It could be safely said there’s endless legions of bands with what one might call ‘lame’ names, or misleading monikers that seem anything but fitting when actually listening to their music. But it’s doubtful there could be a more fitting one for Hideaki Ishi, who hails from Tokyo and has lived a life that’s the stuff of a Hollywood (or Japanese Gangster!) films. A high school dropout, DJ Krush worked his way up from lower-level street gangs, only to become a full-fledged yakuza member. Based on that somewhat vague biography, one might anticipate rhythms of machine gun-fire or, at the very least, some ear-splitting drum and bass rhythms. But as things turn out, Krush is anything but aggressive. Instead, years of experience as one of Japan’s very first hip-hop DJs has led to a very ambient, laid back fusion sound, one that mixes a lot of sultry jazz with trip hop rhythms and stand-up bass, lounge music that intertwines with intricate time signatures and anarchic, across-the-board mixing of genres. Then again, he isn’t above mixing it up with heavyweights like Malik B and Black Thought. Here’s a peak at one of the genre’s innovators on Red Bull Music Academy Radio.

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If you’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure of seeing the movie version of Naked Lunch, you might remember that Mugwumps are the half-typewriter/half-beetle creatures that talked with British accents out of their buttholes to Bill Lee while he binged on skag, er, bug dust, and tried to avoid screwing his wife. While not quite as eccentric or visceral in imagery, there’s a certain surrealism to Geoffrey aka Mugwump, perhaps not to unlike a bug you’ve caught that makes you want to nod off and get lost in the sort of film-noirish world that William Burroughs created. Occasionally Mugwump veers into a hackneyed dance world of overused beats and rhythms, but when he’s on, he’s on — and at Red Bull Music Academy, you can get a brief glimpse of the ambient, trippy world Mugwump’s created, one that may make you think : Hmm, maybe I’ll try some heroin. I mean bug dust, hahaha.

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