DJ C “Do Radly” Album

Experimental Party Music “Back when I first heard DJ C's beyond-category sets blaring across Mass Ave, his penchant for mixing hip-hop and jungle, reggae and garage was remarkable and rare in a town, and at a time, when more monolithic genre-based scenes prevailed. To hear hip-hop you'd go here, for reggae there, drum'n'bass over there, but to hear them all, you'd have to see DJ C, whose turn-of-the-millennium sets and early productions for Mashit deftly layered dancehall acapellas, double-time Amen breaks, chill room synths, the snap of boom-bap, and oddly apt pop tunes. Mixing and mashing these all together, DJ C has moved crowds while revealing common ground across worlds of music, opening up new possibilities for listening and dancing along together. On Do Radly, a new album of homespun instrumentals, DJ C strips things to the root and brings his longstanding genre-spanning into new focus. While still shaped by an unending quest for musical discovery that leads him far and wide, these latest tracks are more built-from-scratch. They let us hear DJ C's signature synthesis of polyglot pop painted with a more recent, local palette: the soundscapes of everyday family life. As digging in the crates meets digging in the sandbox, things close-at-hand come in handy: the lightness of a laptop with ever-timely synths & time-honored drum banks, yes, but also the stuff of daily diversions and lullabies — acoustic guitar, assorted percussion, toy piano, melodica, voice. We hear DJ C's hands at the wheels, tracks brimming with digital detail, but we also hear them on strings, making the most of things in realtime and space, doing radly, not least by giving us this new batch of bespoke beats equally fit for the club, the kitchen, or the virtual dance party.” - Wayne Marshall