This week: KILLSWITCH 1 YR ANNIVERSARY w/ Jonah Sharp (Reflective), Dave Aju (Circus Company) & Drumcell (Droid LA)!
Can you believe that it’s been 52 weeks since we started Killswitch? To celebrate our 1 year anniversary, we’ve got a SICK lineup of killer tunes, killswitch kupcakes, free pizza, limited edition Killswitch buttons, $4 kosmo killshots and an extra half hour of debauchery!
Throwing down the tuneage:
JONAH SHARP (Reflective) 9:30pm-10:30pm
DAVE AJU (Circus Company) 8:30pm-9:30pm
DRUMCELL (Droid LA) 7:30pm-8:30pm
Plus Killswitch residents:
dCOY & Javaight 6:00pm-7:30pm
Thanks again for all your support and for supporting SF techno, and thanks to all the talented DJs and producers that have dropped their killer tunes.
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About Jonah Sharp:
Jonah Sharp aka Spacetime Continuum played an important role during the 90’s in consolidating the global experimental ambient and techno scene through his Reflective Records imprint as well as releasing a string of solo studio albums on Astralwerks and Virgin Records . He has worked with many artists including a live album with writer and philosopher Terence McKennna, and collaborations with Mixmaster Morris, Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Pete Namlook, Ursula Rucker, Move D, Tetsu Inoue and Bill Laswell to name but a few.
An Edinburgh, Scotland native, Sharp started his musical life as a drummer, playing with various art-school punk bands inspired by the super-8 film ethic of the likes of Caberet Voltaire and early Human League. After briefly flirting with the late 80’s London acid jazz club scene as a session drummer, he soon realised the possibilities of a sampler and a drum machine as a solo performer. Excited by the sounds of Detroit techno, Chicago house and the electronic music that was coming from Europe, he started performing live and DJing at parties in London in 1989 and decided that chill- out or "other" room offered a lot of potential for realizing what he was trying to communicate musically.
He left London for America in 1992, settling in San Francisco, where he established his Reflective label and recorded the bulk of his work to date, split over a number of different project headings ( Emit Ecaps, Alien Community, Reagenz, Electro Harmonix and Strange Attractor). His most consistently visible work though has been as Spacetime Continuum, most of which was released by Astralwerks and Reflective.
He has performed live electronic music and Dj’d all over the world including a slot at the very first Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2000 curated by Carl Craig and on Mount Fuji in 1999 in front of 18,000 people during an insane torrential rain storm. He has remixed the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Meat Beat Manifesto and Matt Herbert and had his music in numerous movies including Darren Aronofsky's 1998 movie" π " .
More recently he has completed the soundtrack for the documentary “Consume This Movie !” and has spent time co-writing, co-producing and touring with The Global Drum Project, who include tabla player Zakir Hussein and Ex Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. The album, "Global Drum Project" released in Oct 2007, has been nominated for a 2009 Grammy Award.
August 2008 saw him perform with Mixmaster Morris live on the main stage at The Big Chill in the UK playing songs from their upcoming collaborative project. Currently he is in a studio in San Francisco writing new solo Spacetime material, finishing work with Move D on the new REAGENZ album and gigging and writing material with Nigerian talking drum maestro Sikiru Adepoju.
About Dave Aju:
San Francisco native Dave Aju has been producing and performing his unique brand of electronic dance music for nearly a decade. He seasons traditional elements of house and techno with a blend of outside musical influences, notably free jazz and p-funk, a low-slung aesthetic clearly rooted in hip-hop, and an organic sonic approach akin to Musique Concréte. The result is a consistently fresh and expressive sound, varying from raw and percussive to deep and melodic, that is favored by an ever-increasing number of listeners, dancers, DJs, and producers around the world. His in demand status has taken him from Moscow to Mexico City, the highly-respected MUTEK Festival, and has garnered support from a who's-who of forward-thinking peers, from hometown heroes Sutekh and Kit Clayton to the illustrious Matthew Herbert, who has recently commissioned Aju to release material on his Accidental label. His recent debut full-length, Open Wide, is currently causing a stir in the electronic music community with it's bold diversity of musical styles and the strict but effective use of only his mouth to construct it.
About Drumcell:
Founder of Droid Recordings and co-founder of Droid Behavior, Drumcell (aka Mohamed "Moe" Espinosa) has been one of techno's greatest allies in Southern California in recent times. A graduate of the Musician's Institute and a long-time performer at parties in Southern California, Drumcell has been influenced by music from his earliest years. After being exposed to raves in the early 90s, He grew addicted to the sounds of acid house, techno, in its many forms, and industrial.
It was not long before he was copping turntables to satisfy his vinyl fetish. By the early age of 14 he was playing in various local bands, and through out the rest of his teenage years, cut his teeth-producing hip hop records, dub and various forms of electronic music on Los Angeles based underground labels. By combining his production, DJing and networking skills and focusing in on his more mature musical tastes he soon established himself as one of the major players in LA's growing techno scene.
Associating with the members of Acid Circus to form Droid Behavior as an event production group and record label was the next logical step to raise awareness for techno in the city and to help expose local Artists, established djs, and performers from around the country.
Over the last 5 years Drumcell has rocked parties from big to small on a weekly basis in LA as well as gigs all over the U.S alongside such names as Kenny Larkin, John Tejada, Tim Xavier, Daniel Bell, Ben Sims, Adam Beyer, Jeff Mills, Speedy J, Ritchie Hawtin, Mathew Dear, etc. and has also released quite a few heavy tracks on labels Omniscient, Remains, Heavy Industries, and his own DROID Recordings imprint.
Drumcell has been known to keep on the edge of technology and be continuously pushing the limits to what the future has to offer. He is always in the process of developing homebrew software as well as cutting edge hardware solution to bring a fresh innovative taste to his production and performances. When performing, Drumcell can be seen blurring the lines between a live and a DJ set by utilizing tools such as FX processors, samplers, drum machines and other devices to weave a thick blend of acidic techno and aggressive but funky minimalist groove to ensure a frenzy amongst his listeners.
With the state of electronic music in North America leaning towards stripped down funk rather then progressive fluff these days, Droid has become the center for LA techno and Drumcell remains steadfast in his mission of putting this city on the global map.