OCnotes

OC NOTES

Comet Tavern

Tuesday We Saw Him: March 1

By Todd Hamm

Otis Calvin VIII, the talented, on-the-rise producer/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist known as OC Notes, is cueing tracks on his laptop at the Comet Tavern. Tonight his set is buried in the undercard wasteland beneath sleaze-pop princess Lisa Dank, along with a handful of other mixed-genre acts. During most tracks, which jump from softer soul loops to self-crafted acid/bossa nova mixes, he simply stands back and processes the crowd's reaction, his head in a constant nod. Occasionally he leans over his touch pad and flicks a well-placed sample over the crowd's chatter. He exudes an elevated level of cool confidence as he plays his heavily layered instrumentals for the hundred or so in attendance, and despite any real crowd interaction or visual stimulus, people on the floor are dancing manically.

Calvin has quietly amassed an incredible 17 full-length E-projects over the past decade, as well as an assortment of EPs, singles, and remixes unknown to all but the most plugged-in scene hawks. When asked about low-interaction performance, and the difficulties that come with moving from being a mainly instrumental, Internet-style musician to a live performer, he says: "The dope thing about me is that people have no idea what I'm going to do when I perform. Cats don't really know me that well or what I'm capable of," he continues. "Depending on the venue and how much time I have to perform, there's no telling what I might do. Cats are gonna get it, though, the more they see me."

Calvin's local breakthrough of sorts came when he worked with THEESatisfaction for their 2009 holiday track "Icing," which was followed in early 2010 by Dap Confuser, an album-length collaboration with Fresh Espresso MC Rik Rude. Metal Chocolates, another Rude/Calvin full-length, will be out April 1.

While Calvin's continued to make headway into the world of collaboration over the past year and change, he's only recently come into his own as a solo artist. His most accomplished work, 2010's Madlib-styled long-play Doo Doo, with its 21 jazzy hip-hop and blunted neo-soul reworkings, make it clear he's got even more up his sleeve.

"I've got some special stuff in store for the good people here on planet Earth," he says.

music@seattleweekly.com

OC Notes plays Neumos Friday, April 1, with Metal Chocolates. - Seattle Weekly

Rik Rude (whom you know from, among other things, Fresh Espresso) and OC Notes (whom you might remember from the far-flung planet of Awesome) are at last blessing y'all (via the good folks at Out for Stardom) with the rightfully long-anticipated Metal Chocolates album. (Everybody mad at the righteous black space opera that's in such abundance lately should probably go listen to, like, Termanology or something right about now.)

Rik, heeding the call of Notes' Madlib- esque opium-den hypnofunk, spits a pimpishly poetic fine wine, conjuring a low-eyed Sidney Poitier. OC Notes' underrated MCing owes to Oxnard's Madliberator as well—a mumbly, blissed-out stream of funny asides and sticky nugs of stoney profundity. Metal Chocolates' sumptuousness is perhaps the best showcase yet for both talents, and while it's considerably less showy, if all is right in the world, this project will draw all the accolades of Rik's other band. All that said, the release party for Chocolates goes down at Neumos on April Fools' Day—no foolin'—with Truckasauras, Viper Creek Club, and DJs Darwin and 100proof - The Stranger

Seattle hip-hop music has been branching out into different genres in recent years, and inside that general broadening is a vaguely psychedelic thrust, with a handful of groups having a sci-fi or dreamlike aesthetic.

Key players include Champagne Champagne, THEESatisfaction and top-ranking Shabazz Palaces. Now it's time to add Metal Chocolates to the list, the nascent duo comprised of producer/vocalist OC Notes and rapper Rik Rude.

Metal Chocolates' debut self-titled album comes out in waves, starting Friday, the same night the group plays Neumos on Capitol Hill, with Truckasauras and Viper Creek Club.

The most experimental tracks on "Metal Chocolates" are "Pioneer Square Powder" and "Grand Theft Audio," adjoined mood pieces that thrust the listener into a jostling junkie throng, and a frantic episode of "COPS." The former is a dense audio collage of people coughing and sniffing. The latter finds Rude breathlessly narrating a car chase over fast-paced hand drums. By the time those are over, the sleepy guitar of the next track "LFL — Looking For Love" is a welcome respite.

