June 10-16, 2004

music

Mission Control

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Philly DJ/producer Dev79 gets organized.

by Andrew Parks

Cocaine as currency and a bar brawl straight out of a Steven Seagal screenplay — a typical night at Atlas if you ask Gair Marking, aka DJ/producer Dev79. So typical he turns his mixer up and tosses on a heavy pressing of the corrosive, jarring Venetian Snares. It's an odd score for a bloody scene, especially considering the guy cowering under a nearby table who waits for the crashing glass to turn into the pop-pop-pop of gunshots.

"I played that just to be an asshole," Marking recalls while sitting at a table at Old City Coffee. "That was one of the worst places I ever played, with lots of real nasty miscreants."

That nightmare residency is now but a blip along Marking's mercurial rise in Philadelphia, which peaked in 2002 with the closing of his celebrated stay at Aqualounge. Slipstate was one of the first monthlies to fuse hip-hop with the dub/IDM/drill 'n' bass fringes of electronic music. On any given night, Marking could be seen hovering over a glowing Powerbook, turntables, synths, drum machines, effects pedals and even the occasional accordion. Given the mixed media, it was a hard sell at first, made even harder by the then-un-gentrified corner of Third and Girard.

"The first time I saw him spin I was like, 'What the … ?' But I could tell he wasn't an average producer," says Carl Milbourne Jr., better known as Carl Kavorkian of the Jam Faction collective. "He adds effects and tweaks the sound in an innovative way that I wouldn't think of."

Such skills aren't sharpened overnight. But before Marking touched a turntable, he picked up the standard teenage angst accessory, the rock guitar. In his senior year of high school, he used it for the industrial project Deviant Clouds, a fitting middle ground between his Bloodlet and Coalesce collection and his mounting stack of experimental electronic records. Marking was the group's Trent Reznor. It's not hard to imagine his Skinny Puppy side when scanning his floppy black bangs, thick sideburns, lip piercing and Donnie Darko-baby face. But his claim of being a "dark, moody bastard" is surprising, at least in a conversation punctuated with smiles and a half-chuckle.

"I have this secret yearning to scream in a hardcore band," he says, pointing at a pin on his messenger bag from the dirge-metal band Isis. "I'm really a hair-trigger bitch, but I'm too intelligent and business savvy to beat the shit out of people. I'm 28 and don't have health insurance, so I can't get sued."

Marking's brooding character clearly projected itself while he explored grounds as a poet/musician/writer/filmmaker/artist at Rowan University.

"Gair was not exactly like other students," says Rowan professor Jerome Spencer, who later hired Marking as a research assistant. "He tended more toward the artistic than others. His writing, as I recall, was very good."

It turns out Marking was a writer before a musician, often self-publishing poetry or scribbling lyrics. At Rowan, his words lent themselves to film, usually falling into the realm of head-scratching existentialism, far removed from the slapstick Chaplin pastiches of his classmates.

"There were only a handful of progressive, art-minded kids," he says. "So I made my films partly to fuck with people. Some intense, serious, sick, surreal, violent shit."

How surreal and sick, you say? Try a black-and-white-shaded trilogy reel revolving around mimes, murder, obsession and jealously. The brazen sexuality and masochism of the clips caused quite a stir when shown to students and parents, but Marking received accolades for his ability to burn powerful, pointed images into the retina.

The same can be said for his songwriting as Dev79, a guise he adopted in 1999 after dropping the camera for a sampler. Early cuts took on an ambient, lost-in-space feel, the sort of blackhearted music you switch on with a pair of high-end headphones. A transition to damaged hip-hop is heard on his untitled 2002 7-inch for the Sonicterror label. On the A-side, "Ellipsis," Star Trek portals shimmer and fade over sounds that sputter, stutter and clang. On the flip, "Viscousity," lethargic beats beg for 45-rpm treatment and a flatlining copy machine asks for a tuneup.

The 2003 EP Distinct Stance (Zenapolae) takes the formula even further, going so far as to brand itself "broken math noise hop" in lower-case graffiti. UFO effects battle with heavy-as-hell bass lines and broken breakbeats, while strings and horns are alternately strangled and run through a paper shredder. The appearance of Slug Crumbs' Random is a nod to Marking's current goal, an artist album of guest MCs. It's the next logical progression for a producer caught somewhere between DJ Spooky, Prefuse 73 and Aphex Twin.

"I like certain segments of IDM, but I don't identify with the sound or ideology," he says. "It feels nerdy to me because it focuses on hyperprocessing the high hat for 17 hours. I love twisting out sounds, but I'm not going to spend 20 hours on a minute detail."

Marking has a cache of "hot tracks" resting on his hard drive (a burned disc of several new songs sounds like something Definitive Jux would put out), but he's waiting for the right label. For now, he has 7-inch splits planned with the Seattle label Noise Liberation Army and the German ragga/breakcore label Sozialistischer Plattenbau.

In no way connected to the latter is this week's show from progressive German laptop technicians Funkstörung. It's the latest appearance of Marking's quarterly _current party at Silk City. He's promoted monthlies at the lounge for more than a year since ending Slipstate and starting his design/production/marketing company Seclusiasis.

"I think it's the best club in the city," he says. "It has this opium den grittiness to it, but it's not a scumbag place, it's a happy medium."

A happy departure from sawed-off pool cues and split knuckles, at least. As for the switch from Slipstate to the multi-faceted front of Seclusiasis: Chalk it up to the tried-and-true DIY career path.

"I can do so much more if I am intelligent about it and make sure my business is in check," he says. "People don't think like that, especially when you're younger and it's all about 'fuck the establishment, fuck being organized, let's just be punk.'

"I'm decent at music now, so I'm semi-confident and semi-arrogant," he adds with a wink and laugh.

If only he could hear the giddy reaction of Funkstörung's Michael Fakesch when played some raw mixes of Marking's hip-hop tracks over the phone.

"That's really good, actually. That's what I like: electronics combined with hip-hop. Don't you like it?" he asks, laughing.

Sure, but why do you?

"It has funk and it kicked me in the ass with the groove, which, in the end, is the most important thing."

_current_ presents Funkstörung, Dev79, Kenneth Masters & DJ Cramske, Nintariman, Jam Faction and At Work, Sun., Jun. 13, $12, 21+, Silk City Lounge, Fifth and Spring Garden sts., 215-592-8838, www.seclusiasis.com for info.