Dj Gnosis

photo by Steve Rucker

May 23, 2003- In the Madcap Studio
Section One:

Dj Gnosis: Yo, you’re not doing me in stereo, whassup?

Lisa King: Talk about the earliest music that you remember in your childhood that you liked.

DjG: Well, I was raised very fundamentalist Christian. So, I had limited exposure to secular music when I was very young. My parents became born again Christians when I was six years old, but at the same time my father worked for RCA Records. So what I was exposed to was whatever promotional stuff that he had received, as far a secular music goes. The earliest stuff that had an influence on me, that still stays with me without being completely cheesy, is Simon and Garfunkel, and for some reason Herb Alpert. We had lots of eight tracks of Herb Alpert. Peter, Paul, and Mary too, so later on in life when I got into Bob Dylan, I realised that Peter, Paul, and Mary were the popular voice, or more easily digestible voice of sixties folk protest songs. Also, twentieth century composers, real mainstream shit like Aaron Copeland. That’s what happened to be around. “Accepted secular listening.”

So, I was raised in the fundamentalist Christian church, and I didn’t rebel until I was 16, in 1983 probably. The first cool music that I liked on my own, was in middle school, and it was The Psychedellic Furs. That was before I knew about the history behind that kind of music, and psychedellic pop. Bu the time I got to tenth grade I was a dedicated R.E.M. fanatic. Started getting into, mid-eighties, not post-punk, but post-post-punk or something. U2’s first record, and then I really got into Big Country. I’m probably still the biggest Big Country fan there is. I have a thick stack of every 12” they put out. Real inspired shit.

LK: What is a Dj?

DjG: Everyone is a Dj. So, it’s hard to say. A good Dj should have a story line. They shoud be able to make sense with the tracks of what they are doing. I know some great genre Dj’s. There are amazing Techo Dj’s, House Dj’s, and unless you’re really exceptional with what you do in that genre, and you produce music in that genre, and you are able to mix it in an interesting style, it’s not that interesting. Most bedroom Dj’s are ones who start off, and just want to play a genre. No matter how good their mixing skills are, it’s going to get boring.

So I am interested in Dj’s who play different genres, and are able to make sense of it. It’s not just a jukeboxing, of “Here’s something you like, and here’s something you like, and this is something different.” It’s got to go beyond novelty to make some sort of musical sense or cultural sense. I would rather hear a Dj that is less competent in mixing, but had an idea of telling a story, or showing how different disperate types of music relate to each other. Skills are also impressive. If someone is really great at what they do in one genre that’s good. It’s a live situation. If you can see someone that really has the party rocking, you may think it’s a little cheesy, but they keep it going. More power to them.

LK: What kind of stuff do you spin?

DjG: The first stuff I “spun” were CD’s and Cassettes, at WREK in 1991. We had a show with my man Ryan, even though I was not a Georgia Tech student. He let me go in there as “Community Staff.” We had a show called “Concusion Theatre,” which was formerly an Industrial show. That’s right when The Orb came out, which really fused the ambient work of Brian Eno with the new emerging more sophisticated House sounds. Trance was just coming out. This is long before it was the Monolith, the Behemoth that it is now. I was more inspired by Negativland, and shit like that than turntables. They really did’t exsist then. Other than in an old school hip-hop sensibility. Nobody really cared about it then. We were playing ambient tapes of Brian Eno over some new Trance beats.

Then I discovered Roots Reggae. Suddenly I discovered Dub, like King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry, and that to me is, and still is, the root of remix music. So when the original MJQ opened in 1994, we had a night called “Dub Kung-Fu.” For three years. It stared off as just Roots Dub, and then we played at Yin Yang on Saturday nights with that style. Then Trip-Hop came along, and that seemed to naturally fit into the mix. It was the next progression. We were playing Sabers of Paradise, and Dj Shadow’s early singles. La Funk Mob. We incorporated that into the Dub, because it was more smoked out. The Dub sensibility applied to Hip-Hop, and it was so nice. It made so much sense at the time.

Drum and Bass came along around the same time, ’94-96. Raga drum and bass was incredible. It was the Dub logic in double time. We moved stuff from slow, smoked out beats to double time. That got the dance floor moving for a long time. That was the sound when the old MJQ closed. There was a summer in between before the new location opened, and I had a gig every Sunday night at The Point. The highlight of that was I brought down K.C. Rice a.k.a. The Designer. Also he’s Tortoise’s sound man. And, Johnny Herndon from Tortoise. They had a Dj soundsystem called Double Dragons. They Played at The Empty Bottle. We brought them down.

