Lucid Music

Artist Information

Biography

Lucid Music didn’t officially become a group until the winter month of December 2005. Before then it was just two friends making music strictly for the fun of it. They met while working at the same dead end retail store. Warren was an emcee from Long Beach California who had moved to Pittsburgh in 1999 to attend school and take care of his elderly grandmother. Marcus was a Chicago transplant who would freestyle in his grandmother’s basement while working towards a degree in business administration.

With a makeshift studio located in his grandmother’s attic, Warren began recording with Marcus. Soon after Marcus joined the army, bought his own recording equipment and returned the favor by recording with Warren during his return visits from his station in Iraq. One of these recording sessions produced a song that inspired the two emcees to collaborate on a full length album to be completed after Marcus’s tour of duty. It wasn’t until the album, entitled “ WAKE UP”, was finished that the duo came up with the name Lucid Music. Music to make it’s listener aware.

A local variety show promoter hooked Lucid Music up with their first performance. Based on the strength of that one show, Lucid Music were invited to perform by promoters and local acts for the next year and a half, never having to book their own gigs. They sold homemade cd’s and with the help of Pittsburgh hiphop group The Dreadnots gained distribution in Japan.

Shortly after recording their second album, “ HOW CAN WE LOSE WHEN WE’RE SO SINCERE?”, Lucid Music met Dr Jones, a veteran deejay and hiphop promoter. The trio instantly bonded over their love of true school hiphop and began to collaborate. With the addition of live mixing and scratching into their shows, Lucid Music continued to perform throughout the city receiving airplay from radio stations WRCT and WYEP. Lucid Music stood out from other local hiphop acts because of their positive message, profanity free lyrics, and the fact that they were the only group with an actual vinyl spinning deejay. In the fall of 2007, Lucid Music finished their third record, an ep entitled “THEY’RE NOT READY”.

The Lucid Music sound is inspired by the hiphop it’s members grew up on. The lyrics are positive and profanity free allowing the group to perform for audiences of all ages. Jazz, rock and funk samples are used to create what can only be described as “ that old boom bap”: uptempo drums, thick basslines, melodic horns and piano. Turntablism also plays an important part of not only their sound but a live show as well.

As of may 08 Lucid music has international distribution through Root70lounge.com, a japanese indie label. all of our releases can be found on junodownload.com as well as itunes japan.

In early April, Lucid music released their fourth studio album entitled " THE ADVENTURES OF THE INVISBLE BAND". Lucid music also recently recorded a psa which can be heard at poisonfree.org,a site devoted to empowering the community's youth.The organization has extended a clothing sponsership to Lucid muisc and have employed the trio to perform at various schools that specialize in helping young adults who are at risk.Lucid music also had their song ''showtime" featured in an independent movie called ''american macho buddha".it can be seen at this link.www.wiredcinema.com/mdb/american-macho-buddha/ or google it.its good
In 2010 Lucid music signed a distribution deal with legendary indie label Bombhiphop records for the re release of "the adventures of the invisible band" album now available on iTunes.The album was selected as handpick of the week by the staff at indiethink.com
http://digital.thinkindie.com/stores.php?playlist_id=298

Lucid music just released their fifth album entitled "Rockit Science" which is released under their own label,Nat Turner records.
for info and booking contact lucidmusic06@hotmail.com

Instrumentation

Marcus-emcee/production
Warren-emcee/production
stephen-turntables/production

Discography

Rockit Science LP ( July 28th 2012 )
Wake up LP (2005)
How Can We Lose When We're So Sincere ? LP (2006)(root70lounge.com)
They're Not Ready EP (2007)(root70lounge.com)
The Adventures Of The Invisible Band LP(2009) (root70lounge.com)
The Adventures Of The Invisible Band-redux ( 2010) (bombhiphop)
Tracks from all four albums can be heard on 88.3(wrct) and 92.3(wyep)
as well as Trueschoolradio.com, idleminds.com,phatroot radio and tablist.net

Official Website

http://www.lucidmusicwakeup.blogspot.com/

Links

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Last.fm
• bandcamp

Audio

• Instant Love
  Listen  
• Bringing it back
  Listen  
• The Breaks
  Listen  
• Thankful
  Listen  
• Keep Pedaling
  Listen  

Video

showtime " VIDEO "

Photo Gallery

Press

• Lucid Music Fifth Album Recounts It's Origins [+ Show ]
  

  The art started one day out of the blue He met the brother and knew something about him was true ...The art started one day out of the blue
  He met the brother and knew something about him was true
  
  Lucid Music began years before the duo — Warren Parker and Marcus Vaughn — knew they were Lucid Music. In the early 2000s, the Pittsburgh transplants (Parker, born here, had grown up in Long Beach, Calif., and Vaughn was from Chicago) met through work, at a dollar store. They realized they both liked to make hip-hop music, and began writing together. But in 2003, Vaughn shipped off with the Army, doing a year-long tour of duty in Iraq.
  
