Truly, madly, heaply

Diplo defies expectations with the surprising
spread of sounds on his Mad Decent tour

MESSIN’, WITH A LESSON: Diplo

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

“We’re all stupid and crazy,” Diplo says over the phone with an audible shrug, “that’s about it.” The DJ, producer, remixer, Mad Decent label head and now filmmaker and philanthropist, born Wesley Pentz, raised in Florida and now Philly-based, isn’t getting too complicated in his assessment of what unifies the various acts he’s bringing with him on the current Mad Decent tour.

If the electro avant-pop of Brooklyn’s Telepathe, the sun-kissed noise-punk of L.A.’s Abe Vigoda and the arcade bangers of London’s Boy 8-Bit have anything in common, it lies in what they aren’t. None fits the slamming slum-funk bill many might expect from globetrotting Diplo, a key figure in getting M.I.A. and Bonde do Role off the ground. “I’ve been defined by the press as the ghetto-club-beats guy, which is something I never asked for,” he says, and what better way to set the story straight than to showcase his latest Mad Decent darlings and their unexpected set of sounds.

To a degree, the tour is also about Diplo reaching back to his roots, in that at the shows, no fake I.D. is required for teens to get through the door. “As much as possible, through the whole tour, I’m trying to make the shows all-ages because I play a lot of bars where the kids are really into fashion and everything, and I want to take it back to where I come from, which is these small, packed, sweaty parties put on by the kids.”

Wonders down under

That’s hardly the only thing Diplo’s been doing for the kids. In January, 2007, following an Australian tour, he stuck around to organize music workshops for indigenous teens in Maningrida, a town in the autonomous Northern Territory. Following that, he headed south, hooked up with Sydney DJs Nina Agzarian and Andrew Levins and dropped into the all-boys Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre in New South Wales. Three days of workshops there produced, among other things, a track by the kids called “Smash a Kangaroo.”

Diplo describes connecting with the kids in a way familiar to anyone who’s watched a roomful of sullen teenagers gradually evolve into a circus of creative enthusiasm, once trust has been established. “The first day, I feel like they totally hate me. I’ll make one kid do something, just so I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time. By the second day, they all want their time with me, to sing or turn some knobs or whatever. Before I became a DJ, I was a schoolteacher—it was a pretty interesting program, not just ordinary teaching—so I know about that.”

With some gear and a little fundraiser-party cash left over after Diplo’s departure, Agzarian and Levins kept the ball rolling, setting up more workshops, roping folks like M.I.A., Yelle and Spank Rock into conducting them, and christening the overall effort Heaps Decent, an Aussie variant on Diplo’s label name. The second Heaps Decent single, ‘“Koori Girls” by the King Sisters with Pase Rock, came out in September, and more are likely to follow.

Diplo notes that his charitable efforts aren’t meant to inspire only underprivileged youth in the outback, but the luckier ones too—maybe even the same kids busting moves at the Mad Decent party this weekend. “Younger kids, when they think of philanthropy, they think it’s something only professors or older, rich people do. They don’t think of it as something they can do themselves.”

Brazilian frame-up

Yet another project of Diplo’s that recently came to fruition, albeit one that won’t undercut his chafing rep as the go-to guy for ghetto grooves, is Favela on Blast, the documentary he co-created with director Leandro HBL. It’s an in-depth exploration of the fierce, punchy funk emanating from the slums of Rio de Janeiro and the community that created it, checking in with noted MCs like Deize Tigrona as well as regular folks in the favelas.

“I’ve been to the favelas many times, they know me there, so I had really good access to the scene. People know bits of it, from a song online or photos on a blog. Hopefully this movie will give people a better picture. In the last three years, the scene has totally taken off, with artists getting big and touring outside of Brazil.”

Having just premiered the film in Brazil, Diplo is now looking at the international festival circuit and has already heard murmurs of interest from Palm Pictures and Lionsgate. Ironically, the explosively creative but ethically challenged Internet culture so key to building up Diplo and his comrades may turn out to be his first “distributor.”

“I’m just getting copies to the favelas now, so some of the artists can sign off on the music rights—so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were copies getting out there in like, three days.”

THE MAD DECENT TOUR WITH DIPLO,
ABE VIGODA, TELEPATHE, BOY 8-BIT
AND A-ROCK AT STUDIO JUSTE POUR
RIRE ON SATURDAY, OCT. 18, 9 P.M.,
$18.50, ALL AGES

Make yourself decent A look at the acts Diplo’s dragging along with him GO MENTAL: Telepathe by RUPERT BOTTENBERG Telepathe: Brooklyn’s Busy Gangnes and Melissa Livaudais, both survivors of the math-punk unit Wikkid, started Telepathe with a sensibility similar to such loft-space art-psych abstractionists as Gang Gang Dance, but have lately taken a sharp turn into electro-pop terrain, as their new 12-inch “Chrome’s on It” ably demonstrates. Early 2009 should see the release of Dance Mother, their debut LP, produced by TV on the Radio’s David Sitek. By Diplo’s own admission, they provide a needed distaff corrective to what would otherwise be the Mad Decent sausage party. Abe Vigoda: Sadly, no, it’s not thick-browed Fish from Barney Miller rolling through, if only to prove that yes, he’s still alive. This Los Angeles quartet, however, makes a great consolation prize. Springing from the Smell, the same all-ages, DIY show space that coughed up No Age and HEALTH, Abe Vigoda bang out bright, shiny, spastic noise-punk with a surprising tonal tilt to the guitars, suggesting African pop and Caribbean carnival steel drums—hence the “tropical punk” tag attached to the band and their worthy new album, Skeleton. PALMS BEFORE THE STORM: Abe Vigoda Boy 8-Bit: London’s David Morris, captain of the Body Clap night at his city’s T-Bar and remixer to the likes of Santogold and dubstep icon Burial, is a semi-reformed metalhead who now plops the Commodore 64 and Gameboy next to Daft Punk and Shy FX on his MySpace “influences” list. His jams will get the place jumping, perhaps high enough to snag magic coins for bonus points—check out “The Suspense Is Killing Me,” his recent 12-inch on Mad Decent with a thck ’n’ chunky Drop the Lime remix attached. Fun fact: Morris told XLR8R that his parents refused to buy him a video game console as a kid. Revenge!