With so much energy building up in anticipation for this weekend’s musical roller coaster in Baltimore I felt it only appropriate that we further the hype. As many of you know, in honor F5F’s very own Bryan Cosgrove aka B.Cos popping his Bisco cherry in support of the Disco Biscuits fall tour opener in Bmore @ the Hipodrome we at Fortune5Fifty have decided to throw an invite only after party at the legendary Hour Haus Studio. We have quite the late-night treat in store for you kiddies…Marmoset > Segway > B.Cos > Sonkin. And as if that isn’t enough, we’ve teamed up with Steez Promo to bring you all the very first ever ‘Fortune5Fifty Rooftop-Rave-Stage’ at Bourbon Street Saturday night in support of the Rusko/Orchard Lounge/New Deal show. The Rooftop-Rave-Stage will feature some of F5F’s latest electro projects including Mikey Gavin debuting as his DJ alter ego ‘Batman’ > ’Not Like Sauce’ featuring myself, Marmoset, and Ben from Segway > and fresh off his debut w/ the Disco Biscuits B.Cos will be introducing Charm City Soundsystem and some very special guests! Needless to say join us at Fortune5Fifty as we take you on an all access trip to Epcot-land…B.Y.O.R.E. (bring your own robot ears)
Of all the acts that will be gracing the stage in Bmore this weekend I am most excited to see Leon Sonkin. For those of you who already know Sonkin, you know whats in store…bass heavy dub’d out rage…and I mean that in the nicest way. For those of you who are still in the dark I figured an introduction was long over due. Without further ado I’d like to introduce Leon Sonkin to F5F…thanks in advance for melting our faces this weekend. 
[F5F] Dub Step is by far one of the fastest growing crazes of recent years. When did you get involved and what are your thoughts on the future of Dub Step?
[Sonkin] I guess you could say I “came up” on drum n bass about 6-7 years ago. At the time, the genre was entering what I felt to be its last breathe of fresh-air, with the prominence of liquid funk, and producers like High Contrast, London Elektricity, Logistics, that whole Hospital Records crew really ripping to the forefront of drum n bass. However, the sound itself had been around since the early 90s and one could even argue that drum n bass originated in the late 80s. Clearly, I didn’t really feel much of an involvement in the sound. Then for about a year I just completely stopped listening to drum n bass, spinning records at all… I began paying more attention to bands and other forms of music… even other forms of art. I was going through a transitional period of my life with school and work and I had been doing a lot of traveling/relocating. I’ve lived in every region of the US aside from the Pacific Northwest! When I was living briefly in the Midwest, I had heard a few of the earlier Horsepower Productions stuff and, to be honest, it didn’t really do anything for me at all. It wasn’t until I had heard some of the early workings of Skream and Digital Mystikz that I finally said to myself “ok, this is fucking cool!” Soon after, I relocated to Los Angeles for about 8 months. I remember attending a few drum n bass events early on and just being completely bored… Right near my apartment in Hollywood there was this little, yet swanky club called Tokio Bar, and every Sunday they had drum n bass, hip hop, and this new genre I had kept hearing snippets of… dubstep! The weekly was actually called Samurai Sunday and the great people of Smog LA, Temple of Boom, and Pure Filth ran it. At the 2nd Samurai Sunday I had ever attended, someone handed me a flyer that forever will stick in my brain. The show was CASPA, the event was Pure Filth, and the flyer depicted a solider in military fatigues tossing a grenade with dove wings. I had to go this… Needless to say, I went to this party in downtown LA in a borderline scary warehouse, and it changed my life. The tunes were so hard, the beats so minimal… As someone also intrigued by the darkness of the human soul, the dystopic future we grow closer to daily, and the overall sinister qualities of heavy bass music, I instantly fell in love with the sound. I was still buying tons of vinyl at the time and immediately started buying up anything I could get my hands on. All the early Tempa releases, all the early Dub Police stuff, and anything and everything DMZ had anything to do with. Fast forward to now and I feel like my love for dubstep remains, even if my sets now include grime, hip hop, bassline house, hard electro, and anything else I can sneak in effectively. I see 2010 as the year dubstep gets as close to “mainstream” as possible. With the recent buzz over hip hop laden dubstep, ie the Snoop Dogg Millionaire track and the LA Dubstep Mixtape, I see dubstep beats becoming a mainstay in hip hop, almost as common as the auto-tune craze of today. Aside from that, it will just continue to change in every form it can, as the idea of dubstep really seems to center around the open-endedness of it all. Will it fizzle out? Probably… although it won’t leave… But the reality of electronic dance music is that everything comes in waves and cycles. As long as we never hear dubstep on BMW commercials, I think we’ll be okay!
[F5F] Rumor has it you are working on a new collab project know as Street Bass…can you confirm this? Assuming this project is under way give us a lil incite on what its all about.
