D/P/I

Alex Gray, a Los Angeles musician working as D/P/I, reshaped fragments of hip-hop, dance music, and assorted pop culture remnants into jittery, mind-bending audio collages. Fragmentary music samples and field recordings formed the basis of most pieces, which he altered and scrambled using oscillators, filters, granular techniques, and assorted effects. A longtime collaborator with Sun Araw, Gray first attracted notice through experimental ambient recordings issued as Deep Magic on Not Not Fun, Preservation, and his own Deep Tapes imprint. In the early 2010s he turned to trippy, sample-laden work under the names Heat Wave and DJ Purple Image, the latter usually shortened to D/P/I. His eccentric, compelling CD-Rs and online mixes, most often circulated through Chanceimag.Es, drew listeners in experimental electronic and left-field hip-hop scenes. Matthewdavid issued the D/P/I cassettes 08.DD.15 and Rico plus the CD-R MN.ROY on Leaving Records in 2014. D/P/I also co-produced one track on Matthewdavid’s Brainfeeder album In My World that same year. Ad Hocc arrived in 2015 as a business card-sized USB drive holding six variations on a single 41-minute piece. Shelter Press released Composer in 2016, declared the last D/P/I album.