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The Bassment is a weekly article bringing you coverage of the best in Hip Hop and Electronic music from around Vancouver. Weekly interviews, event coverage, album and concert reviews that show how awesome our city’s electronic and hip hop scene really is. If you think there is someone or something that needs coverage in this city in regards to the Hip Hop / Electronic community then get in touch with us.

We’ve featured Jaykin before on VIA but here is his appropriate debut in The Bassment. Just back from a trip to Japan, Jaykin released Sneakers & Video Games II some months back this year. A continuation of Sneakers & Videogames I, it contains no less than 5 songs that are part 2′s to songs on S&VG I. In a world of a million MCs, Jaykin calls himself Vancity’s Nicest, raps about Galaga, Capcom, Nippon, and V.A.N. life over synthy beats and scapes and aims to be more than an MC.

Sneakers & Video Games II stream
Sneakers & Video Games II download

Photo: Ian Azariah

Re-introduce yourself for The Bassment

JayKin real name is Jaakan. Van is my home and l love God, Sneakers, Video Games and obsessed with Japan. I’ve been doing this on a serious note for 4 years.

Your latest album is Sneakers & Video Games 2 and there are also 5 songs that are part 2′s to songs that were in Sneakers & Video Games 1. Tell us about the the part 2’s.

I really wanted to keep it all connected since there was a part 1 and part 2. A lot of artists have sequel albums but never really have sequel songs continued from the last. I find it keeps the listeners interested to check back on whatever song it is. Back to the future effect.

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The Bassment is a weekly article bringing you coverage of the best in Hip Hop and Electronic music from around Vancouver. Weekly interviews, event coverage, album and concert reviews that show how awesome our city’s electronic and hip hop scene really is. If you think there is someone or something that needs coverage in this city in regards to the Hip Hop / Electronic community then get in touch with us.

“I make beats and I ride bikes” was something Syavash Yorish (aka Savage Beats) used to say.

About a year after hearing that line a few times, studio founder Justin Jung got into a bit of a bail out on his bike, complete with separated shoulder and minor concussion. The first person he hooked up with out of the hospital was Savage and the line he used to say resurfaced in Jung’s wobbly noggin. Then after apparently having a “wild moment of enlightenment like the part in Back to the Future when Doc Brown suddenly realizes that he can make time travel possible with the flux capacitor,” Beats & Bikes was about to become a real deal. Fast forward to today, Justin and Syavash got something unique to add to the Gastown/Chinatown/DTES’ ever burgeoning community of new cool stuff. Beats & Bikes is where beats and music are produced and fresh carbon chain bikes can be copped. Beats & Bikes. Get it?

All photos by Boon

Introduce yourselves:

SAVAGE BEATS: I go by Savage Beats. Real name Syavash Yorish. Born and raised in Afghanistan, I moved to Canada in 1990. Fell in love with hiphop in the 90′s and never looked back. Started with b-boying with Contents Under Pressure. Later, started producing music with DJ Flipout. Never looked back. Fast forward to 2000′s, I had a vision of a studio / bike shop since I’ve had 6 car accidents and gave up on cars and fell in love with bicycles. To me, they are freedom. Every sense possible. All I did was make Beats and Ride bikes. Never looked back. Less than 1 year, we give you Beats & Bikes. The rest speaks for itself.

JUSTIN: Justin Jung aka “Jungle”, was born in Vancouver and spent most of his early youth in Summerland, British Columbia. Small town hopping, BMX jumping, skaters vs skids, boarders vs two plankers, punk vs metal, VCR’s, VHS, cassette tapes, Apple 2e’s, MTV and Nintendo video games were few of the things that shaped Justin’s identity and fascination for life and the arts. Jump to 1992 and Jungle is at the top of his class as a student in The Art of Rebellion. “Greetings Vancouver, I’m gonna take a shit on you!” He’s leaned up against his ’72 VW Ghia in the parking lot of Burnaby Central High with hair long, cap on, plaid jacket, jeans baggy, and a cig burning in his mouth… Say hello to the Golden Era, in beautiful Vancity and the place he now calls home.
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The Bassment is a weekly article bringing you coverage of the best in Hip Hop and Electronic music from around Vancouver. Weekly interviews, event coverage, album and concert reviews that show how awesome our city’s electronic and hip hop scene really is.If you think there is someone or something that needs coverage in this city in regards to the Hip Hop / Electronic community then get in touch with us.

