Last time I ran into Rob Swift, I heard him before I saw him coming. I was at the steadily growing All Points West festival and I heard some other kinda scratching and cutting’ coming out of a sponsor tent and I knew could it not possibly be just some dude who’d asked his girl to hold his grilled corn while he tried his hand at the open decks…and when I entered the tent there he was, doing what — as I’ve said before — every great artist does: playing his heart out no matter the venue or the size. Rob will be playing more than a few sizable venues when he hits the road this year and we’ll be posting his down-for-whatever tour diary entries and road videos. I’ll also be posting an on-cam oral history from Rob Swift, shot in his NY studio. In the meantime, here’s the full stream of The Architect, which goes from the gloriously sludgey to the crisp and agile (fuck my adjectives, listen for yourself — I liked movement #2 in the mid-album triptych ) with a nice mix of classic noir, full-on strings melodrama, pipe-organ creepiness and some masterfully understated scratching. There are simply not enough quality turntablist albums out these days, so it’s beautiful to see a return to form here. I’m expecting Rob to get even deeper on his next work, which will likely see him take his oft-stated predilection for jazzy re-constructs to another level.
FULL ALBUM STREAM: Rob Swift’s The Architect
Two and a half minutes of hot and fast vintage Latin Jazz, rhythmically enhanced by Rob Swift — check the crossfader porn at 1:40
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