Shadow Jugglers ON THE AIR - 16 AJ

[jimungle]

OII,

www.citr.ca / 101.9FM

So, tonight will be fun with the regular jugglers (Jimungle, Bias and MP) and with our guest Sixteenarmedjack (16 AJ).

And its the B-Day of Toby, one of the finest junglist warrior in Vancouver. Thanks to be Bias.


Respect mi brothas and sistas


Sixteenarmedjack
Man, Myth, Legend.

Sixteenarmedjack aka Odie to his friends is a true mashup jungle / cutup drum programming solider.
Representing Illegal Sound, Ten Pound Sound Recordings, X-13 Recordings and Jungle relicks, this man has been holding down for the massive in Toronto and making waves on an international scale for sometime now.

The music he writes is categorized and described by others as ragga jungle, but really if you listen to enough of it carefully and properly you start to see some differences from the rest of the ragga pack out there, stylistic qualities that give him a far deeper link to art house electronic purveyors such as the legendary Aphex Twin, Amon Tobin and Squarepusher. Artists who created a micro universe of sound, feeling, emotion and imagery in every single song they composed, intricate worlds of individuality and all unique and yet linked and a weird and liquid form of cohesiveness…

Obviously Jungle is an influence in Odies works (Remarc is one of his favorite jungle producers), and of course he listens to and understands dancehall (check all his Sizzla and Capleton rmx’s), but all I’m saying and all he would like to say is simply this.
Don’t categorize and conform music, accept music as music and music alone, all styles and divisions can be and are melted away over time, the limitations we create for ourselves are imaginary walls formed by out modeled and old fashioned ideas we have been brought up with and grown to believe with complete sincerity, break your limits and let something new and truly original and unique flow, for after all we are all one in five or six billion (maybe more now?).

This man is definitely a producer and deejay who you should all stand up and take notice of….
In the words of Tester of Trilogy Sound “16aj, his drum sequencing is untouchable, if you don’t know, you will…”

I met up with Odie in High Park, Toronto, we drank beer, ate Chinese rice crackers and discussed music, philosophy, growing up and more.
It was a sunny day, and he projected a genuinely positive peaceful vibe, and had a lot of good words to say.


Odie on where he's at currently.

I've got four releases out now, Illegal 001, Ten Pound Sound 002, TWIL 001, X-13 003. Several new pieces are coming in the future, Illegal 002 (Finally, 'See You Smile'), Sound Route 001 which is a special release with my boy Iriematik (One Blood Sound.) There are a few other projects in the works and I've got a lot of international interest from some parties.

I've been working on collaborations with Iriematik, Thermadore and some special ish with MTL's Mayday. Constantly in the Ghetto Lab writing new choons, got over one hundred finished choon at the moment.

I'm starting to focus on more original vocal material, I will be bringing two new voices into the Jungle, Dylan Murray (See dylanmurray.net) and Emperor Selah, two truly wikkid conscious artists who are totally felling my vibe, and visa versa, so it's gonna happen in a heavy way.

Apart from all that, well...
I am working on a CD/LP called 'Handsex for Puppeteers fucking themselves", and I plan to move to Montreal soon, get away from Toronto, I need to do this soon. I've been saying I'm going to do it for a while now, it's so I can situate myself properly with the right people, to get proper progress going.


Odie on his musical influences.

Heh, Squarepusher, Lee Perry, Remarc, DJ Hype, Illegal Soundcrew, that’s pretty much it right now, there used to be more, but things have changed (Editors note: This interview was first attempted a year ago, and he mentioned a lot more names back then).
Squarepusher is pretty elementary, there was a point around 95-96 where jungle music was really dieing to my ears. I was at this party on LSD, one of the sanest drugs out there, and my friend popped this tape into the stereo.
A tape called 'Hard Normal Daddy', five mins into the tape I remembered that Jazz and Jungle are the same thing.
Jazz Acid with intelligent drum and bass rhythms, it put my brain to rest. I was the kid who would sit on the street car beat boxing a syncopated beat the whole ride, continuously changing the whole way. So it was so serene to hear someone already doing what I was thinking of.
You just gotta listen to his shit to understand, Squarepusher, Tom Jenkinson, remember the name.

