Spank Rock homeboy and Dim Mak representative Pase Rock commences his national tour of Australia this Friday at Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory, before manning the one’s and two’s in Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Adelaide, Melbourne, Wollongong and Byron Bay. To help celebrate Pedestrian are giving away five Dim Mak prize packs which include a Dim Mak tee, sticker pack and double pass to a Pase Rock show in the city of your choice.
Easy right? Email ashley@pedestriangroup.com.au with your “rockiest moment” and the prize packs are yours. Check out the dates and venues below…
Pase Rock will be kicking off his Australian tour this weekend in Sydney alongside Ksubi bro Dangerous Dan and a host of other great DJs for $16 @ Oxford Art Factory. Buy your tickets here!
Interview by Andy C for on the fly.com.au
What is a DJ if he can’t scratch? What is a MC if he can’t rap? What is a beat without a live clap? Well I can do it all baby, just like that! Trading off Egyptian Lover’s classic rap, Pase Rock has built a career as an exponent of the four elements of hip hop. As an MC and producer he is published on over twenty labels worldwide, as a DJ he plays non-stop all around the world and is in tight with both the Hollywood hipster scene and NY Mafioso, as a dancer he’s a natural (check the youtube on the Fuzzy boat cruise a few years back) – and you need only ask the management at Kings Cross club Melt if he writes graffiti (sorry, Walter). But Pase Rock is not just about doing these things, but rather progressing them, building a career and having a good time doing it under KRS-One’s mantra, that ‘the essence of hip hop is in transformation’!
For starters, Pase Rock’s work with the Spank Rock fraternity released the global dance scene from its impoverished electro-house infatuation in the mid-2000s; his work with rap group Five Deez speaks to the old school but moves beat production to the next level; his Fully Fitted project with XXXchange, Devlin and Darko and Tyler Pope from !!! breathed new life into an old suite of samples and helped resuscitate belief in the †club’ sound last year; while his own brand of slap-happy, potty-mouthed party music continues this legacy with original collaborations alongside today’s stars – Santogold and Amanda Blank. And we don’t stop! His debut artist album, Bullsh!t as Usual, has since been complemented by last year’s blow-up, ‘Lindsay Lohan’s Revenge’, and two new cuts on Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak label, †Get Money Kids’ and †So Fuckin Disco’. ‘I’ll be releasing a new 12′, †Nights’, on Dim Mak next month, then an album Spring time [in the US] next year,’ he tells me, but is reticent to say where. ‘I don’t know what label that will be on; I can’t commit to an answer there.’
That said, there’s no denying he’s in tight with Dim Mak and the rest of the West Coast party massive, ‘I decided to move out here, to LA, a few months back. I was working out here a lot, there was the Dim Mak connection and you might say I wanted a change of pace, hehe… there’s a bit more action here anyway, New York has been a bit quiet lately and is especially susceptible to bad weather – people refuse to go out in the cold.’
But of course you can’t discuss the West Coast Party scene without discussing DJ AM, America’s #1 DJ who was found dead in his NY apartment last month. ‘We’re all just trying to deal with it still,’ he sighs, ‘AM was such an important part of nightlife here, I mean it’s surreal to think that I’ll never get to see him DJ again or hang out with him; he was such a permanent fixture in everybody’s life. What’s worse is I just found out the MTV series that he made just before his death will screen next week.’
There’s a real sense of sadness with Pase personally and from what I can gather across the whole scene in LA. With this he tells me how keen he is to ‘get out’ for a bit and head down to Australia. The show must go on, with this trip dovetailing with a recent three-month tour that took in South America, North America and North and South East Asia. It will be his fifth trip to Oz, having travelled here thrice before with Spank Rock to play Big Day Out and the Sydney Festival. I have grand memories of these previous trips when I have had the pleasure to DJ and hang out with Pase and all the Spank Rock guys. On the last trip in particular, the chemistry between the two MCs, Pase Rock and Spank Rock, was electric – they were on fire, a soulful rap attack that peaked with a cover of Jimmy Bo Horne’s †Spank’ that nodded to Michael Jackson circa †Smooth Criminal’.
Around that time though Spank Rock himself, Naeem Juwan, made a decision that †Spank Rock’ was now a one man band – an MC with producers and collaborators, rather than a band or collective. It was a move that surprised me at the time, but one that doesn’t seem to have adversely impacted on the dynamics between the wider group or Spank and Pase, the MCs, themselves.
‘I’m down with those guys til the day I die,’ he tells me in reference to the Spank Rock troupe. ‘ I mean XXXchange has produced half my album, Chris, Ron, Alex and I still have the Fully Fitted label, Naeem, Santogold and Amanda are all on my upcoming record. That’s just the way it is.’
It’s comforting to hear and at this juncture I recall a conversation I had with Naeem when we discussed his persistent and evolving schedule of collaborations (within Spank Rock and beyond with the likes of Bjork, Coldcut, Teki Latex and Lady Sovereign). ‘There’s a bunch of people out there that like what I do, likewise there’s people making awesome jamms that I’m into,’ he told me. ‘We’re all members of the indie music scene or fraternity or whatever you want call it.’
Pase Rock clearly holds the same view – an all singing, all dancing party machine who is about music and moving it forward: Put your paaaanties on, put that pussy away. Pase is on his way!