[Sonkin] Street Bass isn’t a project, as much as it is an idea. A concept. A philosophy, and most importantly, a genre that we at Seclusiasis have champion’d! When dubstep was still in its incubatory stages, people didn’t know what to make of or call 140/70 bpm beats with hip hop vocals, or jittery club-esque tracks with throbbing bassline stabs. Along came Seclusiasis, our Philadelphia based dj crew and record label, with the Street Bass anthems mixtape series (#4 drops in mid October with a huge release party in Philly featuring Seclusiasis’ own Starkey, dev79, myself, and the Trouble & Bass crew’s AC Slater) which we feel has changed the game significantly. You now see parties all over the US and Canada advertising dubstep, electro, and STREET BASS. Admittedly, we all kinda smirk whenever we see people using the name we created. If it were possible to copyright a genre, trust me, we would have done it by now! It ends up working out though, as the clowns who jack our names always end up advertising for us in some weird, fucked up, reverse way.
[F5F] We’ve been exploring technologies influence on today’s music…the battle between analog and ’spacebar’ dj’s and we’d love your input. What roll does technology play in a live performance? Is 12″ vinyl a lost art?
[Sonkin] Oh my… the subject on everyone’s minds! “Is so and so up there actually doing anything or just pressing space-bar?” “So and so is pretty good, but he uses a computer…” “Fuck so and so! He just pushes buttons!” I started out spinning 100% vinyl every night. As the bookings started to increase and the demand for fresher shit started growing, I realized that, from both a financial and practical standpoint, it was impossible to continue buying and traveling with vinyl. Not to mention the overall strain of carrying around a ton of records that you end up bending and warping anyways. I currently use Serrato, while maintaining the turntables as control surfaces, and honestly, don’t see any difference between what I do and what someone who spins straight up vinyl or dub plates does… other than that his shit may sound better from an audiophile standpoint. I’d love to be able to press dub plates of all my tunes, but I’d probably need about 2-3 more jobs and a rich girlfriend to be able to replicate what I presently do to live. I can carry infinitely more music on my hard drive and get new tunes the day of a show and play them. Not to mention it makes playing your own shit considerably easier. I don’t think vinyl will ever die or stop being sold, but from a performers standpoint, the future definitely favors those who have made the binary switch. That being said, from a performers standpoint, I absolutely love being a spectator to the average audience discussion about different performers and what they do live. The amount of ignorance is unbelievable! It reminds me of going to Tampa Bay Lightning ice hockey games when I was a teenager and having to listen to old southern people argue about what the definition of “icing” or what “off-sides” actually were! “Icin’ is when they gotta change the ice between periods with that there ice changer truck!” Sometimes people just need to remind themselves that we are paid professionals and for the duration of the performance, let us do the thinking, eh? So sit back, relax, and watch us push buttons!
[F5F] If you could collab with any artist living or dead who would it be and why?
[Sonkin] So tough to answer with one person, so I’ll give a few answers. I think Mike Patton would be amazing to work with, just because of how talented and creative he is. I was a huge Faith No More fan growing up, and have loved the majority of his later workings. The sci-fi nerd in me would also secretly want to work with Squarepusher. But that shit is so far removed from what I play these days. I’d like to think that I’ll be working with a lot of my favorite producers in the genre fairly soon… Just a matter of me building the confidence and quality in my own productions to take on the ambitious of task of working with some of the industry heavy-weights that I like and respect musically.
[F5F] Philli seems to be blowing up musically…recent examples yourself, The Disco Biscuits, & Brothers Past to name a few…what roll has ill-a-delphia played in your musical career?
[Sonkin] I owe pretty much everything to Philadelphia for being the launching point for my career. The great Senator Clay Parnell gave me a shot at the Biodiesel show at the Silk City Diner over a year ago during ‘Jam on the River’ weekend. The rest is history. Also, I was able to meet the mad man known as dev79, and subsequently Starkey and the rest of the Seclusiasis crew. They have been the most important factor in my career thus far and I feel very fortunate for having been invited to join their crew. Musically, Philly has inspired me in so many ways, it’s amazing! I was always big into hip hop, so the urban elements of Philly provide inspiration, as well as the club scene, the metal scene, and the overall vibe of the city. It’s just so grimey, yet old and beautiful… I’ll be sad if and when I ever leave!
[F5F] DJ’s have been edging their way into the jam scene for several years now. They certainly have diversified the festival circuit and its presence can be seen in almost every jam band today…examples: Future Rock, The Disco Biscuits, Sound Tribe, Pnuma Trio, and the list goes on and on. What are your thoughts on this?
