NastyNasty
Next up is the slut-nasty Bay Area producer, NastyNasty. I first found NastyNasty when he did a collaboration with one of my favorite artists, the previously featured Nit Grit. Their collaborative track is one of my favorites produced by either of them, independently or collectively.
Check out their collab here: http://soundcloud.com/nit-grit/nastynasty-nit-grit-say-my-name.
When listening to the track with at least a limited knowledge-base about both of the respective artists, it is easy to hear both of their unique styles within the track. Nit Grit’s signature lazer-bass and agressive roar pound your eardrums while NastyNasty serenades you with his namesake of nasty vocal samples. This track is really a killer.
For more NastyNasty, check out the free Mix and interview he released for SF Weekly.
http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5506141&show_comments=false&auto_play=false&color=ff0037
Lazer Soul by NastyNasty
Interview with NastyNasty about his Mix: (exclusive for for SF Weekly)
NastyNasty “Priceless (Edit)”
The live edit of one of my staple openers. It’s a lonely city we live in, so on the rare occasion that you meet someone worth spending time with, you’d better tell them. If you’re bad with words like I am, this is how you tell them.
NastyNasty “Choker (Dub)”
I had the biggest crush on this girl. I actually told myself last February that I wouldn’t date until 2010, but I broke down in December for her. The vocal snippets borrowed from Usher’s “You Got it Bad” were synonymous with the sentiments I felt at the time.
NastyNasty “Melting You (Dub)”
It’s really no wonder this track mixes so well with “Choker,” as they’re about the same girl. Once I finally had the nerve to tell her about my crush, I then began the process of breaking down all of our silly, guarded boundaries. “Melting You” is a song about breaking down little walls to see what lies beneath.
NastyNasty “No Names V.I.P. (Dub)”
After a year of playing the original a few times a week, I was bored with this one. After another six months, I was downright annoyed by it. Undoubtedly my most popular song to date, I knew it’d be cruel to eject it from the sets altogether, so I made this V.I.P. edit of “No Names” both to keep me interested and give the audience something special. Fun fact: “No Names” is about the furthest thing from a love song. The vocal samples were originally intended as painfully tongue-in-cheek. I was in the wake of one of my most painful breakups when writing the original, and I would have given the left side of my face just to speak to her again.
NastyNasty “West Coast Hardcore (Dub)”
I didn’t grow up on electronic music by any means. I listened to a lot more Misfits and Black Flag than Stockhausen or Kraftwerk. I made a series of short tracks that took aesthetics from my roots in punk and applied them to bass music. I sort of took punk’s minimalistic effectiveness and simple structure and wrapped loud bass and synthesizers around it. Due in no small part to its simplicity, this track has proven itself to be one of the most effective tracks in my repertoire. Almost instantly resonating with people, this one rips through dancefloors like a slithering cattle prod.
NastyNasty “DEAD STAR”
A good portion of the stars we see at night are, in fact, dead. They have actually been dead for hundreds of thousands of years, and their light is just now reaching us. Comparatively, a good portion of the stars we see on TMZ are dead. They have also been dead for years, and are simply hollow shells of former individuals kept inflated by teams of media moguls until they lose their tabloid usefulness. Deep shit, yo.
Nit GriT & NastyNasty “Say My Name (Dub)”
Both outsiders to the scene, more or less, Nit GriT and I frequently bounce ideas off of each other. When we finally sat down in the studio together, it was sheer mayhem. Like Rusko, Danny (a.k.a Nit GriT) has a flare for pairing melodies with aggressive dubstep sounds, so I knew when we sat down together we’d have quite a pairing on our hands. Also for the record, I totally love Destiny’s Child. “I’m a survivor, I’m not gon’ give up…”
The Knife “Behind the Bushes (NastyNasty Remix)”
When I first started NastyNasty, I did alot of mainstream rap and R&B remixes. I got to a point where I realized that, while it got me alot of attention early on, it would undoubtedly become a crutch, and if I wanted any sort of longevity in this game, I would need to stand on my own two legs. Having put a ban on doing full-fledged remixes of any mainstream rap or R&B, I now look to other sources when it comes time to pretty up my live sets or color a blog with a remix. The Knife is pretty much awesome. Initially, I was gearing up to remix “Heartbeats,” but in all truth, I’d be hard pressed to make that song any better than it already is. “Behind the Bushes” (the closing number on The Knife’s Deep Cuts album), however, struck me as the perfect number to re-appropriate and incorporate into my sound.
NastyNasty “Out Here (Dub)”
In the words of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, “I am trying to break your heart.” I’d say about 75 to 85 percent of the songs I make are about love or the lack thereof, and I feel like I’m failing if I don’t rip your heart directly through your ears at some point during my set. One of the beautiful things about music is that it can make us feel less alone in our moments of darkness. I find most of my best music comes in times of loneliness because — contrary to the definition of the term — it is a universal feeling that we all take part in at some point; we are more or less unified as humans by the sense that we are alone in the world.
NastyNasty “Pictures (Dub)”
I’m not famous by any stretch of the imagination, but I have managed to make a bit of a name for myself in the last year or so. As my music travels, my name travels with it, and as my name travels, so does interest in the person behind the name. This is all kind of abrupt and a bit jarring for somebody like me, who is, by nature, a bit of a hermit. People want bios, pictures, stories, and gossip. All I want is a secluded space with some speakers and my laptop. There is a delicate dance going on between my actual person and my professional self.
NastyNasty “Bad Scene (Dub)”
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” –Hunter S. Thompson
NastyNasty “Sore Loser”
I am not a perfect person by any means, but I do want better for myself and for others. Hope paired with activity is what makes humans so special in my opinion. And not just the fact that we can wish for good, but our willingness to execute those ideas.
NastyNasty “Perforate (Dub)”
[London-based electronic music label] Planet Mu contacted me about doing a release earlier this year, and, being the longtime Planet Mu fan that I am, I was ecstatic. I instantly sent them a catalog of what I considered to be my best work. [Label head] Mike Paradinas rejected a large body of my work, and encouraged me to keep sending tracks as I finished them so long as they were “in a different musical key.” It was the first time I had been called out for my endless use of G minor, and I was a bit angry, to be quite honest. I made “Perforate” as a keyless track to transition between keys during my live set, as I set out to expand my key range, and also as a kind of abrasive ‘Eff you, I can totally work in other keys, dude,’ track. [It’s a] mean little bugger to boot.
Starkey “Robot Hands (NastyNasty Remix)”
Starkey has been a favorite of mine for quite some time now, so when I was asked to do a remix for his release for Civil Music, I jumped on the opportunity. The original is quite a weird tune even by my standards, and if anything, my remix stands to normal it out a bit. Although, it’s still rather leftfield.
Check out the rest of FriteNite as well, and enjoy the mix!
-Ethan
SubSynthesis 