” mixed and curated by Starkey. He produced like 70 percent of it himself, and getting it for his stuff alone is worth it.
Tell us about the Tampa Tony track (“Can’t Juke Without Me”) that you remixed.
Fuller: In the whole remixing/producing realm, that’s what you’d call an edit. It’s where you take a track that you like but maybe for certain reasons doesn’t fit for Djing—maybe it’s too slow, maybe it’s not easy to mix in, or it’s not mastered very well. We took this track that we liked, sped it up, added an intro and remastered it … We just beefed it up and made it bump.
Lippincott: I think Tampa Tony’s maybe got two tracks out.
Fuller: He’s more of a regional guy from the Florida area.
Lippincott: Honestly, that’s one of the fun things about what we do, and there’s a lot of kids all over the world that are excited by the same culture that we are right now. It’s such open game, finding something like this Tampa Tony joint that nobody knows, but then you do something to it and bigger DJs start to play it and chart it. It not only helps us as aspiring producers, but it also helps out that artist.
Fuller: There’s a real strong element of regionalism, where different cities or different areas of the country have these different musical movements that are going on. Before they were all a little bit isolated within their own cities, but now, with the internet, they all intermingle. That’s where you get this whole Baltimore-club phenomenon and the ghetto-house scene of Chicago and even Dirty South rap.
Ad Astra Per Aspera / Fourth of July / Boo and Boo Too / Coat Party :: This show is in conjunction with the Red Balloon To-Do art extravaganza and will be Ad Astra's record release show for the vinyl version of "Catapult Calypso" that Second Nature Recordings is releasing on white speckled vinyl. ... More info
Comments
lawrence.com does not necessarily agree with comments posted below - responsibility lies with the relevant user alone. Read our full policy
Post a comment
(Requires free lawrence.com registration.)