Summer’s over in case you didn’t notice. 6 weeks of sun this summer was a bummer but seems like there is always tons of action going on this time of year. Olio, VIFF, yada. I checked out the 11th annual New Forms Festival on Sep. 9 and also was at the Concrete Park jam at the Woodwards’ atrium on Wednesday night. New Forms really should be higher on the radar in the city. I think for doing what they do and combining what they combine together they are not worth missing. The media art and electronic music festival has been doing it up for over a decade which of course is no joke in this town. And as we sadly are missing the Livestock block party this year (though they had that thing at Strathcona park earlier this summer), the Hastings Set and W2‘s Concrete Park jam in the Woodward’s atrium could turn out to be a cool replacement. It was in the spirit of the old school hip hop park jams with the soundsystem, bboying and best of all, a free event in a nice public space.

Check out the review and tons of pics below.

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If this year’s summer hasn’t exactly felt like summer, the coming BC Day long weekend always packs a lot of punch into the city: There’s the fireworks, the Pride festival and the Powell Street Festival, this Saturday and Sunday at Oppenheimer Park, home of Vancouver’s traditional Japantown. The PSF hits its’ 35th annual mark this summer and is still the lower mainland’s longest running community arts festival. Julia Aoki, who is no stranger to the pack, heads the crew this year as interim general & programming manager. She steps in to fill in for Kristen Lambertson’s year away from the role which has Kristen working on some of the city’s other big festivals. Before Kristen, Miko Hoffman held the festival down like a rock from 2003-2008. We spoke to these 3 past festival GM’s on how they got involved with the festival and its’ special place within Vancouver’s many different communities.

The 35th Annual Powell Street Festival
Saturday, July 30th and Sunday, July 31st, 2011, 11:30am – 7:00pm
Oppenheimer Park – 400 block, Powell Street
Festival schedule
Festival program
FB event page
Photos, vids from last year’s fest

L-R: Miko Hoffman, Julia Aoki, Kristen Lambertson (photo: Boon Kondo)

Q: How did you all get involved with the festival?

Julia: My sister, Aretha, was on the board of directors and programming committee years ago. I remember visiting her while she was volunteering at the Children’s Tent during one Festival weekend, and after that becoming generally more aware of the Festival. When my sisters and I were children, our parents would file us into the Ford Granada, which we called ‘Old Blue,’ and we’d drive in from the suburbs to attend the festival; but between adolescence and adulthood, I had pretty much forgotten about it. Becoming involved with the Festival (first as a Volunteer Coordinator, then a committee and board member, now the Interim General Manager and Programming Director), happened partly at my sister’s insistence, partly due to the nostalgia I felt for the event, and partly due to the feeling that it was a safe and inclusive space to explore the idea of being Japanese Canadian.

My first year as Volunteer Coordinator I was struck by the kindness and generosity of a strong community of people: from board members and staff like Miko, Rika Moorhouse, John Yamazaki, Angus McLean, and many others, to the volunteers that return every year, like Kathy Shimizu, Cat Renay, Gweny Wong, Mary Spark, Gary Mah and Kevin Sleziak… the list goes on and, since that first year, it’s continued to grow. Besides the more obvious draw of the artistic programming and the delicious food, the Festival is a testament to the possibility of a collective and committed effort, and it’s really rewarding to be part of that.

Kristen: I actually first became involved in 2008. I had always heard about the Festival when I briefly lived in Vancouver for a few years before moving away, but had never attended. Yet I had been intrigued by its mixture of Japanese Canadian arts and culture, history and its unique relationship to the DTES community. Luckily it all came together when I moved back to Vancouver in 2008 and the opportunity arose to work with the Festival.

Miko: It’s in my blood! My mom was involved from the very early years, and I grew up watching my mom perform taiko there, and when I was old enough to carry a tong, I was volunteering on garbage duty! And I guess I worked my way up, from garbage to the merch table, to coordinating the merch table, to coordinating the festival, to General Manager. And now I’m happy to be back as a volunteer.

Photo: Boon Kondo
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The Bassment is a weekly article bringing you coverage of the best in Hip Hop and Electronic music from around Vancouver. Weekly interviews, event coverage, album and concert reviews that show how awesome our city’s electronic and hip hop scene really is.  If you think there is someone or something that needs coverage in this city in regards to the Hip Hop / Electronic community then get in touch with us.

