Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
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Also this issue: Disappearing Act suitespot Palomar From Autumn to Ashes Unsilent Night KlezKamp Reviews Beat Box |
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December 19-25, 2002
music
Spork in the Road
 SOMEONE ELSEāS PROBLEM: Bjoern Hartmann (left) and Jay Haze are throwing one last gig and heading to Amsterdam. |
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Two vagabond electronic artists are tuning out and moving on.
Just a blip after they got started, the Tuning Spork DJs are leaving town for the wiles of Amsterdam. "Philly has got underground talent -- Solomonic Sound, Ovum Records, Tigerhook -- but the scene is weak," says California-transplanted DJ/artist Jay Haze (a.k.a. The Architect and Dub Surgeon). "Very small and very supportive, yes. But to make $100 on a monthlong promotion? If the people don't start appreciating the ability of the artists, well they won't be around much longer." (It's a decidedly different viewpoint than you'll hear from, say, The Vanishing Peoples of the Earth on p. 35.)
For Haze and German-born Bjoern "B" Hartmann, everything seems greener in Amsterdam (though the Tuning Spork label's third partner, City Paper's resident DJ knight Sean O'Neal, is staying put). With their records, live gigs and visual-heavy DJ tours throughout Europe -- records released every six weeks that sell over 1,000 units each and chart in countries like Japan, Romania and Germany -- Haze and Hartmann figured Amsterdam was the perfect center. "We are leaving to pursue our dreams, experience a new culture and make this thing work the way we want it to," says Haze about the move. "They have great laws, we can fly all over mad cheap and -- oh yeah, can't forget the hookers and pot food."
No matter how or where, Haze and Hartmann -- who have yet to collaborate in a studio setting -- represent music deeply profound and savagely trippy.
"If I had to put a word to it, I'd call what we do lo-fi experimental click house and experimental dub," says the 24-year-old Haze, a musician, spinner and analog gear freak who maintains two other labels, FutureDub and the cracklecore-centric Contexterrior. "The doors of possibility are opening and I am in. I hope I keep evolving and when I don't, hopefully I will have a friend with a shotgun handy."
"No matter how experimental or bleepy my sound gets, it is always dance-floor oriented," says Hartmann, 25, a jazz pianist and recent U of P grad who turned to minimalism to find the essence of electronic music production. "Navigating the spaces of experimental abstraction while still staying accessible to a wider audience is very challenging, but also extremely interesting. At the same time, I want my music to be engaging enough for home listening. The goal is to make people wonder what the hell I was thinking while still keeping them moving along to a beat."
It's a goal the DJs have accomplished on their own (Haze's "My Shoes are on Backwards and My Socks Don't Match") and with collaborators (Jeff Samuel, Dave Shamban), in live settings and on the Tuning Spork recordings. It all ends with a bang at their goodbye party this Friday at Fluid.
The label has become, during its one-year existence, world-renowned for B, The Architect and Someone Else's (O'Neal's nom de plume) separate but equal raw, reflective noise-tracks produced on each of the eight Tuning Spork EPs (so far -- there's no plan to dissolve the label as yet). Throughout each of their records, there is both great dread and a sense of ferocious fun, as if children had disappeared in the corn with hammers and squirt guns. Despite the chill of the genre, Tuning Spork stuff sounds soulful and kiddish.
"It's all about how much of yourself you invest in your music and how much you let the technology or rejection thereof control your process," says Hartmann. "Part of me is still this little kid who loves playing with all the fancy electronic toys and it's only natural for that boyish silliness to find expression somewhere."
Haze feels much the same way, only with a slightly different take. "We are a bunch of funkin' dorks and we want that to reflect in our music while conveying the message Œdon't take yourself too seriously.'" While all of their production work is done independently, they do indeed tag-team during DJ sets and are planning to focus on the collaborative aspect of their live performances in Europe whilst arranging for their first true collaborations. But it is abroad, and has always been, that the effects of their music, and its frantic experimentation, will flourish.
"Thank you for five wonderful years in Philly," says Hartmann. "And don't even think about crashing at our place in Amsterdam if we don't see your face at our goodbye party."
Tuning Spork Farewell, Fri., Dec. 20, 10 p.m.-2 a.m., $5, with Adam Marshall, Scott Everett, Jay Haze and Bjoern, Fluid, 613 S. Fourth St., 215-629-0565.
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