"
Rhyece O’Neill is an intense young man. A polemical folk singer, a producer of bass-heavy dance music, a protester, and a digital media worker for a major record label. He’s unlike anyone else in Australia’s dubstep landscape."
Cyclic Defrost interviews O'Neill, aka
electronic/dub/dubstep producer Westernsynthetics, and head of the
Sub Continental Dub label. You can skip the rest and hear
two streaming mixes from Westernsynthetics,
19 tracks from the Sub Continental Dub label, plus
the label's first three singles, or continue inside for background, context, and even more music.
Raised on Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Hendrix, and Zappa, O'Neill joined a punk band with strong political views, then shifted to the electro and drum'n'bass scenes in the early 2000s, through which he found dubstep in 2005. All the while, he kept busking for money, playing covers of Dylan and Neil Young, and even wrote
his own folk music, including a song about the
Yorta Yorta people.
New Fuse was one of Westernsynthetics first songs, written in 2006 and sent to various DJs for support, but only released online in the last year. In the next few years, he formed his own small label to promote like-minded Australian musicians, including
Josh Lamaro aka
Spherix (SUBDUB001),
Rick Bull aka
Deepchild (SUBDUB 003). Both of those singles, plus Westernsynthetics Engine No.999,
which was nominated in the 'Best Instrumental Composition' category in the Australian Songwriters Association Awards, are streaming on
an archived view of the label's discography page.
Westernsynthetics' debut album was released on 10.10.10, entitled
May Day Radio, a mix of dubstep, techno, and downtempo hi-hop.
The album is streaming on Soundcloud, and the first single from the album,
The Machine, has a murky, abstract video (YouTube; also on
Vimeo). The track features samples of
Mario Savio, from
his speech on the steps Sprout Hall as
part of the
Free Speech Movement from 1964-65 (
previously).
If you still want more of the dub techno/dubstep sound,
here's two hours of mixes, and
here's the tracklist for the Void live mix (the .ZIP download link is dead, though).
If you're looking for something else,
Rhyece interviewed b.i.n.t., (scroll down past the bit on sampling drums), and linked to
a streaming track and
a free breakcore album to download. If you keep scrolling down past the interview, you'll get to the free electrical storm breaks that Rhyece recorded in Germany (
Free Sound Project previously,
twice).
But if breakcore isn't your thing, you can
stream postrock-type tracks and mixes from Gentleforce Soundcloud, or
his album POWWOW Nine on Bandcamp, which
Rhyece supports.
posted by J0 at 1:24 PM on February 27