NOAHD, SHYLOK from CRUSH

Crush:ed crew bring soulful and heavy drum 'n' bass to the Ohm every Wednesday night for free and come straight out your radio every first and third Saturday, 1-3pm, on KPSU 1450 AM. With a roll call that's seven names long, you won't get bored with the styles being put down.

How did you get together?

Noahd: I started going down to Crush with a bunch of my friends a long time ago. I dropped a couple demos off there, but they kind of got neglected and then one day Shylok just let me play with him. I had some records with me so we just tagged a lil' bit.

How'd you get into drum 'n' bass?

Shylok: I grew up playing the drums, so d'n'b was really appealing to me. I grew up in a real small town and besides hiphop, I wasn't too hip on electronic music. The first time I heard d'n'b it was Roni Size's Newforms, album and I was like, "It's not a band, so I'm not into it." After I moved to Portland, one of my buddies played some Ray Keith, and it just caught my ear and made me say, "Holy shit, I understand this." After that I started spinning right away, and I'm just now starting to get involved with production.

Do you think it's vital for DJs today to also be doing production?

Noahd: I think to go big, to go into an international scene or even across the country unless you're a jaw-dropping DJ, yeah.

Drum 'n' Bass seems like a small scene in Portland. How do you keep your weekly going?

Shylok: Well one thing we do to try to get the drum 'n' bass scene going is just starting the night with more downtempo stuff. It gets people warmed up so they can still have a conversation, and we can ease them into jungle and keep their heads bobbin'. Jungle can be pretty fuckin' scary right away if you've never heard it; there's a lot of shit going on. That and keeping it free. We're doing it for the love of drum 'n' bass, and that's the only reason we're doing it. CHAZZ MADRIGAL