The new MJQ opened, and it was all about Drum and Bass. That’s when it started changing. ’95-’96 it started getting really dark. We would just try to run the newest Drum and Bass as double time over the new Dancehall. Buju Banton put out “Till Shiloh,” which was an opening of the new Conscious Dancehall. So we would try to play Conscious Dancehall and bring in double time Drum and Bass. I played that until 2000.Which was far beyond-My Drum and Bass was still relevant to me. People demanded it, so I played Friday nights. Sincee Lay, my old partner and I were part of a crew called The Team Rollers. We did a night a Dottie’s for 3 years. Dotties was a hangout for hipsters, in the early ‘90’s, and cool rock and roll kids. I was around in that scene. So for us to get a Tuesday night there as Dj’s was just pathetic. Tuesday night. It was just absurd. But it blew up. So it was the longest running Drum and Bass night, even though we played all sorts of stuff. It turned into an institution that some kids have taken over, now that’s it’s Lenny’s.

So Sincee Lay and I spun on Saturdays at MJQ, a night called Selection Saturdays, and we spun Friday’s too. Drum and Bass was really in demand there, and the genre was dying, so I started getting getting into all sorts of Diasporic African music. West and North African music, Blues from the Mississippi Delta, and the few people that were doing mixes with that.

Now what I play is just that. African Diasporic Music. I like playing a story, and to show the similarities. Beats per minute, or by style, I show these similarities. Much has been made of West African music and The Blues. I had to keep it going, and for someone to hear something that they are familiar with, and then hear something they are unfamiliar with, and still understand that element of the music, was a challenge. What I srive for is playing some new jiggy Hip-Hop track, going into some African cover of that, and then into something that is and inspiration for that, and make it make sense to people. At times I’ve gone overboard. I got into Algerian Rai music, which is a popular Algerian sound. Especially popular in France, with the huge Algerian population there. What I love about that is the Arabic vocals, really passionate, over African beats. For a while I lost people, because I would go too far that way. So the last few years I just use it a little. Give them something they know, and then something they don’t know that I feel is important. Something really fresh that they can relate too at the same time. It’s always a challenge to keep a balance.

LK: Talk about Gnosis.

DjG: The Dj name I’m stuck with? Orinally Gnosis comes from me reading the Gnostic Gospels, which I got into by reading Phillip K. Dick. I was raised Christian, and I was really bitter about it when I was 16. I was all punk rock and like, “Fuck all that!” I would go totally anti-Christian. Then I started coming around and seeing that the Christianity I was raised in really doesn’t represent the roots of Christianity. In fact it was heretical. Like the Gnostics.

At that time, in the early to mid-nineties, I was hanging out with a lot of graffiti writers, and I thought “Gno,” short for “Gnosis” would be a good tag. I soon discovered that I had no skills in graffiti, and I was a much better Dj. So I abandoned that, but it became my Dj name. It sounds really pretentious, and I’m stuck with it. I have to explain to people, “Uh, yeah, it’s, uhm, Greek or Sanskrit for ‘knowledge’…” And they’re like, “Oh, that’s…cool…?” Gnosticism was an early Chrisian sect that were considered heretics after the time of Christ. They believed that yes, the New Testament was true-yes, all the books of The Bible were true-But they believed other books of the Bible, the Gnostic Scriptures were also true. They believed beyond the Creator God, there was a Greater God, and we were created by Yaweh, but Sofia is his mother. She knows that he is conceited. It sounds pretentious. This direct communication with God. But it’s someothing that resonates that I come back to a lot in my life. Gnosis gets mis-pronounced more often than you can imagine. “Gee-nosis,” “Guh-nosis,” but I’m not mad at anyone because lots of people don’t know my name is John, they just call me “Gnosis.” I’m stuck with it.

LK: Can you talk a little bit about Eastern Developments?

DjG: Eastern Developments was a brainchild of Scott Herren and Pete Rentz, my two closest homeboys. They would talk forever about Scott choosing the music and Pete doing all the graphics. Finally they were like “Fuck it. We’ve got to do it.” At that time, Scott and I were both living in Atlanta, and we realeased two records. One by Dabrye, called “Instrumental,” and one by HuVibrational, which is Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake. It’s called “Boonghee Music.” Dabrye’s record is instrumental Hip-Hop, jiggy Detroit style, but instrumental, and it’s beautiful. And in HuVibrational, Hamid Drake played with Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra, and Adam Rudolph has played with Hassan Hakmoun. It’s also a very beautiful record. An Ep. It’s hand percussion stuff, with a lot of Cuban instruments, finger snapping, and hand clapping. It’s a new style of dance music which is the most organic dance music I have ever heard.

We put those out. Dabrye’s record really blew up for us. At that time, I moved to Tokyo and Scott moved to Barcelona. It had been 6 months, and those two records had done well internationally. Two weeks before I moved back to Atlanta, Pete had moved to L.A. Things were out of sorts. We came up with our next four releases, which are Daedelus, “The Household Ep,” which Scott has a remix on, and the Kopernik self titled Ep, Ammoncontact, and Ahmad Szabo. Those now are just being reviewed, and they’ve done really well. Eastern Developments is locally minded, but globally minded. So the next two releases we are going to do is by two Atlanta people. Ryan Rashid under the name Leb Lase Import system. That’s going to be an instrumental banging hip-hop record. The other one is by Lori Scacco, formerlyof Seely. A full length. So those are our Summer releases.