Tonight, the Duke Coffeehouse need not pay its busboys: DJ/rupture will be turning the tables.
There may be no artist better prepared to transform the Coffeehouse into a house party than Brooklyn’s Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ/rupture. Clayton integrates eclectic musical influences—New York hip-hop, Latin American cumbia and North African folk—to create music that plays as comfortably when accompanying the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (Clayton once performed as a turntable soloist with the 80-person ensemble) as it does blasting in the dance halls of Kingston. His mixtapes transition seamlessly between spacious Caribbean ragga and dense UK breakcore beats. His performances are practical, foot-tapping lessons in ethnomusicology.
“I try to push the turntable’s possibilities,” Clayton said.
Clayton has a knack for finding sources of music often unheard in today’s electronic era. Unlike most DJs, Rupture prefers not to scour the internet for new music. Instead, he travels the world and scours old record stores, always keeping an ear to the ground for the best local tunes—his recent visit to Mexico scored him a few treasured cumbia albums.
“For me, being a DJ is much less about compulsive downloading than about piecing records together in a new way,” Clayton said.
Despite sampling from age-old musical genres, Rupture’s re-combinations never come across as retro. If anything, his mixes sound futuristic, anticipating how Caribbean and African music might incorporate electronica 30 years from now.
Dubstep, at least in its most popular iterations, has the reputation of being too crass, preferring outlandish bass drops to artistic restraint. Rupture breaks the mold, producing a brand of dubstep that maintains critical acclaim. As a result, his audience is a mixed bag: some are pulled in by his worldliness, others by the visceral nature of his propulsive beats.
Opening band Lemonade shares Rupture’s sophisticated approach to dance music.
“We have a similar aesthetic,” said Lemonade drummer Alex Pasternak. “We’re both doing a lot with UK hardcore. But we also share an interest in ethnic music: Brazilian, Caribbean and Turkish.”
Tonight’s performance breaks from traditional Coffeehouse concert offerings. While electronic bands perform frequently—including Blackbird, Blackbird and Baths this past spring—Lemonade and DJ /rupture offer the Coffeehouse’s first dubstep concert.
“The show will be more dance-oriented than most of our performances,” said Adelyn Wyngaarden, booking manager for the Coffeehouse. “The dubstep should be a nice release from all of the stress of finals and papers.”
“The basic goal is to get folks moving,” Clayton said.
DJ/rupture and Lemonade will perform at the Duke Coffeehouse on East Campus tonight at 9 p.m. Tickets are $10 for general admission and free for students and are sold at the door.
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