Far from your typical rappity-rap experience, "Metal Chocolates" is inspired by the grimy bustle of downtown Seattle's Pioneer Square and, among other things, the weird utopia of Willy Wonka and the "Chocolate Factory" films (perhaps the inspiration for the duo's name).

Wonka's world figures into the title of the hypnotic "Glass Elevators," and the duo intersperses movie dialogue throughout the album. The 12 tracks incorporate radio theater, stream-of-consciousness soul and loosely arranged rap music into a fusion that doesn't attempt to explain itself, it just is.

The best song is either "Opium of Love," where OC Notes channels Mos Def's jazz-mumble singing style to lusty effect, or "Afro Egypt," a throbbing soul-house number that seems to occur in a darkened aviary, birds chirping, shadows flitting. On "Afro Egypt," Rude raps about kingdoms and eagles in a style that seems like free association, but with too many syllables not to have been written out before. He then rhetorically asks, "Breakers in the building: have you seem 'em?"

The image could mean hip-hop was there — if you saw it.

"Metal Chocolates" will be released gradually, with 100 gift boxes available at Neumos — including a "Metal Chocolates" download, cassette tape, and various art projects such as custom gold chocolate coins. Official online and vinyl albums are planned for next month. - Seattle Times

Two unusual, promising local concerts on Capitol Hill tonight: Slowwave at Havana, and OC Notes at Chop Suey.

Slowwave is from Tacoma, and sounds like Anglophilic modern rock with touches of Americana. Rootsy Radiohead...really! The band is too good to be unknown as it is, and plays Havana tonight for The Rumble, a recurring event that is always free (you have to RSVP), and brings live music to a nightclub that normally hosts DJs. Havana is attractive — high-ceilinged, big-windowed, styled to look like it might be Cuban — and seeing rock bands there is fun. To me, alternative venues in general are fun. After you go to a few hundred concerts in rooms that are basically just black boxes, a change of pace is nice.

Up the street from Havana, OC Notes headlines at Chop Suey. The concert is notable not just for Notes' beautifully unraveled take on soul music, but because the Seattle DJ/producer almost never headlines anything. He mostly DJs at events that are more "get together" than "concert," or between sets at traditional shows. The one time I saw OC Notes do a live set that wasn't strictly DJing, it was an entrancing mix of live sampler playing, keyboards and vocals. Like hiphop, but not. - Seattle Times

The newest album by OC Notes. This is a must have for music lovers. - traxploitation

OC Notes demands our attention at this moment. He is a 25-year-old producer based in Pioneer Square who is on the verge of dropping a significant work of local hiphop—a collaboration with the rapper Rik Rude called Metal Chocolates. Rik Rude, of course, successfully collaborates with P Smoov as Fresh Espresso—the duo's 2009 album Glamour is a local classic, and all signs are pointing to a strong follow-up. Rude and OC Notes have known each other since the middle of the previous decade and started working on the Metal Chocolates project over a year ago. In late September, they had their first show at the Highline, a Capitol Hill vegan bar and restaurant.

Metal Chocolates is not, however, the first Notes/Rude collaboration. That honor belongs to Dap Confuser, an album released at the end of 2009, which is vastly different from the sound and feel of Metal Chocolates. Indeed, it's fair to ask if Dap Confuser is even a hiphop record.
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With Metal Chocolates, we can safely say the music is a part of the tradition. Rude is rapping; Notes is producing beats for a rapper—that project is closed enough to be defined, categorized, and associated with other like-minded projects. Dap Confuser, on the other hand, is wide open—there isn't really any rapping (mostly chanting), the beats aren't hiphop-based, the rhythms and textures are drawn from a variety of sources and traditions. And this is really the main theme in Notes' work: openness. Many of his releases (particularly his instrumentals) present the listener with a sense of being open to almost anything that's out there—genres, sounds, ideas, beat innovations, instruments, samples. At the core of Notes' creativity we find a clearing that's open to experimentation and the production of exotic combinations.

