Fans of electronic music, hip-hop, and beat culture already know that Paul D. Miller, aka
DJ Spooky (That Subliminal Kid) is the most academic of DJs. His early recordings, made when he has in his early twenties, were all adorned with wordy critical and philosophical concepts in their booklets; in interview, the man was an unstoppable flow of words. Ultimately, however, then as now, it all comes down to the music. Whether or not one could get with his records, (s)he always had to admit he was original to the core.
The Secret Song is
DJ Spooky's first new studio recording in a decade. Issued by Thirsty Ear, it contains a CD and a DVD. The latter hosts a project where
Spooky musically and visually remixes a cinematic montage by no less that
Dziga Vertov from his '20s films Kino Glaz and Kino Pravda. The hip thing is that these two films were already early montage exercises, so with
Spooky's mix of ambient dub, classical, cinematic snippets and space, these gorgeous black-and-white images -- that already reflect a way of life all but unknown to most of today's Westerners -- recombine history as contrast in sound, vision, and the various terrains where they begin to bleed into one another.