Hit Sauce gets the New York insider’s perspective of what to listen to in 2014.
DJ Ripley is Dr. Larisa Mann, a Brooklyn resident with a Jekyll and Hyde work schedule; she is the mixmaster whose day job requires a PhD.
Metro: What is your relationship to NYC music?
DJ Ripley: My job as DJ Ripley, member of the Dutty Artz collective, and my job as a (currently part-time) professor of media studies both shape how New York music hits me. My research is on global media networks, law, technology and power, and focuses on how musical experiences can subvert hierarchies. That’s pretty much how I connect to music. Stuff that moves me the most also moves against the things that are messed up in this world.
Metro: Who were some of your favorite new artists in 2013?
DJ Ripley: Early this year, Cakes Da Killa blew me away with his album The Eulogy. I love the dark, ominous production, drawing on ballroom and other bass cultures including tweaked-out old jazz/swing references that to me echo Dajae-style Chicago house, and aggressive, witty, hilarious lyrics.
Alsarah is a Sudanese-born singer who has been in New York for a while, and she did a collaboration with Debruit called “Aljawal” that is just a lovely mix of beats and melody with an urgent, haunting sweetness. Seeing her play with her band the Nubatones was also a delight of 2013.
Metro: Who was playing during your NYE?
Ripley: I DJ’d at a house party in my neighborhood so I threw down everything from the MikeQ bootleg remix of MIA’s “Y.A.L.A.” to “Shorty Swing My Way” to Joro Boro’s Nola Bounce remix of Goran Bregovic’s “Kalashnikov.”
Ripley’s picks for 2014:
Cakes Da Killa
Filastine
Alo Wala
MPeach
Dr. Das
DJ Precolumbian
KiT (Kuenta i Tambú)