Now, being open is not always a good thing. Any artist can be open, and many artists produce works that are vapidly eclectic—you only have to turn to many of the CDs of the illbient genre of the 1990s to find the truth in this claim. Also, openness—in jazz, techno, and hiphop—often means abandoning the pleasures of the beat for the excruciating freedoms of confusion. This was the direction the Jungle Brothers took on 1993's J Beez Wit the Remedy—the liberation of hiphop expressed as radical beat disassembly (the second part of Remedy was unlistenable). The Brooklyn rapper Sensational also took this complicated and often painful path into beat chaos. There's no joy (or jouissance) in Sensational albums such as 1999's Corner the Market and 2001's Get on My Page.

OC Notes is not about noise or beat deconstruction. His openness does not push music to the point of pain. It's an openness that's never far from the dance, from the swing and sway of things. Dap Confuser has a lot of catchy hooks and no defining center, and it freely roams the world—we hear some Nigerian highlife ("Lately Times"), some Brazilian samba ("Buddy Guy House"), some North London broken beat ("Stutter Step"), some Central European new wave ("Danny Glover in the '80s"), and a touch of Philly soul ("Listeners Block"). Each track has no real direction, no narrative structure; the music starts, the music happens (synths shine, drums rumble, galactic sounds fall in and out of the beat, Rik Rude comes in and out of the mist), the music ends.

Metal Chocolates are not nearly as open. The rapper and producer work within a more restricted program that unifies all of the tracks into a distinct feeling. "Afro Egypt," for example, feels very built, though not with ordinary materials. Poetic associations link the rhymes, which suggest a number of wonderful imaginings: global desires ("We love ladies from London, Brazil, to Israel"), the Afrocentric fantasies of Shabazz Palaces ("I see kingdoms"), and b-boy mysticism ("There be breakers in the building/Have you seen 'em?"). The beat thumps, and strange birdcalls fill the oriental air. This is a trip down an electric Nile. A trip that has a beginning, a middle, and, with a majestic flourish, an end.

On October 31, OC Notes and Rik Rude appeared on KEXP's Street Sounds for a live performance. They revealed a batch of new tracks, my favorite of which, "Candy Store Controller," is a haze of strings and opiumlike enchantments. The host of Street Sounds, Stranger columnist Larry Mizell Jr., rated the performance as one of his favorite in-studios "by far." That praise is not surprising. OC Notes is a creative force, and his radical openness—the fact that nothing is alien to his imagination, and that this imagination can synthesize these bits and pieces of music from everywhere into the delicious and often erotic tracks—reflects a hiphop that has less and less to do with place and more and more to do with the placeles - The Stranger

It lasts for some 30 minutes, it's a molten mix of jazz and some soul, some of it is a mess but some of it is pure genius...
Dope fiend jazz by Rudenotes.

OC Notes is keeping hiphop's jazz dream, which began in the early 90s and declined in the mid 90s, alive and viable. - The Stranger

Let’s get something important out of the way: OC Notes is a genius. He’s one of the more underrated producers and music figures in Seattle at the moment and that deserves to change because he’s out-hustling and out-thinking most of his competition. When he’s not working with the THEESatisfaction camp as a Black Power Arranger or with Rik Rude in their Metal Chocolate’s configuration, he’s a solid selector as well. He recently DJ’d a set at Hidmo two Friday’s ago and was smart enough to record it all. Check it out below. And if no one has made the Madlib comparison yet, let me go ahead and stick it out there. OC Notes is the closest thing Seattle has to Madlib when it comes to creating new music that’s partially recycled from old music. Interestingly enough, they’re both named Otis. Discuss. Also, can anybody with a keen eye name the martyred revolutionary on his t-shirt? - Last Nights Mixtape

The OK Hotel has a long history. It was built in 1910 and was a hotel until the 1950s. In the late 1980s, Steve Freeborn and Tia Matthies turned it into a restaurant and music venue that hosted performances by the giants of grunge (Nirvana, Hammerbox, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone—Pearl Jam's first incarnation). It was also the scene of a lot of ska activity, led by the band Monkey Business. On February 28, 2001, a powerful earthquake knocked the building out of business. The place was closed, and Freeborn and Matthies relocated to the Rendezvous. In 2004, a developer rehabilitated the building, and it now offers living spaces and studios for artists. All well and good. But the interesting and unexpected thing (even more unexpected than the earthquake) is this: The basement of the OK Hotel is now becoming the center of local hiphop production.