  "You were able to take a couple things with you — people brought their guitars and things," Vaughn remembers. "I brought the beat machine I had; I couldn't record songs, but I could write. That's pretty much all I did: write. "
  
  Upon returning to Pittsburgh, he took back up with Parker. They began working on an album, but had never played live.
  
  "Around that time, we used to hang out at the Pittsburgh Deli Company, at their hip-hop night on Saturday," recalls Parker. "And a guy came up and said, ‘Are you guys rappers?' I guess we looked like we rapped or something."
  
  He turned out to be a promoter who put on a variety-style show: hip-hop acts, bands, singer-songwriters, performers of all sorts. He gave Lucid Music its first show, in 2005, on a bill with a variety of acts, not all rappers.
  
  Booked twice a week, the merch table told us
  We put 'em on notice whether they did or didn't know us
  So it's on, rockin' spots where hip hop's not heard
  
  Perhaps it was because of that beginning — a show at the Deli Company, with a diverse bunch of artists — that Lucid Music was open to playing venues that weren't known as hip-hop hotbeds.
  
  "We've been performing at the Smiling Moose since 2005," says Parker. "Now, you see a hip-hop show at the Smiling Moose, it's not out of the ordinary. But when we were doing it, there was no hip-hop night or anything. If we weren't the first [hip-hop act to play the Moose], we were the first to do it on a regular basis."
  
  2010's The Adventures of the Invisible Band was Lucid Music's fourth album — and included turntablist Dr. Jones, who spun with the pair for five years, until earlier this year. After being released by Japanese label Root70lounge, it was distributed by Bomb Hip-Hop, a Los Angeles label associated with Blackalicious and Cut Chemist, among others.
  
  It just so happened that we caught the ears of one man
  And it was Dave Paul, of Bomb Hip-Hop
  Which later led to a redux of Invisible being dropped
  Got more props, increased the stock, more spots got rocked
  But still through all of this, locally unknown
  And from the local scene no love was shown
  
  You might say that Lucid Music doesn't identify with the rise of Pittsburgh hip hop that we've all heard about in the past few years.
  
  "I don't even know if we're in that!" Vaughn says with a laugh.
  
  "They know us at the Shadow Lounge, all that," says Parker. "We just don't feel like we necessarily have to stay in one lane. Shadow Lounge is dope because it's probably the one venue [in Pittsburgh] that caters to hip hop first. But I feel like no venue should cater to any one type. It should be any kind of music."
  
  Compared with the young Pittsburgh hip-hop scene, the duo's sound is old-school. A Lucid Music track might take one sample and repeat it on loop or the entire song, creating a comforting background over which the two make sometimes-complex rhymes. The two both look up to lyricists from the golden age of hip hop.
  
  "We may differ on who we think as the best," says Vaughn. "I think he's leaning more toward Rakim; me, I like Big Daddy Kane."
  
  The two nearly always produce their own beats; most of the time, they mine old soul records. ("I'm pretty sure all of our tracks have been made off records we bought at Jerry's," Parker says.)
  
  "We kind of feel like we let the lyrics do the work," says Vaughn. "With the beat, we don't want to have too much going on, to take away from what we're saying."
  
  The duo's latest, Rockit Science, features nine tracks, dealing largely with life as musicians — including the autobiographical track "Origin," excerpted here. But they write about writing, not writing about fancy cars and bling.
  
  "We make music for artists in general," says Parker. "Artists who are going through the struggle of trying to juggle their art and the financial part: How much time do you dedicate to it?"
  
  "For me, I don't got a lot of glamour to really talk about anyway," adds Vaughn. "But I want people to know that we're just regular people that go through the things that y'all go through, too. We hate our jobs, we've gotta get up every day like everyone else."
  

• Jamestown NY show review [+ Show ]
  

  ''Not since the days of the Native Tongues Posse have we run across hip-hop that sounds as true to i...''Not since the days of the Native Tongues Posse have we run across hip-hop that sounds as true to its soul and jazz roots as Lucid Music. Two self-described b-boys (haven’t heard that one in a stretch either) from the burgh we like to call Pitts, Lucid Music makes old Yo! MTV Raps geeks like us smile from ear to ear. Content warning: this is no mere retro. It’s rhyme and beat in the lineage of the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, De La, etcetera.'' - WORD ( local paper in jamestown ny)
  

Setlist

1)Three Twenty
2)Invisible
3)Bringing It Back
4)High Noon
5)Showtime
6)Art N Soul (remix)
7)The Road Less Traveled(remix)

Basic Requirements

Calendar