dst | SOUL OF SYDNEY: Feel-Good FUNK SOUL DISCO & beyond.

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Greetings! We come in peace!

I’m a recent Sydney transplant. Born and raised in Hawaii I have spent most of my adult life in San Francisco (I’ve also lived in San Diego and Chicago). I can be a bit reserved at first, so I thought no better way to introduce myself and tell you about my background than through my record collection. I have been religiously collecting those round discs of plastic since the early/mid 80’s, so we have a lot to cover.

If Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel was what opened my eyes to the world of DJing, then Grandmixer D.ST.‘s “Megamix II: So Why Is It Fresh?” is what caused me to purchase my first pair of turntables. “Megamix II” was a collage of snippets and excerpts of records taken predominately from the genre shattering Celluloid label with some brief flashes of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” thrown in (D.ST.’s first megamix was a similar working of songs mostly taken from Herbie Hancock’s “Future Shock” album as a promotional tool by Columbia to promote Herbie’s album. Here’s another tidbit of useless information – “Rockit” was the first fusion of hip hop and jazz on wax.).

The liner notes on the back of the record listed the equipment used for “Megamix II”, and I remember it being not much more than two turntables, a mixer, some sort of recording device, a couple of keyboards and a drum machine – a perfect example of it’s not what you have, but it’s what you do with what you have.