DJ Food & DK
June 13th, 2008 by sparky
DJ Food & DK will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
DJ Food – Biography
With over 20 years DJing experience and more than a decade serving up Food for DJs, for both Ninja and Coldcut’s weekly radio show ‘Solid Steel’, Kev is now in the Food hot seat. He first met Matt Black at his ‘Telepathic Fish’ ambient parties of the early 90′s, started designing artwork for Ninja Tune and paired up with PC (Patrick Carpenter) to form the public ‘face’ of DJ Food on 4 decks in clubs around the world. After working on various Food and Coldcut related studio projects with PC (A Recipe for Disaster, Journeys by DJ, ColdKrushCuts and the Blech mix compilations for Warp) they released the album ‘Kaleidoscope’ in 2000, closely followed by the ‘Quadraplex EP’ in 2001.
Also arriving in 2001 was the first in a series of Solid Steel mix CDs starting with DJ Food & DK (Darren Knott – Solid Steel’s producer) and the publicly lauded ‘Now, Listen’. Since then he’s been doing constant art and mix work with a rescore of the Monkees’ cult film ‘Head’, an, as yet unreleased, album of vintage Sesame Street funk, an exhaustive DJ Food website (www.djfood.org) and his magnum opus ‘Raiding the 20th Century’. This last hour long mix / documentary was an internet only release charting the history of the cut-up and featured journalist Paul Morley reading from his book ‘Words & Music’. Not only did it crash servers on several sites that hosted it due to it’s initial popularity but it was later subject to a cease & desist order from EMI for multiple infringments of copyright.
Now, alongside DK again, he has followed up their Solid Steel debut with the sequel – ‘Now, Listen Again’ and is now working on the next DJ Food album solo as well as providing artwork for Ninja artists such as Amon Tobin, The Herbaliser and many others.
DJ Food past:
DJ Food has been many persons, of who we will come to in a moment. DJ FOOD is best described as Food for DJs, simple as that, just flip it around and it begins to mean something entirely different.
Originally produced by Coldcut the DJ Food project started in 1990 with the release of Jazz Brakes. Jazz Brakes Volume 3 being the label’s most successful early album. Not only are they effective collections of breaks, loops and samples ideal for mixing, remixing and producing – but also fine collections of funky jazz & hip hop tunes, that cut it just as well on the discerning dancefloor as in the safety of your own home… Since the growth of the abstract hip hop scene recent years the Jazz Brakes albums have proved to be ahead of their time Jazz Brakes Volumes 4 & 5, co-created with DJ/producer PC, are collections of finely crafted tunes that transcend the breakbeat compilation format to stand as artist albums in their own right. These latter DJ Food albums have developed with shades of latin, dub, techno, ambient, tribal, african and jungle flavouring the funk. The October ’95 album entitled ‘A Recipe For Disaster’ was a conscious break from the five Jazz Brakes volumes to form more of an identity as an artist, and a remix album of tracks from all 6 LPs ‘Refried Food’ was released Feb ’96.
But who makes this food then? We know that Matt Black & Jonathan More (aka Coldcut) were responsible for starting the DJ FOOD series of Jazz Brakes back in the early 90′s, and along the way they met Patrick Carpenter (PC) who was commonly misconstrued as the computer that they made the tracks on for a while. A loose collaborative team began to form as more like-minded people arrived at the party; Paul Brook, Paul Rabiger, Strictly Kev and Issac Elliston to name a few. Whilst keeping their hand in as DJs, Matt & Jon couldn’t and didn’t want to DJ twice in one night under both aliases of Coldcut & Food so PC & Strictly stepped up to represent the Food club-wise. This was the score for some time, until PC became so busy with his involvement in the Cinematic Orchestra that he decided to depart to concentrate on that, leaving Strictly Kev to carry the mantle and really come into his own.
DK – Biography
DJ, music maker, radio producer and presenter, Darren Knott (alias DK) is a key component in the Ninja Tune live shows and one of the main driving forces behind the legendary ‘Solid Steel’ radio show.
In 2001 he released the ‘Solid Steel presents’ Mix CD on Ninja Tune alongside DJ Food and toured on 4 decks with Strictly Kev (DJ Food) throughout the UK and the World. The Solid Steel mix CD was critically acclaimed achieving compilation of the year in Q, DJ Magazine, Time Out and Seven plus compilation of the month in Jockey Slut and Dazed & Confused.
Previous tours also include the well received US Tour with Coldcut and a European Tour with fellow Ninja artists Kid Koala and PC (DJ Food). DK has teamed up with Ninja Tune on various gigs, DJing both nationally and internationally, from spinning vinyl in a steaming hot turkish bath in Hungary, atop a cold Swiss mountain and in amongst an unexpected riot in Greece (opening up for the Prodigy), to name but a few.
The London gigs have included all the regular Ninja club nights including the famous Blue Note night ‘Stealth’ and ‘Kungfusion’ at the 333 . DK was also a regular at the recent Xen Solid Steel nights at Cargo.
Regular presenter and producer on Coldcut’s infamous Solid Steel Show, formerly on London’s Kiss FM Radio and BBC London he has been instrumental in syndicating the show to over 30 radio stations worldwide. Along with Coldcut and DJ Food, DK continues to broadcast possibly the best mix show on the airwaves.
Studio work has included the track ‘Arcane’ by Arc on the Xen Cuts compilation and remixing ‘Timber’ for Coldcut, a remix for The Cinematic Orchestra and various releases on independent labels.
A frequent visitor to the New York music scene, DK rates this as being a great influence along with a grounding in London’s club history. Extensive travel and committed ‘diggin in the crates’ enabled a large and diverse collection of records to be amassed from different countries, which is reflected in his selection of tunes. His Djing style is an eclectic mix from Jazz induced beats to Drum & Bass, Hip Hop, funky breaks and beyond, trying to avoid a night of just one style of music and leaving room for both the latest tunes and classic rarities.
DJ Food & DK will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
