Son Raw is Passion of the Weiss’ resident expert in Urban Electronic sounds, which means that he specializes in music with a lot of air horns, gun shots, broken beats and laser sounds. Having written about Hip-Hop, Rare Groove, Bass Music and Grime and having DJ’ed everywhere from Los Angeles’ Low End Theory to Paris’ Rinse France and London’s NTSLive – we figure he knows what he’s talking about.
When asked to describe his musical philosophy he mumbled something about musical viruses and “searching for the next fix" before concluding that sunshine does indeed play a major part in the daytime.
12 1/2 songs that influenced Son Raw
1. Wu-Tang Clan – C.R.E.A.M
2. Portishead – Sour Times
3. Skream – Midnight Request Line
4. Ruff Sqwad – Future
5. MF DOOM – Dead Bent
6. The Bug – Skeng
7. The Diplomats – DJ Enuff Freestyle
8. Wiley – It’s Wiley (Royal-T Remix)
9. Nas – Project Window (Original Version)
10. DJ Rashad ft DJ Spinn – Drank Kush Barz
11. Logos – Ex101
12. Freddie McGregor – Tomorrow is like Today
13. The second half of Erykah Badu’s Master Teacher
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Currently Listening:
Mumdance & Logos - Proto
D'Angelo - Black Messiah
Mr Mitch - Parallel Memories
Coyote Records - Coyote Kings II
Rick Ross - Hood Billionaire
Yamaneko - Pixel Wave Embrace
Lil Herb - Pistol P
Wayne Shorter - See No Evil
A Tribe Called Quest - Low End Theory
Son Raw - Conscious Wave Mix
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Currently Watching:
The Imitation Game
Blade Runner
Guardians of the Galaxy
Adventure Time
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Currently Reading:
Brian Coleman - Check the Technique II| Floating in Space: April’s Grime round up | April 10, 2014 |
Instant Son Raw – just add beer. I’ll spare you the Rakim line – suffice to say that since I last wrote a round up post, a whole lot of releases and mixes have grabbed my attention and now you get to reap the benefits. The theme this week is dynamic opposites: artists, labels and […]
| DJ Q is Ineffable | March 31, 2014 |
Son Raw is unflappable. The concept of underground Pop music is a strange one. By definition, Pop needs the mass-appeal to hit as many people possible, while underground sounds target specific niches searching for more challenging alternatives. Today however, we live in an era when Pop has had the life focus-grouped out of it by […]
| Son Raw’s Highcast | March 26, 2014 |
Son Raw will get no sleep till Brooklyn. For Grime/Bass heads on our side of the Atlantic, this week’s big news is going down in Brooklyn as Keysound Records’ Wen, Beneath, Parris and Dusk & Blackdown touch down for Reconstrvct. I’ll be in attendance, and will likely be very, very drunk. Until then, a shameless […]
Son Raw & Maxwell Cavaseno are all in the same gang It’s been roughly 6-7 years since YG burst on the rap scene. He’s survived two trends/sub-genres coming and going, been incarcerated, and lived a life that the average rap fan fantasizes about. Throughout those years, he’s remained an underground phenomenon, beloved in Los Angeles […]
| Wen reaches for Signals of a future past | March 18, 2014 |
Son Raw saw the signs. Before we talk about Wen, let’s talk about Keysound, a label that’s officially having its moment in the sun. Born of the same mid aughts explosion that gave us Hyperdub, Tectonic, and Deep Medi, Keysound’s early records weren’t just left of center – they were left of everything. While future […]
| Novelist & Mumdance tear up Rinse | March 17, 2014 |
We’re living in the Golden Age of Son Raw No “1 DJ and 1 MC” nostalgia here – strictly up to the minute vibrations. While I’m a big fan of the adlibs, multiple flows and harmonizing that go on in contemporary Hip-Hop, there’s a tangible energy that you only get through live rapping and hour […]
| Son Raw’s Free.99 round up | March 13, 2014 |
Son Raw will be in the UK in May and in Europe early June. He is willing to DJ something that isn’t Techno or Deep House for a reasonable fee. Contact him on twitter if you’re interested. I was actually thinking of skipping my column since I’d already covered this week’s big releases, but there’s […]
| Curly Castro & Zilla Rocca go to London | March 7, 2014 |
You hear that Doug? SON RAW IS COMING TO LONDON. Despite what Drake says, I’m perfectly willing to make new friends, they just have to meet certain guidelines. One of the rituals I expect from my homies is the ability, nay the compulsion, to endlessly quote classic rap tunes and movie quotes. If you get […]
Son Raw is back in the U.S.S.R. Not many club nights manage to attract attention outside of their home cities, particularly small, producer oriented ones. For all the hype around FWD and Low End Theory, theses were not (and are not) bacchanalian parties full of drug consumption and excess, they’re community run events by and […]
| Gage, Mr. Mitch and the maleability of genre | February 25, 2014 |
Son Raw is looking for a new room. Is genre even remotely useful anymore? From its earliest days as a tool for segregating “race” and “hillbilly” music in shops to its current status as a driver of ultra-specificity in dance music (minimal-psy-breaks anyone?), subcategorizing music into neatly defined boundaries has created as many problems as […]
