Danger Dope
Danger Dope is a project of DJ Rencong, a native of Aceh province in the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Started in 2005 and today based in Jakarta, it is a project of hip-hop, instrumental, soul, funk, jazz, and post dubstep, which he combined with sound bites from movies, talk shows, conversations, and many other things into music he refers to as a sound collage.
Indiefonica: Tell us a little bit about Danger Dope…
DJ Rencong: I played music like Jazz, soul, funk in my first band; we call it Angkatan Udara (Air Force – editor). I play music with my walkman then I mix it. We used to play collectively in my old band so we often play with different formats, including the band format itself, sometimes we use chamber. My time with Angkatan Udara was spent playing live music with a number of other people however I finally decided to try to play solo, so I came up with the name Danger Dope.
Initially I made a few short tracks just as a fad, my reference were MF Doom, Madlib, Ravi Shankar, and also use Indonesian movie soundtracks and I thought “wow this is definitely fun” and my friends’ responds were they think the tracks were really “dope” and they were “dangerous”, well from there I just use the name Danger Dope.
Indiefonica: Since when did you use this name, how many tracks have you made so far?
DJ Rencong: Since 2005, I’ve made around 70 to 80 tracks.
Indiefonica: How many are already officially released?
DJ Rencong: Well I tried to officially release some of these tracks when I was playing with my friend DJ Nasa, we made a project called Dynamonk, and we already released three albums actually, the first one was in CD and the other two were digital.
Indiefonica: why did you choose to play hip-hop music?
DJ Rencong: I played the drums when I was in Aceh, played hardcore and death metal; I am fan of Brujeria and Dying Fetus. But when I moved to Jakarta I was having difficulties because I didn’t have a permanent lodging, a place where I could stay, so bringing my drum kit with me was not a option and I decided to lay off the drumming for a while. One day I was watching Cypress Hill on TV and I was really impressed, they smoke weed and their music is also influenced by heavy metal so I thought that was cool, and I watched how DJ Muggs made his tracks and I liked it. So I decided to sell my Nikon FM2 camera and bought my first mixer. But I was a little confused thinking that I wanted to play live music and that it’s important to have an instrument so I bought a walkman (as the instrument) and a mixer, and I started playing music again.
Indiefonica: What cassette tape did you use for your stage performance?
DJ Rencong: I found a cassette tape at the studio in the campus where I used to live, it was a love song compilation tape. dubbed the tape with my own track except I left out a few seconds of the original recording and use that as the intro part of my own track. And there were a lot of students on my campus who like to play musical instruments like the flute for example, and they’re quite good so I asked them whether I could record them playing their instruments. After that I looped a few bars from the recording and add some dubbing of my own and make that into a track.
I have also used Zainuddin M.Z’s preaching tapes, which include a short section of Arabic music, I mixed that up too, at the beginning people used to laugh at me for using a walkman on stage because other performers use turntable or CDJ.
Indiefonica: Do you have special rituals before performing on stage?
DJ Rencong: Usually I smoke some weed, well actually I smoke weed too when I’m making music. Because I frequently get different results between when I smoke and when I don’t. I usually get a few ideas that I think not many other people have thought before, so I think smoking weed has its positive side.
Indiefonica: You frequently made your songs as you perform on stage, what do you do when you make a mistake?
DJ Rencong: I play the same set as the one I prepared ahead
Indiefonica: Did you ever make any mistakes while performing on stage?
DJ Rencong: I did, but you can’t really say they were mistakes. I play live on stage with the materials that I have prepared before, And I always have it with me so if I make any mistake it’ll be when I am doing the loops, And I’m not too concern about this because when you play live nothing will ever go perfectly anyway so as long as it still sounds good then it’s not a problem.
Indiefonica: Did you ever panic?
DJ Rencong: Not really, when you are on stage, say for 30 minutes, I can do whatever I want during that period. It doesn’t matter if I make a mistake, and don’t really care what people think because it’s my time to play on stage anyway. If you don’t like it you can leave, if you do like it then you can stay, but when my allocated time is over, then I’ll leave the stage.
Indiefonica: What’s your goal in music?
DJ Rencong: Music has always been part of my life, and I have to do it every day, I feel something is missing when I don’t play music. I always bring my sampler with me wherever I go. I use any kind of sound I could find, from people speaking, movies, anything that sounds fun really. When I studied graphic design, there is a thing called the collage, we take certain parts of different pictures and combine them to make a new design. So that’s basically what I apply when I’m creating music, I take a variety of sounds and I mix them into a single track.
Indiefonica: What's your opinion on the arrest of the punks in Aceh last December?
DJ Rencong: I was in Aceh when the arrests were made. There were already a lot of punk kids, probably way back since I was born (1981). In fact the punk and death metal scene in Aceh were larger than the other scenes. What happened there was they were not Acehnese, they came from outside of Aceh with a style that they brought from outside, for instance I as an Acehnese knows how to conduct myself, what to do and what not to do. They were doing something they were not supposed to do that even the punk kids in Aceh weren’t doing, this caused unrest (in Acehnese society – editor). My dad never knew what punk is, but when I came home to Aceh last time he said “those punks…etc”, even though I used to wear Dr. Marten shoes and Mohawk haircut he never said anything about punk kids. They were loitering and hanging out at bus stops on the roadside, and getting drunk in public, upsetting the public and became the talk of the town. There are lots of coffee shops in Aceh where people like to spend time hanging out and I was in one of these shops when a bunch of them came in, very drunk and started busking, which never happened before in Aceh, so the people there were baffled. Lots of people in Aceh like to get stoned too but you don’t see that kind of behavior.
You see, in Aceh when they have music events they separate the boys and the girls, yeah can you imagine that? This is to avoid sexual harassment, so I was surprised when I saw they were not separated at this particular gig, and they were drinking (alcohol –editor) with the girls, so the police stepped in and made some arrest to avoid any unwanted vigilante acts by the local community who were already deeply upset about the whole thing, the police didn’t beat them up though, they only shaved their hair.
Track List:
Unreleased (2012)
Video:
More Info:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Danger-Dope/161829410498980
(Hip Hop) (Funk) (Psychedelic) (Experimental)
Last Updated on Monday, 20 February 2012 20:09