It did not happen all at once, but gradually. The first hiphop producer to move there was the DJ and hiphop entrepreneur Audeos, who is 25 and a native (he grew up in Lake Hills). "I moved here in 2004, after they remodeled the place," says Audeos. "I had a regular apartment upstairs and made beats in the basement." DJ Audeos set up a studio where he recorded a variety of underground acts and released a series of compilations of mostly obscure artists. Audeos called the studio 206-HOP Sweatshop. "The name has to do with the fact that it gets really hot down there. There are no windows. Even in the winter it's hot. I don't know why. I think it's the ghosts. The old grunge bands used to play in that building. Their ghosts are keeping the place hot."
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After establishing the studio, Audeos partnered with Gabriel Teodros and OC Notes. "I started fucking with the Seattle cats when I was 17, when I first came to town," OC Notes explains as he plays some tracks he produced for Rik Rude, the rapper for Fresh Espresso, one of P Smoov's two main projects (the other being Mad Rad)—everything is connected in this city. "I came from Maryland," Notes continues. "My father is in the military. And so I bounced around and ended up in Seattle. I would go by Westlake and see these cats breaking and freestyling. I met Rik Rude, Specs, and I'm getting down with everyone. I met Audeos, who was the first cat down here. He let me in and we started sharing half of the studio." In 2007, OC Notes, who is 23, moved to Arizona for family reasons and studied sound engineering there. He returned in October 2008 and resumed his partnership with Audeos.

Before OC Notes moved to Arizona, a strange thing happened at 206-HOP Sweatshop. "We were just down here one day, doing our thing, and there was a knock at door," he explains. "I opened it, and there he was—Vitamin D. He had just moved in and heard the music in our studio and was curious to see who was making beats." Vitamin D moving into the building was like a Nordstrom store moving into a small mall: He brought gravity to the location. The Pharmacy, the name of his studio, had a long and rich history in the Central District. Every rapper in town mentioned the place with religious reverence. If you were serious about making hiphop, that was the place to go. For the Pharmacy to move from the Central District to the heart of Pioneer Square is not a minor shift. Its cultural implications are so significant that it necessitates a reevaluation of both neighborhoods. A Central District without the Pharmacy is not the same as a Central District with the Pharmacy. The same can be said about Pioneer Square.

"I had heard about Vitamin D since I started making music in town," says OC Notes. "That's the dude everyone knew. And I'm coming up producing music, going to shows, getting closer and closer to this dude's circle. He is at a level I want to reach. I'm down here; he is up there. I'm trying to get up there. Then, boom, there he is at my door... It was one of those moments."

"The Pharmacy was the hub of so much that was born in this city," says Monk Wordsmith of the Physics, who also have a studio in the OK basement. "But now he is here. It's kind of cool, 'cause you see all of these people going in and out of his place." When the Physics moved in a year ago, the basement became an official center of local hiphop. "There is definitely a number of artists who pass through here," explains Thig Natural. "Macklemore, Blue Scholars. Everyone got the word about the place and comes down to record or hang out." When asked why the Physics moved here in the first place, Justo answers: "It's only 300 bucks. Less distractions. No phones work down here. The internet connection is not good. You can do work."

The Physics' studio has an MPC2000XL, a Moog, an ASR 10 sampler, and a computer that stores rather - The Stranger

Before we get Metal Chocolates, Otis & Rik hit us with this completely freestyle creation:

Visualize......

Its another rainy day in the square. Rude and Notes walk the back alleys to the murder mart to pick up a sweet and some of the finest pois-ons the city has to offer before returning to the laboratory. The sweet gets rolled, the cork pops, the machines get turned on. An agreement has been made. Today our scientists have decided to try a new experiment in spoken word and electronic African rhythms. One take, free form, freestyle, jazz. This is pioneer square....Dope Fiend Jazz.

