Submitted By: trocknroll

Genre: Hip Hop

Date of Set: 2007

Filesize: 96.20 MB

Total Downloads: 14

Diplo, Diplodocus, Wes Gully, and Wes Diplo are all pseudonyms of Wesley Pentz, a Philadelphia-based producer and DJ. Together with DJ Low Budget, he runs Hollertronix, a club and music collective. In addition to his solo career, he has worked with British-based singer and artist M.I.A.. The two were also romantically involved. Pentz's alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.

As a DJ, Diplo is characterized by his eclectic, often 80s-oriented mashups, mixtapes, and live sets. On his full-length solo effort, Florida, however, his sound is closer to sample-based cinematic instrumental hip hop, like the work of DJ Shadow.

Born in Mississippi and raised across the southern United States, Diplo picked up much of the local culture while growing up there. Music styles such as dirty south, crunk and Miami bass are now key ingredients of Hollertronix's output. Pentz's solo work is also influenced by Southern Gothic and other southern literature. Additionally, world music is a strong musical influence on Diplo, especially baile funk, which he encountered whilst traveling in Brazil.

Diplo is signed to the Ninja Tune-imprint Big Dada. In 2006, he started his own label, Mad Decent, signing Brazilian baile funk group Bonde do Role.

Submitted By: trocknroll

Genre: Hip Hop

Date of Set: 2007

Filesize: 96.20 MB

Total Downloads: 14

Every Thursday night, Mike McGuire spins records in a bar at 2nd and Fairmount, a section of Philadelphia called Northern Liberties. He hauls a couple crates and his turntables up a flight of stairs, and waits for the floor to fill with people who know him only as DJ Low Budget, half of the trailblazing Hollertronix crew, Baltimore Club junkie, and prime beat selector in his own right.

With its roots in Philadelphia, McGuire's contribution to the frenzied Hollertronix parties has become a conversation topic for those in the know all over the world. Alongside Wes 'Diplo' Gully, McGuire's monthly Hollertronix slots at Philly's Ukrainian Club are now overcrowded with an eternity of devotees gorging themselves on an agreeable Ukrainian lager and the crew's unconventional genre-splicing mash-ups. The Never Scared mixtape helped spread the word, with its sleek melding of the Clash and Missy Elliott, a dip into crunk, and a stop-off in the beats that are centerpiece to McGuire's recent Bmore Gutter Music mix.

'About five years ago I was working at (Armand's Records in Philadelphia), and it was always the kind of music you heard,' he says. 'They'd play a few sets of it on the radio sometimes. When I started spinning at this club Eden Roc, it was mostly a black crowd, and I was working at the record store at the same time. I was servicing a lot of deejays who spun on the radio. With the urban market - that's kind of where I came from anyway - you needed that kind of stuff to rock the party there. A lot of people don't realize it, but I would spin that stuff and people would go crazy, more so than for the hip-hop. I just fell in love with it there, just with the energy of it all. It was basically from spinning that gig and the record store.'

'I'm into the breaks and stuff like that; that's cool,' he says. 'But really where my heart lies - and if I could I'd spin it way more often, but I just feel like it's kinda past that time - it's the '70s and '80s dance music, funk disco. Not even hard-to-find shit. Shit like Earth, Wind & Fire. Really fun, feel-good music. But kids are, I don't know, getting younger.'

'In all fairness, I do think there was something really cool about '80s pop,' he says. 'It's just funny when a twenty-one-year-old girl requests New Order.'

In between the gigs, his Baltimore-heavy samplers, and trying to get his Web site re-vamped and re-launched, McGuire's also turning out remixes. He did a remix on the last Spank Rock twelve-inch and is doing the same for Baltimore's Unruly Records (label founder DJ Scottie B executive produced Gutter Music). But production isn't really where it's at for Low Budget.

'I do love making music, but I'm just way more efficient deejaying,' he says. 'I haven't really surpassed the learning curve for production; I'm really inefficient. I feel like I have great ideas, and when I do complete something, it's good. But I don't bang them out like someone who's been doing it forever. With deejaying, it's so easy for me to make a hot mixtape. I feel like my love for [production] hasn't really been able to blossom yet, but it will. It's definitely what I need to be doing. But when I do become good on all sides of it, it's done. I will be good at it.'

http://www.myspace.com/lowbee

Not available