DJ Spooky

DJ Spooky, also styled That Subliminal Kid, rose to recognition as a leading advocate of turntablism, the hip-hop and DJ practice that fuses avant-garde musique concrète principles with the heightened focus on mixing craft that took hold around the start of the new millennium. Shaped by the influences of John Cage and Sun Ra alongside Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, he stands among the figures most responsible for elevating the notion of the DJ as artist. His debut full-length, Songs of a Dead Dreamer from 1996, stands as perhaps the central document of the illbient movement. Subsequent projects have encompassed work with avant-classical groups such as the Freight Elevator Quartet and the Kronos Quartet, abstract rappers including Kool Keith and the Jungle Brothers, dub innovators Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mad Professor, jazz explorers Matthew Shipp and William Parker, metal drummer Dave Lombardo on the 2005 album Drums of Death, and numerous additional collaborators. Throughout the 2000s he issued mix compilations drawing from the full catalogs of Thirsty Ear, Sub Rosa, Shadow, and Trojan Records. Although much of his output in the 2010s centered on modern classical and soundtrack material, among them 2015’s Rebirth of a Nation, he revisited reggae and dub on the 2018 release Phantom Dancehall.

Born Paul Miller in Washington, D.C., he was the son of a lawyer and Howard University faculty member who passed away when Miller was three. The record collection left by his father, combined with extensive international travel tied to his mother’s fabric business, introduced him to an expansive spectrum of music. His youth in the 1980s drew him toward D.C.’s hardcore punk community, British ska-punk, and go-go. While studying at college in Maine, Spooky began experimenting with mixes for his campus radio program and sought to incorporate his KRS-One cassettes into classroom explorations of deconstruction, an approach that would become far more plausible a decade later. After completing degrees in French literature and philosophy, he relocated to New York, where he composed science fiction, wrote advertising copy, and continued visual-art pursuits. Hip-hop remained central, however, prompting him to help establish the underground Soundlab collective alongside We, Byzar, Sub Dub, and others, a circle that later evolved into the illbient movement.

Following a series of singles and EPs issued between 1994 and 1995, Spooky secured a deal with Asphodel in 1996 and delivered his first album, Songs of a Dead Dreamer. The track “Galactic Funk” gained traction in clubs, resulting in studio appearances with Arto Lindsay and remix assignments for Metallica, Sublime, Nick Cave, and Spookey Ruben; he also began contributing regular columns to The Village Voice and Vibe. In the same period he put out the mix album Necropolis: The Dialogic Project, recorded the Paul D. Miller solo effort Viral Sonata, and took part in a new digital realization of Iannis Xenakis’s Kraanerg. His second proper album, 1998’s Riddim Warfare, assembled an eclectic cast that ranged from Dr. Octagon to Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. He further presented visual exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York and composed the score for the award-winning 1998 film Slam.

The following year he issued File Under Futurism, a joint production with the Freight Elevator Quartet. In 2000 came the collaborative project The Quick and the Dead with Scanner. The widely acclaimed mix CD Under the Influence surfaced the next year, yet the subsequent original album did not arrive until 2002’s Modern Mantra. That same year Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series presented Optometry, a recording uniting Spooky with avant-jazz musicians including William Parker and Matthew Shipp; its remix counterpart, Dubtometry, followed in early 2003.

During 2004 Spooky joined the dub ensemble Twilight Circus for Riddim Clash on Play. He was also invited to remix material from two separate labels that year: a Sub Rosa overview titled Rhythm Science appeared in January, and Thirsty Ear granted him access to its Blue Series for Celestial Mechanix, issued in June. In 2005 Drums of Death, the joint effort with Slayer and Fantômas drummer Dave Lombardo, was released, followed in 2006 by the Spooky-assembled collection 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records. He subsequently reworked selections from the historic reggae imprint’s catalog on the 2007 album Creation Rebel.

Stepping back from recording, Spooky edited the 2008 anthology Sound Unbound, a volume of writings on music and art accompanied by a mix CD issued separately by Sub Rosa. That year he also appeared in FLicKeR, a documentary examining Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine invention. Returning to original studio work, he released The Secret Song in 2009, his first collection of new material in ten years. The set featured contributions from a jazz quartet, a chamber ensemble, pianist Vijay Iyer, Jungle Brothers members and other rappers, lyricist Mike Ladd, and Thurston Moore; it was packaged with a DVD containing his soundtrack to a montage drawn from two of Dziga Vertov’s earliest Russian films.

Two years afterward Spooky performed on composer Anthony Paul de Ritis’s concerto for DJ and symphony orchestra, Devolution. His next undertaking involved reworking the soundtrack to D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation; issued in 2015 as Rebirth of a Nation, the project incorporated a fresh score with input from the Kronos Quartet. In 2018 VP Records issued Spooky’s Phantom Dancehall LP, which included guest appearances by Walshy Fire of Major Lazer and Sanjay along with samples drawn from the label’s catalog.