Crunc Tesla / What’s Really Rad?

Tigerbeat6

A very, very long time ago, there was an emerging form of youth music that energized a generation. Crunc Tesla’s What’s Really Rad? EP revisits that era without drowning in nostalgia. The music, produced by Atlanta-bred, Brooklyn transplant DJ Raedawn, reunifies today’s fractured rap and techno scenes. Simply put, it’s a 23-minute kinetic energy burst along the lines of Outkast, The Pharcyde, Squarepusher, and even Harry Bellafonte. Acid basslines, Gypsy organs and tweaked synths melt into grimy beats while creamy, rapid-fire lyrics flicker from dark to brilliant. The bipolar fusion of tones melds Middle Eastern melodies with dirty south drum kits, dancehall riddims and broke-beat glitchology. The vocalists bombard from all angles, with MCs hailing from Jamaica, Baltimore, D.C., Atlanta and New York. You might call this American grime or crunktech.   Grandson of a Baptist preacher in Mississippi, Raedawn has been in the game since the age of four. Besides being a seasoned DMC vet and mixtape maestro, he developed the Turntablist Transcription Methodology with chums Ethan Imboden and Battlesounds creator John Carluccio. This unique notation system for scratch DJs has been developed into computer software, taught in music courses around the world, and covered by Time, CNN, Blackbook, and XLR8R. At Skratchcon 2000, Q-bert knighted him with the DJ Q-bert SkratchMaster Award from the Global Skratch Foundation. Far from a scratch nerd, Raedawn has ripped stages everywhere from the Apollo Theatre to the dankest all-night techno dives in Berlin performing alongside artists like Stereolab, Dizzee Rascal and the mythical Red Alert.

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