Interview – Mark de Clive-Lowe

Mark de Clive-Lowe is one of the most respected and prolific figures in the world of electronic music, and is credited with ushering in the broken-beat scene along with London cohorts 4hero and Bugz In The Attic.  With a revolving door of top-notch vocalists, and improv being the hallmark of his live shows, it’s impossible for him to put on the same show twice.  In anticipation of Mark’s upcoming show at Liv in DC this Friday, I got a chance to talk to him in-depth about switching up coasts, bringing the best out of true soul divas, going back to the future via jazz, and being a worldwide music ambassador.  And in all seriousness, Mark definitely brings the LOLs.

Mark de Clive-Lowe will be performing at Liv w/ special guest Sy Smith on Friday, July 30, 2010.

Unkle Funkle:  What prompted you to move from the U.K. to L.A.?

Mark de Clive-Lowe:  I was in London for 10 years, and I felt like it was time to start a new chapter.  I’ve actually always been interested in living in America but the opportunity didn’t really present itself.  Things were good in London, it was a great creative synergy there with my community.  To be crystal clear, I’ve always aspired for America.  My last full album Tide’s Arising was released on ABB Soul out of Oakland, so there’s various connections there and I kept going back to collaborate with folks there.  So it just seemed like the right time to make a move.  New York was always one place I was gunning for, but being originally from New Zealand and being so used to the beach and the sun and that kind of thing, it just felt like California was just the right place to come.

UF:  Are there any parallels that you can draw between the music scene in L.A. versus the music scene in the U.K., or are there any differences?

MdCL:  Oh, they’re completely different.  I think every city’s got its own vibe and its own kinda community, energy, and spirit to them.  I was just in Atlanta for a few days doing shows and recording there, and that place has its own vibe.  I just think wherever you go it seems to have differences.  One thing with the U.K. is there’s really a great Caribbean culture there, a lot of West Indian culture, and you’ve got a lot of people who are from different countries in Africa and they’ll be first generation or second generation, so there’s a lot of cultural references in the music there.  Whereas in L.A., it seems to be so much more [music] industry here, and I think a lot of people are above the underground very much doing certain kinds of music.  And then there’s the whole Flying Lotus and the Brainfeeder scene that’s really unique to here, and that does actually remind me of a little bit of the vibe of London.

UF:  You are a pretty busy man these days, and there’s a lot of exciting things going on.  You’ve recently  collaborated with Sandra St. Victor, Nia Andrews, and Sy Smith.  Tell me how you ended up working with Sandra.  She’s such a legend in the industry .  The music that you did for her is amazing.

MdCL:  Great man, I’m glad you dig it.

UF:  Yeah, I’ve never heard her sound this good actually.

MdCL:  (laughs)

UF:  She’s always had one of the best voices in Soul and R&B period, but you’ve kind of put her on that “next” level.

MdCL:  I mean, for me, there’s so many great voices out there who aren’t always collaborating with a producer who’s as good as they are a singer, or they might have great voices but they’re not great writers and they’re not working with great writers.  When you get all those elements in place I think something really special can happen.  The music I’m really inspired by, it all works by that method.  You have Charles Stephans producing records and Quincy Jones producing records and those records are head and shoulders above everything else.  Those kind of creatives who can really pull focus and also bring a skill set to the table that’s unique, I think that’s when you start getting something really special happening.  So with Sandra, I was….I mean, I know what I like to hear people do.  It was just nice since the first time I met her.  She just caught it all and it was great.  When I first heard her, she was doing a Chaka Khan gig, Sandra and Karen Bernod.  And Chaka was…Chaka was okay.

UF:  (laughs)

MdCL:  (laughs)  Chaka was cool.

UF:  That’s so funny.  I’ve never heard anybody say that Chaka Khan was just okay.

MdCL:  Chaka was cool.  At the end of the show, the background singers got 8 bars each.  And Karen Bernod stepped up and was just incredible, and I was thinking Wow, what is there left for this other girl to do?  And then Sandra steps up and just re-wrote the book completely, so I mean both of them just blew my mind.  The highlight of the Chaka Khan show was two background singers doing 8 bars each kinda thing.

UF:  Wow, that’s crazy.

