One of my favorite EPs of the last few months was Swindle's Walter's Call EP, which featured the jazzy, house piano-feeling lurch of "Smash N Grab" and saw him performing with a live band earlier this year. One of my favorite routines of 2014 was Shiftee recreating Joker & Swindle's 040 track, "Let It Be Known," although all of his routines are pretty goddamn excellent.
Ever wonder what'd happen if these two collaborated on a live routine?
One day at the Dubspot studios in NYC, Shiftee and Swindle took some time to recreate "Smash N Grab," and while many of today's electronic music lovers fell in love with DJ Craze's "New Slaves" routine, many haven't been up on the turntablism aspect of the style, where the turntable is properly looked at as an instrument. This video reminded me of the Shiggar Fraggar shows, with all of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz creating functioning songs out of scratches; while Shiftee's doing it more with today's technology, the fact that a nimble DJ can properly call-and-respond with a talented musician is always great to see. You even get to see the construction of this track, which apparently only happened two hours before they recorded the video.
#RealDJing, indeed.