The L gets blazed. Rude steps in the booth, OC gets on the pads. The record button gets pushed. No pens, no paper, no pre made beats. This is Live improvisation. New experiments in space and time. Dope Fiend Jazz. - Raindrop Hustla

Not the first remix of King Louie's "I Wanna Be Like You" (Coldcut did one using the Funky Drummer beat"), but the swing beat in this one is infectious. - Mashups Unlimited

What's wafting out of that Pioneer Square sewer grate?

Why, it's "Dope Fiend Jazz," a 35-minute improv jam by producer OC Notes and vocalist Rik Rude.

Recorded downtown on Christmas day, 2010, the piece is named after Pioneer Square's many junkies.

The basic composition is OC Notes playing old jazz records, then freely transitioning into on-the-fly hiphop and back again, splicing in bits of movie dialogue. As the music morphs, Rik Rude scats, paints city scenes, gives life advice.

Moments crystallize when OC Notes plays just the right song, or instigates an original beat that makes your head nod. Rik Rude's chatterbox description of a local mini mart seems central to the project: a "murder mart" swarming with addicts, "butane in their veins."

OC Notes describes "Dope Fiend Jazz" as "a new experiment in spoken word and electronic African rhythms."

He and Rik Rude made a soul-house record last year called "Dap Confuser," and are expected to release an album together this year under the name Metal Chocolates. Also in 2011, Rik Rude will release a sophomore album with his electro-hiphop group Fresh Espresso, which he co-fronts with producer P Smoov. - The Seattle Times

I had never heard of oc notes until moving to the city, honestly he has become one of my favorite producers right off the first bandcamp peep. Every track on here will be something you’ve never heard before- that in itself creates another element of fun to listening, aside the creative use of samples (mostly meaning vocal).

This doesn’t mean his melody samples are any less unique, not only are the sounds unique themselves (as in seemingly non average)- but the drums are equally as unique. - Hip Hop Northwest

Fresh Espresso are currently Seattle’s most remixed hip-hop group. From the FileJerks’ hyperactive remix of “Diamond Pistols” to Thrills’ house music redux of “Big or Small” and “Vader Rap”, FE producer aficionados have club heads bleeding-out all over dance floors across Seattle. Rik and P are even making it mercifully easy for these nerds with the acapella release of Glamour — it’s all about ready…set…REMIX, and SSG appreciates them dudes for encouraging the DIY-spirit.

The most ambitious undertaking, however, comes courtesy of do-it-all production virtuoso, OC Notes. His Coffee Beans…The Glamour ReWorks is a complete and utter re-imagining of Fresh Espresso’s now seminal debut. Listening to it is like stumbling down a dimly-lit hallway, where sobriety is possibly compromised and every room you pass is a doorway into trip-hop psychedelia and fuzzed-out experimental music of Fresh Espresso’s original Glamour. It’s worth the trip, readers. And best of all, it’s free. Here are a couple tracks: - SSG

Seattle producer/vocalist OCnotes just released his "Doo Doo" album for free download, and I recommend you take him up on the offer.

Notes is sort of like Seattle's Mos Def and Madlib rolled into one, a feeler and recycler of many musics, an amateur in the devotee/admirer sense of the word. "Doo Doo" finds him nagivating all kinds of in-between spaces, honing a distinctive blend of house, hiphop, electro and soul that flows through 21 tracks like a dream made from other artists' dreams that they dreamt in previous decades. And if that sounds high-minded, look at the cover.

Side note: I'd been writing "OC Notes," but now realize Notes spells his name "OCnotes" (when he's not calling himself "Linus Aristotle," that is). I regret the error. - The Seattle Times

Every time I get an email from Otis Calvin AKA OC Notes, it contains a series of music that puts to shame every other email full of music I’ve received all month. The email I got this morning is no different. It’s the type of music that you just need to listen to in full in order to comprehend. No pre-listen write-up will do it justice. Hence, here are the words straight from Otis’ mouth.