Lee Perry, well, he's the king of his own space. His world, The music he creates says it all.
I hear his tracks in my head, all the time. I remember this one show he did in Toronto recently, completely full of people, but just all standing around. Man he looked so pissed off, cut the music, smoked this huge joint, went back to his gear, put his head down and just played his music like that for the rest of the show. I felt for him man, where were his people, where were his vibes...
Poor guy, he just doesn't care no more.

Now Remarc,
I've been listening to jungle for over ten years now and all my favorite tunes have been by this man. No one mashed it up like him, he knows how to run the cutup drums proper, carousel like. Drums flipping and twisting as a leaf in the wind does, folding in and out of themselves...
He's the original, the don, and yet to be surpassed.

Of course my soundcrew as well, Illegal sound..
Wikkid DJ's, producers, drinkers and wall bangers
C-Rat, Grade A, Rhygin, MC Enlight, Thermadore, Kevy D and Frankie Gunnz, I founded Illegal with C-Rat, and we been pushing the sound ever since. It keeps me inspired and focused.
People’s dedication I find to be an inspiration…
Mayday, Krinjah, Tuffest, Cassien, the whole survival crew, malice.. Fuck it there’s too many people who give it there all!
Respect!
MC Enlight is a big influence on me as well; he was a friend of a friend. I was feeling his rhymes and he was feeling my music, we were on the level. So I passed him a ticket to this three day party I was playing at and a ride on a bus there. I was like, “this is our chance to see how we do together”, and we fucking killed it, drop for drop, rhyme for rhyme. Perfectly in synch, it was amazing...


Odie on how he got into Jungle.

I was 13 years old, and it was for a superficial reason, a girl.
Brenda, she was 15 maybe 16 at the time, and a major jungle head, I fell for her and it lead me to the music.
It was funny though, because at first I hated raves, hated ravers, I thought they were evil.
Anyhow I was always listening to jungle, playing it on my walkman at school, banging on the riddims on my desk, never listening to the teacher, funny shit.

In the first week of 1995 I went to a jungle party and loved it, from there it got worse, every weekend.
The scene was different then, older and wiser heads, less chemical drug use, they just smoked the sensi. Soon this all changed, a lot of darker gun choons came in, people started hearing the gunshots in the music and echoing that in real life, tough guy attitudes and crystal meth came with it, the older wiser heads left the scene. From rooms full of 10'000 people bouncing up and down with joy to something completely different. Techstep came in, and turned me off the music and onto drugs, at that point the sound really went downhill for me.

I started going to a lot of techno parties, but I was still listening to good jungle, plotting and scheming towards the day I would get to make the music, make it the way I wanted to hear it.

In 1998 I began to work seriously hard, spent all my spare time fishing and got away from the scene, returned to the more natural aspects of life, the tribal basics.

In 2000 I finally began producing, started on ACID and Fruity Loops, my boy J-rad taught me the basics of how to make a song in both programs. Little did he realize the monster he was creating. Now four years on I use Soundforge, Acid, Cubase SX, Reason, Kontact etc, the list goes on, so many programs.

My first release was 2 1/2 years ago, Illegal 001, and my favorite choons I have produced are 'See you smile', 'Fire No Bun' and 'Mashup de place', all in no particular order.
'Mashup de place' was some crazy shit, that choon came out in like a few hours, was madness....


Odie's philosophy on jungle

It's the tribal warrior dance that keeps me close to the genre people call jungle. Huge open breakbeats, massive bass, warriors on the dancefloor, leaping around each other and banging on the walls and floors like monkeys. It's very natural, very primitive; I almost don't really like calling it urban music. It seems to extend further than Babylon.

Also, in the last ten years so, there have been very few nights where I haven't gone to sleep listening to jungle, look at House, you see the rain fall. Now look at jungle, you see the rain fall, run to the seas, evaporate, form clouds and fall again. It's the full cycle, the sum of all things. Jungle brings life to me, and has kept me sane when nuffin else could.

Jungle is a deep form of communication, the drums talk you see, if you listen you hear messages. They reach beyond the verbal, almost beyond psychic realms; they go somewhere else, touch people on a higher level...

And on a final note, I would like to thank everybody who hasn't stabbed me in the back, or tried to, physically or metaphorically.
You know who you are, much love and respect.....

Martyn Pepperell has been a freelance journalist for the last eight years.
Contributing to various Newspapers, Magazines and websites in his home country and abroad.
He has been contributing written pieces to ragga-jungle.com for the last few years. If you have any questions or queries, please contact him at [email protected]