MdCL:  So Sandra and I…and this was back in the day when MySpace was still hot…so we kept in touch through MySpace.  Nothing came of it immediately.  Then last summer I was doing a show in Brooklyn, and it was one of those funny situations where I couldn’t bring a featured vocalist with me and so I wasn’t sure what to do.  I heard Sandra was in town so I was like, why don’t you come down and jam a bit?  I don’t have a vocalist, I need a vocalist.  So she came down and she did the whole show with me, did an hour and a half of straight improv and she had no idea how I liked to do my live thing, so we just dove in the deep end together and that captured me immediately.  Her ability…like, she was going from soul to funk to jazz to opera and bringing it all together and it was an amazing bit of ability and the creativity was there.  She had no shortage of ideas.  So we were like, let’s do some music, so we recorded 3 tracks for her new EP, so that’s out now.  And then she was like, well Mark, we should have done a whole album together.  And I’m saying, yeah I know we should have done a whole album together, how about this?  So I sent her 14 tracks, basically a whole album written to go.  So now we’re doing that.  There’s a whole album in the process.

UF:  That’s incredible.  When can we expect to get that?

MdCL:  Aw, come on now, you just got the EP! (laughs)

UF:  (laughs)

MdCL:  We’re in the demo stages.  All the music’s basically done.  I just had Freddie Washington laying bass on it.  He played bass on Forget Me Nots and all the Patrice [Rushen] stuff.

UF:  Oh wow!

MdCL:  Yeah, we’re pulling in a couple of people and then we’re starting to work on the vocals on that, so I imagine we’ll have that ready next year.  And then more than just being an edgy club album, it’s more of a soul/hip-hop record.  It’s definitely twisted in the way that I like to twist things.

UF:  Hopefully, there will be an American release of it?

MdCL:  I imagine there will be.  We’ve got our eyes on two labels so I guess we’ll invite them to a couple of parties (laughs).

(more…)

INTERVIEW: Diamond District

PHOTO CREDIT: Neal Maclean / Brooklyn Bodega / The Couch Sessions

What do you think of when you think DC Hip-Hop?

In some circles it’s not Wale, or Tabi that gets mentioned, but the DMV’s own Diamond District. From LA to SXSW to Toronto, to NYC, it seems like the trio have been on the lips of everyone in the hip-hop underground after their debut album In The Ruff dropped last year.

And can we be surprised? The album is a throwback to 90s boom bap with some DC flavor, filling a void in the underground hip-hop scene. And on the strength of it, they have toured across the country and across the world. all while keeping their hometown closely in mind.

Add to that the strength of DJ Quartermane and you have one of the best forces in hip-hop right now.

We caught up with Diamond District at the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival after they rocked their set under the Brooklyn Bridge a few weeks ago. They will be headlining the Tru Skool Soundstage along with DTMD and The Cornell West Theory SATURDAY at the Black Cat.

So we all know you guys have been stalwarts in the DC Hip-Hop Scene, but you guys only came together only recently. How did you guys form Diamond District?

Oddisee: We all met at different points in time throughout the U Street Corridor. I met these two gentlemen [Yu and XO] at Capital City Records. I was actually judging a beat contest that [yu] was in as a producer and [XO] was in as a featured MC.

Yu: Oddisse was putting together a solo album [at the time]. We put a song called Gully which was getting a good response out in Europe, but in order to bring us out there [to tour] we would have to do an album. So when Oddisee came back that was the approach. It took about 2 months back and forth via email to put together the album but it was good. The process was real smooth.

I know you’ve been touring. You hit Europe and the West Coast recently. It seems like DC hip-hop has only recently branched out to the rest of the country. How has the response been on tour?

Quartermane:  THEY LOVE US! There’s nothing more to say than that!

But also it’s not a lot of braggadocios rap, it’s content too. Our sound forces people to really listen on the lyric side, and musically it’s hard. You can’t just stand there and not feel it. So it’s a good combination of elements that make it pop off.

Is that the element to your success?

Oddisee: FIrst and foremost it’s good music, and a good campaign, and the support from our fans. We suported each other and our fans supported us, and it’s popping off.

DC has always been in an interesting situation. We’re not Northern, yet not Southern either so we pull from both sides. I hear that in your sound. What are you guys influences musically?

Oddisee – I would have to say our influences are our lives. We all grew up with different perspectives from the same upbringing, from the same area. From the inner cities to the suburbs, to the person who had to move in and out from the city to the suburbs. Our own individual perspectives influence all of our work.

Yu: We have a common respect among all of us and it shows.

It most certainly does. So what’s next for Diamond District?

Oddiseee: March on Washington, is the next album from Diamond District dropping 2011!

You heard it here first.

Diamond District will be headlining the Tru Skool Soundstage along with DTMD and The Cornell West Theory SATURDAY at the Black Cat.

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