Digital Monk Soundsystem

Sylle Struck recently spoke to Bop Gunn on his upbringing in the thriving Odense hip hop scene, his recent work in Boston making Boston Diaries for Digital Monk Soundsystem, and linking up with the Greased Up Records crew, among other things. He also leaked a track, the second preview from his upcoming DMSS release we’ve heard so far – a work in progress of his track “All Day” with Boston emcee Backdraft.

Check out the whole interview here. Or, for the lazy kids, skip to the part about Boston Diaries below:

We’ve been blessed having a bunch of those cats visit us in cold Denmark. Your style of beats (or some of the styles you fuck with) is screaming for emcees to jump on. How come you aren’t fucking around with some rap shit yet?

Actually I did. In October 2012 I was touring with Danish home girl MØ in New York at the CMJ festival, which gave me a chance to hook up with my boy Gasoline Monk in Boston. I was supposed to spend 5 days with him, but it ended up being 12 because of the storm that fucked up New York. Anyway, he knew I was going, so he had set up a meeting with one of the local rappers that he’s been working with. A few days went on, we chilled and had a good time, and while this was happening the talk of the town is that “this white kid from Denmark is at Brandon’s crib with some 40 dope beats and a setup to record…”
Boom! 7 rappers through the week. I recorded 10-12 tracks for my new EP, album, compilation, mixtape or whatever it’s going to be. That was dope as fuck. I had some crazy moments and a documentary about it all will come within the next few months… These dudes have been through some shit and it really makes you appreciate what you got. This safe little country can seem kind of bland when you meet some of these guys out here who’ve been living on the streets, hooked on crack for 20 years. That’s deep.

Two Beers, a filmmaker from Boston and walking-breathing encyclopedia of hip hop, collabs with his (actual) brother Gasoline Monk on this mixtape of hip hop classics. These tracks from the golden era of emceeing remind us how far a lot of rappers today have strayed from the soul of the music. From ODB to Slick Rick to Masta Ace to Nas, there’s only one rule to this mix – bring the dope rhymes!

TRACK LIST

Masta Ace – “Slaughtahouse (Death Mix)”
Channel Live – “Down Goes The Devil”
Lost Boyz – “Keep It Real”
House Of Pain – “Back From The Dead”
K.M.D. – “Cont_CT Blitt…”
The Beatnuts – “Dawn Of The Dead”
Beastie Boys – “Unite”
Crooklyn Dodgers – “Crooklyn”
Gravediggaz – “Defective Trip (Trippin)”
Brand Nubian – “Slow Down”
Ugly Ducklings – “Einstein’s Takin Off”
Craig Mack – “Get Down”
Ol Dirty Bastard – “Brooklyn Zoo”
Real Live – “The Gimmicks”
Nas – “Halftime”
Slick Rick – “Sittin In My Car”

If you know anything about Digital Monk Soundsystem, you know Madlib is one of our main dudes. His fearless pursuit of the unknown is the same journey we embark on. He is also notoriously reclusive, sorta like us (in case you haven’t noticed none of us are the blog-twitter-status update every day type), which is what makes a new Madlib interview so eventful. This interview in Electronic Beats was conducted by Thomas Fehlmann of The Orb and other experimental electronic music projects, and the conversation ranges from krautrock to Yesterday’s New Quintet to Madlib just beginning to use the internet – which isn’t for keeping up on the times as much as tipping him off on his next record store hunt, since he’s got ”so much old stuff to discover I don’t know when I’ll have time to get to the new stuff.” & we’d love to hear one of those unreleased Madlib synthesizer records!

This made us go back to Madlib’s 2009 interview in Wire, and thankfully magazine scans were posted up on 12 oz. Prophet. Read those below:

Rob Nova & Gasoline Monk were recently asked to be part of the group of musicians, artists, actors & writers Trainwreck’d Society rounded up for their Best of 2012 feature. The reactions are pretty diverse – no title shows up on more than 3 or 4 of the contributor’s lists. Kendrick Lamar‘s major label debut resonated with a handful, as did Nas‘ Life Is Good. But we were surprised to see Nova & Monk were the only two to mention Flying Lotus‘ incredible latest release, Until The Quiet Comes. But we aren’t strangers to being different.

Read the whole feature here, and check out our artists’ responses here:

ROB NOVA

KENDRICK LAMAR – good kid, m.A.A.d. city
FLYING LOTUS - Until The Quiet Comes
THE WEEKEND - Trilogy
KILLER MIKE - R.A.P. Music
JJ DOOM - Key To The Kuffs

GASOLINE MONK

FLYING LOTUS - Until The Quiet Comes
SHATTER HANDS - Land Fly
KARRIEM RIGGINS - Alone Together
ROBERT GLASPER EXPERIMENT - Black Radio
NAS - Life Is Good

Boston hip hop blog B’s & 3′s were thorough in this Best Of list, even noting beyond the Top 25 great local releases like African Man Born‘s last two albums and Notoriety‘s Road Trippin’, Kool-Aid Sippin’, Chicken, Beef Patties, And Herb. We were glad to see Retrospek at the top – they’re definitely one of Boston’s most original acts,very left field. If 2011 was the year of Boston legends (Edo G, Reks & Statik Selektah were only a few of the dudes who dropped major albums), 2012′s been the year of the underground – the city’s full of vibrant artists who’re, in a lot of cases, just getting started blowing up out of the local Boston scene. Keep tabs!

& check out a video from the winner, Retrospek -

The Digital Monk Soundsystem t-shirts are finally in – order them here.

About time we put Dirtywork‘s beautiful art on something you can wear. Big shout out to Skurvy Ink, who made this possible – they’ve been doing shirts for Bizarro writers for a minute now. In fact, the DMSS-Skurvy connection originates with Gasoline Monk‘s publisher, Swallowdown Press (yes, Gas Monk’s written novels, under the name Forrest Armstrong). Art 24/7 over in these parts.

Huge shoutout to our homie Noyz Denali, a good friend of Digital Monk Soundsystem and a member of Powerplant along with Rob Nova & Mavz (and others – although they don’t all appear on the upcoming DMSS album Magnificent Wind, Powerplant family runs deep). Noyz just released this new single on Brain Kave, the first new material we’ve heard from him in a while. Just in time too, because 2013 promises to be a packed year for him – in addition to Magnificent Wind he’s got a project in the works with Gasoline Monk called Cocoa Butter, and one with production from Rob Nova called Vintage Bottles that sounds like it’s gonna be something like Blade Runner in audio form. Which is fitting, because Noyz is truly one of the most gifted futuristic-street poets you’ve ever heard. As a matter of fact, Aggro Rag recently asked to publish some of his lyrics by themselves. Doesn’t seem like anybody’s asking 2 Chainz for that.

By the way, check for Brain Kave in this upcoming year – a lot of DMSS artists do some work over there too. Rob Nova’s got an amazing single coming Early 2013 through them called “The Wraith”.