AG-052
Deadbeat "Radio Rothko"

bcode: 83765441509

"Radio Rothko" 256kbps MP3 120.6MB
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Visual Assets

"Radio Rothko" Press Photos and Cover Art 4.3MB
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About the Album:

First things first: What are we dealing with here? You could call this a dub techno mix, and you'd be right. Anyone who's read a blog in the last three years could tell you that. But I think that what Scott Monteith has set out to do here is something more: more particular, more ambitious, perhaps even more edifying.

To discover what, we need to talk about particularity. About a particular time and place, and a particular sound: Berlin in the early '90s, and a cold, reverberant thrum. The pulse of dub reggae running through Japanese-built machinery, filters frothing; the room tone suggestive of nothing so much as the untold empty structures in the recently re-unified city, walls trembling with the sound of techno bubbling up through the pipes below. Every building a subwoofer connected via subterranean conduit.

 We're talking about Basic Channel, of course, without whom none of the music on this mix would have been possible. It's true that BC's Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald are directly responsible for only three tracks here (Basic Channel's "Quadrant Dub," Maurizio's "M6" and Rhythm & Sound's "Mango Walk"). But their influence stretches beyond those, beyond even their immediate circle (represented here by Basic Channel/Chain Reaction collaborators Various Artists, Monolake, and Substance & Vainqueur). Basic Channel's influence runs, like a blood transfusion, through virtually every sound on this recording.

But this isn't a Basic Channel mix. It's also not a dub-techno survey. Twelve of the 19 tracks were recorded in just the past two years, tilting the selection too far towards the present to serve as a comprehensive retrospective. (It does, however, suggest something of the way the style has flourished recently.)  No, there's nothing authoritative or didactic about the mix. Scott Monteith wasn't there at the beginning; almost no one was, aside from a small handful of individuals who pooled their creativity into a unique and, in some sense, short-lived project. But their music flowed into a conduit that reached him anyway, all the way in Kitchener, Ontario. It became an integral part of his own productions, albeit in different measures and different ways. A kind of Platonic ideal of dub techno has maintained in much of Deadbeat's music, just as it is maintained on every track included here. If I might venture a biographical observation, I suspect that much of this mix is about teasing out an idea that must have come to Monteith when he first heard this music over a decade ago, an ocean away from its source: the sense of a latent potentiality in the music, just waiting to be realized.

Which brings us back to particularity. Not just a particular time and place, but also the idea of a sound dissolving into particles. Even, perhaps, dissolving time and place into particles as well, not just metaphorically but literally, via the black art of recording. A moment in time in Berlin—a kind of seed extracted from Jamaican soil and re-planted in a different technological and cultural context—granulizes, rolls downriver. Over and over again, with every recording, spreading, scattering, planting the seeds of new versions, each not just the model but in some sense the clone of the former. Imagine these particles silting up, like a river delta. From a single point emerges a cone, spreading out into the shape of a megaphone's bell.

About the Artist:

It has been 10 years since Scott Monteith quietly launched his Deadbeat music project for a handful of long defunct Montreal labels, and upon a quick inspection of his now extensive discography one can clearly infer that it has been a very busy ten years indeed. A long time Montrealer and recent Berlin ex-pat, Scott been releasing genre defying material held loosely together by an ever present dubwise thread to consistent critical acclaim for labels such as Cynosure, Scape, and most recently Wagon Repair to name but a few. Winning new fans and making converts of the industry's leading publications and websites with each new release, his now legendary live performances have also drawn regular invitations for some of the world's most respected festivals, including Barcelona's Sonar, Berlin's CTM/Transmediale, and Montreal's own Mutek. Never one to shy away from the new creative possibilities of collaborative performance, his partnerships with Stephen Beaupre as Crackhaus, Robert Henke as Atlantic Waves, and most recently along side singer Paul St Hilaire have consistently produced inspiring results.

From 1999 to late 2003, Scott worked, assuming various roles, for the Montreal based company Applied Acoustics Systems, makers of a range of software synthesizers. Having long since moved on to pursue his own musical efforts full time, the experience left him with a passion for the development of new creative interfaces, and a strong grasp of some the most cutting edge technology in the industry. His knowledge in such matters has been regularly called upon at various events, most notably the Red Bull Music Academy, as a writer for Computer Music Magazine, and as a workshop leader at various festivals the world over.

A master of blurred boundaries, Scott's internationally-lauded, irreverent approach to deconstructing genres and mixing musical metaphors continues to shimmer with subtle ingenuity. Allowing his musical tales to unravel with teasing languor, he urges us to accompany his inimitable set of characters on their mesmeric quest through an ever thickening plot - a story, it is hoped, that will continue for many years to come.

For Brooklyn’s Agriculture Records, Scott mixes a historic group of producers at the margin of dubstep and dub techno, and homage to the foundation as well as what’s new. Deadbeat and this new release represent one marker in a massive cultural shift for electronic music artists to Berlin – a post modern Haight Asbury were the revolution is in the mind and the computer screen --- and the collective works disseminate via electronic arteries to the world. Berlin, step into the stream.

About the Agriculture Records:

Founded by DJ Olive and James Healy (Escape Arts) from the ashes of the 1990s Williamsburg warehouse scene, 10 yr old Agriculture Records representing from the street to the museums, from the clubs to the backyard bbq's: roof music Brooklyn - escape the gravity.

Industry Feedback:

"An excellent, engaging snapshot of one of my favorite sounds. Long live the dub in all things."
- Ezekiel Honig (Anticipate)

"Deadbeat delivers an essential meditation with Rothko Radio, in which he defines the dub techno mix. By including tracks like 'Mango Drive', 'M6OA', 'Static', 'Redux', and his own 'Port of Rix'; he explores fragile scapes akin to its pulsating roots then moves through more electric dimensions. An absolute must have."
- Juan Gaviria (Den of Thieves)

"Lovely trip in the land of deep techno atmospheric dubs -- love this mix."
- Laurent Garnier (F Comm)

"A brilliant mix of classic deep dub techno. also you have my favourite of the m series in there, i'm a sucker for 6!"
- Andy Stott (Modern Love)

"Really refreshing to hear this collection of classic and new dub techno put together with such sensitivity. Includes some personal favourites - nice one Deadbeat!!"
- Jonah Sharp (Reagenz, Reflective)

"Expert level mix tape to the stars and back. Deadbeat can do no wrong!"
- Dave Turov (CSM)