The unplanned genius of human error is taken for granted in these times. Dope Fiend Jazz was performed and recorded live by OCnotes & Rik Rude on christmas day for a ghost audience. Take what you will from this experiment because at the end of the day we are the scientists of sound, we truly enjoy the process. Ladies and gentleman….Dope Fiend Jazz. - Last Nights Mixtape

Seattle's OC Notes is a young musician with a smooth, soulful, synth-heavy sound that recalls Helladope's Tay Sean, yet OC Notes is unafraid to tackle the dancefloor with his sexy Afrobeat/house rhythms, resulting in a considerably unique and exciting sound for the Pacific Northwest. Rick Rude (also of Fresh Espresso) appears on five tracks, creating a futuristic soul/R&B/hip-hop fusion reminiscent of The Sa-Ra Creative Partners, while OC Notes' instrumental tracks are deep enough to reach the crates of German DJ/producer Henrik Schwarz. 4/16/2010 -Alex - 90.3 KEXP

I snagged this album from local producer OCnotes (originally from Maryland) a few months back in August when it was released, but it’s Dilla-esque density and spacified rabbit-hole experimentalism has only begun to sink in. That is to say, it’s probably the best hip hop record to come out of the Rain City this year. It ain’t Mad Rad, it ain’t Shabazz, it ain’t even THEESatisfaction (3 groups I highly respect/recommend), but it is 21 digable tracks of contemplative, patched-up soul, hip hop and R&B. A lo-fi electrofunk stream of consciousness Madlib would be proud of. His unearthing gets bonus points for sound bites of George Jetson’s car and the late great Vincent Price.

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Need some go-to tracks? Hit up “Joy”, “Lover”, “Retro-Grade Motion”, or “You Can Never (Break My Heart)”. You can grab the entire thing for free over on his bandcamp page. Or just hang out here and listen. Want some cookies? Somethin’ to drink? How ’bout a big fat bowl to burn while you let this record get in ya head? - Seattle Subsonic

Been skimming the various instrumental projects Seattle based OCnotes has dropped and although a bit noizey and off-kilter it’s somehow more interesting than most electro-spaced sounds I come across. Can’t put my finger on why exactly. This is one song from an instrumental ep titled Juice. Same project also has a slower one called That Purple Stuff that of course outros with Dave Chappelle.
- Grand Good

Plenty to love in this little piece of Seattle hiphop brilliance by producer OC Notes and rapper Rik Rude (also of Fresh Espresso):

-The way OC Notes plays muscular, hyperactive drums against a slowed, ambling guitar/marimba sample. What a strange swing he achieves.

-The way Rik Rude waterfalls through his choruses and verses, repeating words whenever he wants, tumbling over the beat. Such a musical rapper.

-The content of Rik's lyrics, which adds up to "don't fall in love with money, and don't spend more than you save." Can't hear that sentiment echoed enough these days, when we're all poor.

-The way how, after Rik's first verse, you can hear OC Notes say, "Whoooo! That's it, bro!" Notes does the same thing in concert, too, vocally congratulates artists on stage with him when they do something he likes. - The Seattle Times

On Wednesday, January 26, hit up Neumos and check the debut performance of Shaprece, whom you might've seen/heard with Gran Rapids, Fresh Espresso, and State of the Artist. She's doing her thing as part of "I'm Coming Out," a Cafe Society event also featuring the most excellent Fly Moon Royalty (formerly Sugar Water Purple) and DJ Action Jackson. All I got to say is check for Shaprece's "Lift," produced by Gran Rapids' Jay Battle; that is some vintage neo-soul with a modern twist. I'm loving this new crop of female talent in the mix, man, and so should you if you know what's good for you. Add to the list of what's bueno: the new, free online release from OC Notes and Rik Rude (the sparkling grease-drops of their all-improv Dope Fiend Jazz), M.I.A.'s Vicki Leekx mixtape (fuck a blogger backlash), and Ghostface's Apollo Kids (which is the best GFK since The Pretty Toney). See? Still hope. recommended - The Stranger