| Interview:Z-Trip |
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 Scene Magazine | Z-TRIP When he's not touring the globe as a superstar DJ, you can find Z-Trip at your local Democratic National Convention spinning tunes in support of Barack Obama. Or you know, at home doing a spot of housework. To be honest, it is a little weird catching DJs like Z-Trip at home being all domestic. Although it's ridiculous, it's easy to expect DJs to lead consistently cool lives, like hanging out with their MacBooks in airport lounges, going shopping for new sneakers, waiting for Chuck D to come over to work on the latest collaboration or something like that. But when we called Z-Trip on the eve of him flying down here for Big Day Out, the LA-via-Phoenix turntablist was at home vacuuming and washing the dishes. “I'm in Los Angeles,” says Z-Trip, real name Zach Sciacca. “This is going to sound really lame, but I'm cleaning my house because my mum and my wife's mum are coming over for Christmas. I've been out on the road the whole year and now is the time that I'm home, and I'm realising the place is just trashed!” For the uninitiated, Z-Trip is pretty well regarded as the originator and king of the mash-up movement. He's been putting out highly collectible mix-tapes for years now, with his 2005 major label debut 'Shifting Gears' receiving Rolling Stone's highest honor. That album also included a dream list of collaborators, including Supernatural, Lyrics Born, Aceyalone, Chester Bennington, Soup from Jurassic 5 and Chuck D from Public Enemy. (Z-Trip is annoyed he missed out on seeing Public Enemy at BBQ Beats on New Years Day: “Shit! We're going to miss them! I always miss Chuck! We're always like two weeks off of each other!”) While he played a shitload of shows in 2008, Z-Trip found himself focused on a different kind of mission - passionately campaigning for Barack Obama through DJing fundraising parties. “It was basically the last couple of months leading up to the election, the last maybe three months,” he says. “I was really hitting it pretty hard. I spun at the Democratic National Convention and I spun at some fundraisers, and we spun on election night when they had the party in LA - the official Obama party! It was really great; we went on right after the acceptance speech. It was incredible.” In addition to this, Z-Trip also fashioned up a 40-minute 'Obama Mix' which features some of Obama's speech flow over some dope beats, and put it up for free on his website. Within a couple of weeks of putting it up, the mix had been downloaded over 100,000 times. “To me, that was the epitome of how I could say what I felt needed to be said, in a way that people could digest in a different way. I mean, you know, the speeches lose people. People's attention spans are so short and some of those speeches are 15 minutes long, and it's like he's saying so much really incredible shit, and you have to, in the mix, grab the sound bites that really encapsulate what he's trying to say. And I think if you put that over a song that is saying the same thing, you end up with a message that really resonates, you know?” So don't freak out when you hear Barack Obama's voice pounding out across the Gold Coast Parklands at the Big Day Out in a few weeks time - it just means that Z-Trip is on stage. Your best bet will be to get yourself over to his set quick smart - last time he was down here, the man dropped a pure party set that included everything from Johnny Cash to Public Enemy, Oasis, Rage Against the Machine, AC/DC and A Tribe Called Quest. He's looking forward to getting down here and doing it all again - once he's finished with the housework that is. “I always have a good time in Australia. I love the people out there and the energy. The music scene is really on point.” Miss Ward Z-Trip is playing all Big Day Out shows, including Gold Coast on Sunday January 18. Z-Trip also plays The Step Inn January 17. Get down on his Obama mix right here: djztrip.com/obama . |
| Last Updated on Monday, 12 January 2009 08:07 |