DJ Logic: DJ Logic Presents Project Logic

Two things you should know by now: 1) the Technics 1200 direct-drive turntable is the last great jazz instrument of the 20th century and 2) “DJ” (master level: turntablist) is just another word for jazz improviser. Check the karmic come-back: brass ‘n’ drum were limited martial band instruments until mostly self-taught African-American musicians reinvented them to create a new art form -jazz. Seven decades later, self-taught street jocks in the South Bronx used a mixer and two turntables to transform common house party records into hip-hop ghetto symphonies by extending beat breaks, rewinding/cutting/scratching vocals, riffs and hooks. In this spirit-cosmic continuum, Satchmo = Grandmaster Flash, Bird = Marley Marl, Miles = DJ Logic.

Born and raised in the boogie-down Bronx, Logic (Jason Kibler) has been spinning since the age of 14. Over the years his steez has evolved from a rock-da-house DJ to a sound/color/beat-scratching turntable minimalist employed by Vernon Reid, Graham Haynes and Medeski Martin & Wood. His debut DJ Logic Presents Project Logic (ropeadope Records, 51: 41) talks and walks a new jazz world. The formula is avant-simple: record 17 live-in-the-studio improvisations with Project Logic (Melvin Gibbs, bass, Skoota Warner, drums), call in 24 hip hop, jazz, funk, Downtown NY freakazoids (Beans & Priest, MMW, Steven Bernstein, Bill Ware), overdub-manipulate-edit their abstract science-drops, assimilate, reincarnate. Defining Moment: “Spider Dance”‘s unsettlingly eerie haunted house full of shimmering keyboards, monster chicken heartbeats, evil spirit bass and the erotic-hypnotic whispers of Jennifer Charles (“How you glitter, how you glisten/IOUs/Take me back with you”).

Originally Published December 1, 1999