Magazine: RINSE
Title: FAUST & SHORTEE
Words: Sterling McGarvey
Issue Date: May/June 2003
Pigeonholing
turntablist husband and wife team Faust & Shortee into a single genre
of DJing is short sighted at best, narrow-minded at worst. Running the
full gamut of music ranging from their base in underground hip hop (which
has lead to worldwide praise and a spot in Doug Pray's acclaimed 2002
DJ documentary "Scratch"), to delvings into hard Chicago House,
dabblings in rare groove, and finally into full-on drum and bass pressure,
the versatility of the Atlanta-based duo shines on mixed CDs like Shortee's
"casa de Playboy" Latin house mix and the drum and bass laden
"Urban Assault."
In spite of their hip hop background, their dnb selections don't lean toward rap-based jump-up sounds, which, for many people, have transcended cliché. "we find that many DJs tend to cater to the crowd, rather than take them on a journey and expose them to more music," Faust says, "too many DJs play it safe and break out anthems instead of breaking new ground." Shortee points out that she tends not to play the familiar tracks as much as the b-sides, "a lot of kids have come up to me after sets and asked me what a particular track was that I played, and they're stunned to find that it's the other side of a record they hear out all the time," she grins.
The two are currently spinning with 2002 DMC Champion Perseus on the URB/Stanton/Final Scratch-sponsored "3 the Hard Way" tour. Given their affiliation with Stanton and their hip hop pedigree, they eschew the traditional dubplate culture that has permeated drum and bass since the genre's inception. Faust explains, "we don't think [Final Scratch] will kill the dubplate, but technology has finally caught up with production to the point at which pressing an acetate is more expensive than producing a track and uploading it to my laptop." They feel that the durability of a dubplate in contrast to a sound file is unquestionably less. "Once you get hands-on the way we do with records, the life of a plate isn't nearly enough to justify the cost of production," Shortee elaborates.
In addition to their use of Final Scratch as a means of playing original material without the expense involved in acetates or CD-Rs, the recordability of the technology also enables greater ease in improvisation. "I can talk into the mic, record it to the hard drive, and scratch out my sampled voice on the decks, "says Shortee.
As of late, their focus has shifted more towards drum and bass, as Faust explains, "we've found that the energy in the room spikes when we play drum and bass. When we spin hip hop, the crowd is more interested in watching us work the decks. The minute we play drum and bass tracks, everyone is up and moving." As a result, many of their tour dates on "3the Hard Way" consist of drum and bass sets instead of heavier emphasis on hip hop than they've utilized in the past.
Though they play tracks by producers like Sinthetix, Fresh, Roni Size, Q-Project and Red One, the duo puts an emphasis on using their own tracks in their mixes. Faust feels that eventually, the gap between producer and DJ will vanish and "most successful DJs will be playing a majority of their original productions."
The "3the Hard Way" tour launched at the Winter Music Conference and continues until late May. Alongside the tour is a new drum and bass CD, "Urban Assault 2", and two of their tracks are tapped for the hotly anticipated Ubi Soft game "XIII".
