Vital man C

BREAK DOWN THE WALLS DJ C’s head music fuses genres.

Photo: Christopher Kontoes

At the crossroads of the genre-blending, digital-remix and bouncing-bass–obsessed international DJ scene, DJ C and Mashit.com have a rep for pushing underground dance culture forward, both online and off. Radio One legend John Peel picked Mashit as his label of the month in October 2004 when the then-Boston-based producer was releasing tracks by DJ C and others with a jungle bent. More recently, DJ C, who relocated to the Chicago area from Boston a year ago, has turned the vinyl label into a download site, podcast and blog that serves as an outlet for his (and his friends’) mixes, mash-ups, original tracks—even full albums—that don’t tuck neatly into any genre. He’s a DJ expanding his curatorial role online and a Chicago producer of growing influence.

This fall, he’s issuing a free album of all his mash-ups—playful recombinations of everything from Usher and Kelly Clarkson to Southern club tracks—with the working title Mas Hits, plus an album featuring Venezuelan producers Cardopusher and Pacheko for Mashit. He’s also throwing the Bouncement party, which showcases global ghetto-tech, dubstep, bassline, grime, blog tracks and genre blends at Sonotheque on September 21 as part of the Chicago World Music Festival.

A former rock and free-jazz musician and four-track experimenter, DJ C and his friends in the collective Toneburst made their name throwing multimedia events showcasing left-field electronica in Boston in the late ’90s, combining multiple dance styles in one playlist. “I’ve always been more about mixing all of my favorite things all across the years and the genres,” he says.

At New York’s Turntable Lab shop in 2003, he picked up a genre-blending mix-tape from a Philly DJ team called Hollertronix. “We rode back from New York listening, going, ‘Whoa, this is what we do,’ ” he remembers.

The dancehall, hip-hop and pop fan claims he was wise to regional genres such as Baltimore club music before hip DJs embraced them. “Some friends of mine in Boston were sourcing those records in the mid-’90s. I was dumbfounded that Baltimore music wasn’t more popular. Especially the early stuff—it was really funky but with that ghetto feel that was really fun.”

In 2004, inspired by that homegrown sound, C and friends kick-started a Baltimore-inspired movement called Boston bounce that gained the attention of like-minded tastemaker Diplo (of that Hollertronix mix-tape). Diplo chose DJ C to cut a remix of “U R A QT” from M.I.A.’s first album in 2005, and remixes for Warrior Queen and Ghislain Poirier have come more recently. In 2007, he issued Sonic Weapons in Japan, a techy bass record with toasting from Jamaican and U.K. MCs. This summer, he upped the ante with a full album of originals that’s getting national notice—a collaboration with Chicago MC Zulu called Gods & Robots.

The hypereclectic DJ refuses to sell himself as a Baltimore-club or dubstep DJ, though. Instead, he prefers to assimilate new styles—as he’s done with jungle and dancehall—into his far-reaching sets. All the while, he’s looking for new rhythms to bubble up from the streets. “In the Bronx, Kingston [Jamaica], and with the U.K. rave scene, outlaw sound-system cultures spawned their own form of music,” he says. “Our thing in Boston was totally academic. I haven’t been here very long, but I’m impressed with Chicago’s club scene—it’s really vibrant.”

Mas Hits drops at Mashit.com in September. Bouncement gets low on September 21 at Sonotheque.

Listen to DJ C's mini-mix of tracks from his Mas Hits album, coming out in September.

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