This is a band from Vancouver that I want to see make it. There’s a lotta cool music from this city but we need a band like this to make it. We need an “indie electro soul pop” act to rep. Robbie Slade (originally from Nelson) and Peter Ricq (originally from Montreal) became Humans in 2009 in Vancouver. They’ve released the digital album Avec Mes Mecs back in October of 2010. They also got some new stuff entitled New on their site as well. I checked them out live for the first time this past July 1 at the Cobalt and dug the electronicness, odd singing, live drumming, the chant they lead for the DJ that came on after their gig to play Sandstorm. Below, Robbie and Peter tell us more about them. If you like what you read, you can check them out at the Crankworx Festival at Garfinkles in Whistler tonight, at the Astoria here the night after (Sat, Jul. 23) and then they open for Digitalism at Gossip, Aug. 2.

Photo courtesy of Eli Wener

How do you guys describe the Humans’ sound yourselves?

Peter: Electro indie pop mixed with brown rice and jell-o

What did you guys listen to growing up? How about these days?

Peter: Grew listening to the Beach Boys, Beastie Boys, Pet Shop Boys, Fat Boys and loved the movie Boyz n the Hood. Lately, I don’t know but what comes to mind are bands like Metronomy, Grizzly Bears, Bikini, Tom Vek, LCD, Daft Punk, Ty Segall, No Gold, Twin Shadow, Sleigh Bells.

Robbie: I grew up singing the Beatles with hitchhikers in the back of a Landcruiser.

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She’s known mainly as the punk movie girl – the director behind Vancouver’s punk music history documentary Bloodied But Unbowed. We first interviewed Susanne Tabata on the eve of BBU’s premiere at DOXA 2010. As a member of the Powell Street Festival programming committee, her involvement with Vancouver and film also extend to projects like Ohanashi: Stories of Our Elders which Susanne designed, wrote, produced and directed as a 10 part ethnography series for the Japanese Canadian National Museum (based here in Burnaby). Most recently, Susanne has curated and is ready to present the 3rd installment of Kibatsu Cinema which opens tonight and runs all weekend until Sunday at the good ‘ol Cinematheque.

A punk music documentary and a film festival featuring an old Yakuza flick from the 60s, psychedelic gore, anime and beyond may seem to be cut from 2 different cloths. Susanne talks about those 2 endeavors, the selection process for Kibatsu and about the help she got from a special crew for one of the selections below:

Photo: Randy Rampage

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The Bassment is a weekly article bringing you coverage of the best in Hip Hop and Electronic music from around Vancouver. Weekly interviews, event coverage, album and concert reviews that show how awesome our city’s electronic and hip hop scene really is. If you think there is someone or something that needs coverage in this city in regards to the Hip Hop / Electronic community then get in touch with us.

The Boombox Saints have been on the local grind for some time: working on rhymes and beats, opening for acts like Kid Cudi and Far East Movement to Talib Kweli and Souls of Mischief, documenting their day in the life’s on their youtube channel and now have recently released not one but 2 EPs free for download independently:  the Boombox EP and Bringing the Boom Back EP as well as a single (via Nettwerk records) and video for She Got (off the latter EP). We caught up with Huggy Fresh, Freeky P and Adlib between the two releases for some of their thoughts about getting their work out there, their local collaborators and influences and what’s going in the Vancouver hip hop scene in general.

Read the interview below.
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I was away last November when I think I missed both Dam Funk (LA) and Onra (Paris) in town. It’s rare for me to go for a DJ set as a show these days but both artists have produced some of my favourite tracks of the last bit (like Hood Pass Intact, Galactic Fun from Dam, My Comet, High Hopes from Onra) so be able to see both of them on the same bill was pretty sick. Funny enough, the night was free as sponsored by Jameson Whiskey which I was recently introduced to by an Irishman a few weeks before. My Crown Royal days then seemed possibly numbered thereafter and were all but confirmed as I had my share during this show at the Lamplighter on Mar. 15.

But back to the music: With local talents, Hedspin with his homey Pump from Calgary and Nina Mendoza setting things off in the right fashion as I continued to confirm my last days a Crowner with every sip of the Irish brand, I was so stoked to see both Onra and Dam, not just to hear their sets but also to see how they would expand on it with their live input. Both guys’ sound is based a lot on 80s R&B/hip hop so I was also curious to see how their sounds would mesh… (see pics and video below the cut)

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