By Paul D. Miller, who goes by DJ Spooky, and I sat at the Alamo Drafthouse, an hour early for a screening of Blackkklansman. Over drinks, we delved into a galaxy of topics. Paul’s career is long and formidable. For 20 years, he has been a globe-trotting DJ who is typically associated with 90s trip-hop; however, he has worked as a writer, artist, environmentalist, composer, editor, and producer. You can see his catalog at djspooky.com. Here are some snippets from our conversation.
CJ: First off, you have a new album out. Tell me about it.
PM: The project is called Phantom Dancehall and it’s been sitting on my hard drive for a while. You have to imagine where dancehall, hip-hop and electronic music intersect one another. So you really have to think of the album as a conversation between three titanic strains of electronic music, how dancehall influenced really everything and then how dub influenced dancehall. Dub is mostly instrumental with tape loops in the 70s, and then dancehall came up with the rise of the early drum machines casio and things like that and hip-hop borrowed from dancehall and the rest is history. The Phantom album is a concept album I worked with Apple Juice Kid, who does a TV show on PBS that teaches how to do electronic music. We also got Walshy Fire who is the vocalist for Major Lazer.
CJ: How would you describe this album in comparison to your previous catalog?
PM: First and foremost this is a project. They are a lot more flexible and more open-ended. Phantom Dancehall was meant to be like you are at a party at 3 in the morning in Kingston.
CJ: So, are you working on a full-length album?
PM: I’m pretty prolific on certain things but last year my mother passed away and I decided to take a sabbatical from music, which is why I am here in Colorado. I’m in chill out mode. I wanted to give myself some space and time from outside New York hecticness. There’s a great scene here. The first time here in Colorado I was DJing for Obama’s Democratic nomination. I was like this is a cool spot, Colorado, who would’ve guessed. I was a guest of Mayor Hickenlooper at the time, and now he has gone on to Governor, it’s always fascinating to the evolution of things.
CJ: How would you describe your own evolution?
PM: Most people try to become more trendy and popular, whereas I am more of the opposite. I started out popular and I’ve gone towards more avant-garde and away from mainstream stuff. I want to show that you can make a good living, independent and global, and not make music that will fill in some shopping mall. I’d say that my music is for people that feel another way is possible. You don’t need to be programmed by the most available, mainstream stuff around. You can think independently and try new approaches and styles. I think that is really important right now. So much of our time is about certain kinds of conformism.
CJ: I know you are a huge fan of science fiction. What would you say is the best and brightest in that genre?
PM: My favorite stuff right now, well one of them is from Colorado. He ’s an amazing science fiction writer. Paolo Bacigalupi, his stuff is very post-William Gibson, post-cyberpunk. I really like Shane Carruth. He did some really interesting films. One of his most well known is called Primer. He did the writing, directing, he acted and did the scoring. Great work. And then even more current is Boots Riley. He did Sorry to Bother You, which is on the verge of science fiction. It’s very Philip K. Dick, who is one of my favorite authors. I went and visited his grave last year here in Colorado.
CJ: How has being a DJ evolved?
PM: If I could scream it from Mt. Everest I would, you don’t need to be mainstream. I’m a firm believer that innovation is its own reward. It used to be that people would say that you do art for art’s sake, but in order to make a living, you have to understand how this culture works, that this is a capitalist system on the edge of artificial intelligence. What I mean is the economy is going to be shifting as we move further and further in a data-driven society. DJs are people who navigate these huge streams of information and create new potentialities. For me, at least the tragedy of our time is the standardization of music and software. It’s all very similar. You need to experiment with new sounds and new approaches. My next album is driven by artificial intelligence, and we’re working with that as a cryptocurrency. It’s going to deeper and weirder.
CJ: What lies ahead for Afrofuturism in a post-Black Panther world?
PM: Afrofuturism was a tool to get people to think about new voices and new trajectories in what could be blackness. The problem with our time right now is that everyone is so freaking conformist that even that has become conformist. People need a movement. They need a label I get it, but I would like to see a lot more freedom in approaches and styles, like Sun Ra and George Clinton, who are very influential to my work. They came out of a specific history of African American culture that said this is now, and we have a permutation of the possibility of the future. Whereas now the vision of Afrofuturism to me is very narrow. I would like to see a lot wilder and more open-ended engagement, but again I understand that people need simplicity and things that are easy to digest, so if you slap a label on anything it makes it a lot easier to get their minds into.