[Sonkin] It’s undeniable that the DJs and DJ culture have had a profound effect on the jam scene. Who even remembers pre-electronically infused jam rock? (laughs) But seriously, you can ask anyone in any of those aforementioned bands and they’ll tell you, without EDM, they wouldn’t be doing any of the shit they’re doing now. Each one of those bands has a clear cut genre of electronic dance music you can compare it to. The Disco Biscuits = trance. Future Rock = electro. A lot of Brothers Past, Pnuma Trio and early STS9 = drum n bass. Not to mention the fact that all of these bands play a multitude of other styles of electronica! It’s also nice to see guys like Alex B coming out of these bands with their beats and really blurring the DJ/band line. You know, these guys all listen to some form of electronica! Hell, Barber has done pretty well for himself with his dubstep side-project, and I know that he’s legitimately interested and passionate about the genre. All in all, jam rockers are all just aspiring DJs, and some of us are actually just aspiring jam rockers!
[F5F] Of all your travels where is your favorite place to play? Is there somewhere you aspire to play?
[Sonkin] Richmond, Virginia is fucking crazy! Three shows at the Canal Club and they’ve been rowdy as fuck every time! Plus Jesse and Michael at EQ do it up right. Baltimore is def one of the cities that helped me cut my teeth. That crowd likes to drink and do funny shit! Denver was fun, everyone gets extra smashed due to the altitude. The Highline Ballroom in NYC was really cool. The Electric Factory in Philly was really awesome, as it was the most people I’ve rocked it to in a bigger club environment. But it think the main stage sets I did at this past Starscape will forever take the cake. Especially the 2nd one. Thousands of Bassnectar fans going apeshit for my “warm-up” set. You gotta try to serve up bigger bowls of street bass to larger groups of people when you have that type of opportunity.
[F5F] Who is your biggest musical influence and why?
[Sonkin] Joy Division/New Order is the band I hold dearest to my heart. They have influenced me in almost every way imaginable. From Ian Curtis’ haunting vocals, to Stephen Morris’ mechanical drumming and Peter Hook’s aggresively overdriven bass lines, that band pretty much encompasses the gamut of my emotions, opinions, and attitudes. Musically, they’re just so fucking good! Faith No More was also an incredibly important band in my youth. From an electronic standpoint, I’d say that the bigger IDM guys all got me into the sound (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, U-ziq) while the drum n bass guys got me interested in a specialized style (Krust, Blame, Cyantific, etc) and finally the more recent producers and djs who influence me are guys like Joker, Starkey, dev79, Gemmy, Neil Landstrum, Flying Lotus, Rustie, Charlie P, BD1982, AC Slater, and really the list goes on! If you’re making good music right now, chances are you’re influencing me! I can say that I probably find myself listening to dirty south hip hop more than anything though, as I hold Three 6 Mafia and UGK very dear to my heart.
[F5F] Baltimore has a lot of love for you, as I am sure you are aware of. Is there any special moment in Baltimore that sticks out?
[Sonkin] Some of my best friends in the world live in and around Baltimore, so it never sucks! Starscape and Summer Massive were both very fun sets for me that I won’t soon forget. I hope the best is yet to come! I have also more than likely seen the sun come up more in the Baltimore horizon, than anywhere else!
[F5F] What should we expect for you in the up coming months? Studio albums, concerts, festivals, tours….give us the 4-1-1!
[Sonkin] I’ve got a lot of dates coming up. Every weekend in September, along with some October fun. As I mentioned the Street Bass Anthems #4 release party with AC Slater, Starkey, dev79 and myself is October 17th. I’m also playing my 1st ever show in Asheville, North Carolina in November with Joker & Nomad, Charlie P, and Mindelixer, which should be fucking dope! September 18th we’re doing WHO RUN IT? featuring Plastician from the UK, Marty Party of PantyRAID, and Si Young of Plastic Little, along with Seclusiasis’ DJ Ghost. I’ll also be playing the CKS Pig Roast for Marshall Thompson’s birthday, and with my good friends from Pnuma Trio, Bodega, and MJ Project in West Chester, PA on October 16th. Also rocking some local Philly gigs here and there (keep your eyes peeled!) I’ll most likely stay up with the mixes and continue working my ass on production so that I can continue my trek towards world domination. Always looking to hit new markets and play shows!
Which brings me to my next point…we’ve had a lot of people inquire about the Bosco after party Friday night, and as I mentioned earlier this is an invite only event. If you have not recieved an invite or you have friends coming from out of town who’d like to attend please email all requests to team@fortune5fifty.com. We have a limited amount of space so we cannot make any promises but we will do all we can to honor as many requests as possible. Entry will be based off of our master list and if you are not on the list and/or you have not contacted me you will not be permited to enter the event. First come first serve…don’t sleep on this one.
Big ups to Leon Sonkin for his insite and suppoort…looking forward to breaking in the newly rehabed Hour Haus in style.
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