Slopeside Beatmaker
DJ Armbuster Lewis Creates His Own Sound…With A Nod To The Past
>>BY avir mitra>>PICS by celeste gallegos

"When a beatmaker finds the right gems... and combines it with proper and not so proper techniques... along with not having superfluous verbage... it can provide for a pleasurable listening experience... giving one hope that anything is achievable... so when the time is right... Move that ass...pect of yourself that likes to shake it"
-The Clothes Sundays EP, liner notes.

And with that manifesto (accompanied by corresponding clip art), you are ready to listen to The Clothes Sundays EP. DJ Armbuster Lewis presents six beats (one of which features an emcee) spliced with interviews as a brief introduction to his music. He looks to the past for inspiration, seeing the old school as a time when hip-hop was more true to its form. Musically, the result is a collage of sample-heavy, sometimes funky and sometimes wandering beats. Somewhere between the “urban-ness” of DJ Premier and the “art-school-ness” of DJ Shadow resides Lewis’s self-named “Beatness.”

We sat down to get a better look at where this DJ is at. – A. Mitra

Where are you from, and where are you based out of?
Well I'm originally from New York — born in Brooklyn, raised in Manhattan. Though, because of my day job, I'm currently based in Vermont. It’s crazy because I’d never see myself living in a place like this if it weren't for snowboarding. Because of how snowboarding popped off for me, it led me to Vermont, which is fine because I'm not terribly far from New York City at any given moment.
How has that influenced your style or approach to the music business?
I don’t think it has directly affected my music. I feel that an indirect way it has helped me make music is that this place is a lot more laidback than being in New York. When I’m in New York I have more stuff (trouble) to get into. Here, I can marinate into it and disappear without a care in the world. At the same time, though, it can force you to get your hustle on more because to make moves, you've gotta go out of state which makes you use your time wisely when you travel. If I were in New York, I’d become complacent knowing there's a jump off every night.
You paid respects in your liner notes to hip-hop luminaries, too many to list, but who are some of your personal inspirations, or the hip-hop luminaries who helped define your style?
I’ve always been a fan of adventurous sounding music — regardless of what type of music it may be. But at the same time, because of my Spanish background and what my mom played around the house, I grew up listening to very percussive and lively played music. So in the beginning I was into a lot of Kraftwerk and things of that nature. At the time I didn’t realize how unusual their stuff was, it was just what I got into. Then you have your hip-hop staples like Pete Rock, Bomb Squad, and Marley Marl. It’s funny because when I first heard “Eric B. Is President,” I couldn't stand the MC. Can you believe that? I was feeling the beats because Marley produced it (even though I didn’t know it at the time) but just listened to the dubbed out version so I’d hear less rapping. And now, to me, Rakim is one of the best of all time. Not only did I like their music, but [they] were in-house beat makers. So all The Juice Crew, for example, didn’t go elsewhere for beats. Marley did everything in-house for everyone.
Do you have any plans to work with emcees for future records or are you strictly writing instrumental beats? If so, do you feel this would change your style or change the way you approach beats?
It’s gotta be the right union and connection. I can’t just put an emcee on a record for the sake of having lyrics on there or just to put on one of my boys if I’m not connecting with their vibe, you know? First and foremost I’m about the feeling of the music. If a lyricist/singer/poet comes across my way and we connect, who knows. But for now, it’s just about beatness.
You stress throughout the interviews on your EP that you don’t have any one style. Being a musician myself I always have this debate with my musician friends: whether versatility is a good thing (it shows you are open-minded and highly talented) or the mark of an amateur (you are too new to commit to a style, or haven’t found your own “pocket” yet). What do you think?
That’s a tricky one because I feel it can go both ways. Take someone like Quincy Jones. Few will argue his contributions to the musical landscape, but he’s gone from playing with Dizzy Gillespie and big band jazz, to scoring films and making records with Michael Jackson. And then you take someone like DJ Premier, who has a very distinct sound in one single genre. Even when pop stars seek him out, it’s because they are looking for his signature flavor and style. But I can't say that one or the other is an amateur or doesn’t have a voice.
Why “The Clothes Sundays?” What does that mean? What song is your favorite off the EP or which one do you see being in the direction of newer stuff?
“Clothes Sundays” is first of all a play on words, which is obvious, but the more cryptic meaning is, the way it used to be. See, it used to be that everything was always closed on Sundays. You wouldn’t be able to do a lot of things on that day of the week because they’d be closed. When you talk about this music thing, it used to be that emcees had a certain level of rhymes to apply to this hot music being made. Nowadays it seems like whatever. Cats are coming with some idiotic choruses and whatnot. I mean, that’s why Beatnuts started putting their own rhymes down because they’d make a beat and people would lay down some crap lyrics over ‘em. I’m all about that, let’s extinguish all this crumb music. As far as the direction of my newer material, songs like “Swindle” and “Secret Wars” can give a hint as to the newer stuff I’m working on. Songs that take a few twists and turns. Not huge deviations, just enough to wonder what’s coming next.
Your Myspace page mentions that you snowboard for a living — tell me all about that. Is that your day job? Is that how you support your musical career?
Yeah, no doubt. It’s crazy because I get to have two jobs that I’m passionate about, music and snowboarding. So I’m quite fortunate in that sense. I’ve been riding since 1994 and been in the industry (snowboarding) since about 1996 or ’97, and it’s something I see myself doing for the majority of my life. The feeling of flowing down fluffy untouched snow at dawn or riding a freshly sculpted park with your friends is untouchable. I coach at Okemo Mountain School in southern Vermont and we have a hot team right now, so this season is shaping up to be a good one for us. Then over the summer we run camps through ams2pros, so I get to snowboard over summer months as well. Not sure what I did to deserve this life, but I’m not hatin’.
What’s your studio setup; how are you making those beats?
You know, it used to be asr-10 samplers, Alesis and Roland drum machines, Fostex reel-to-reels, and who knows how much more outboard gear. Slowly I became more computer savvy so the software was advancing, but the hardware wasn’t in place to let you interface with the computer, so even though I had nice software, I’d still use old drum machines and whatnot. Platforms and operating systems are a lot more stable nowadays, so as of the moment I'm using Propellerheads Reason and Ableton Live as my main arranging and sequencing hubs. I also have some outboard gear to play instruments, though, and arrange my drum kits like the Novation Remote 25SL, Evolution U-Control, and Evolution MK-225. I’ve streamlined what I use as I’d rather use a limited amount of gear and get the most out of it, and learn inside and out instead of having a trailer load of gear and not know much of anything of it. Usually I’ll start with a break, or I may “ghost” a break and then tweak it to my liking. But that isn’t always the case. “Swindle,” for example, started with the plucked sound you hear in the beginning. I played the beat around that sound as opposed to playing the sound to the beat.
What are your plans and strategies for 2007?
A full-length album is in the works on Shining Shadow, which is my own label. It’ll have instrumental tracks on it in the same fashion as Clothes Sundays in the sense that they can blend into one another if played in order. Whether it’ll have vocals on it remains to be seen. Like I said, it has to be the right combination/situation for me to go that route right now. I have a few things in the works involving film which I have to be tight-lipped about, but it means that the album may be released in early 2008.
Anything else?
Check for new mixes on http://www.myspace.com/djarmbusterlewis, as well as The Clothes Sundays EP on iTunes and CdBaby.com. Big shouts to my Urban Hermits, ams2pros, Logan, OMS, and my right hand for finally grasping the concept of the crab fader technique.