September 21, 2010

Artist of the Day: Holdcut


Holdcut's Biography:

I was born in 1985. From the beginning of my life, my parents never thought of me as a musician. I always had different hobbies: I collected stamps, bottle caps, I was a swimmer with dreams of being a pro. But it wasn’t that. Throughout my childhood, I observed my father’s nearly obsessive passion for music, but music didn’t interest me much back then.

When I turned ten, my family and I moved from Gdansk to a small town in Mazury, where my history with music really started off. When it comes to diggin’, my dad is a true king. I got it from him too, although maybe not in the same way. He pushed me towards finding the best music genre for myself. I learned one thing from him - there is no best genre of music out there.

The development of Hip-Hop in Poland was definitely slow at that time. When I first heard Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Ice-T, ATCQ, Gang Starr, Common etc., it were the times when you could get beaten up for wearing baggy jeans and being true to the hip-hop culture. It was a long time before Warszafski Deszcz (a classic album of Polish Hip-Hop) came out, long before Stare Miasto and Thinkadelic. When I was searching for different types of sounds and concepts I learned that hip-hop is multi-dimensional. When the first hip-hop oriented magazines started off, I quietly took the spray cans in my hands. A couple of drawings around the city later I realized that graffiti wasn’t for me.

My first serious soundsystem (pretty good at the time) and a PC changed my position in the culture. Music Production… that was it! I was the conductor of MY hip-hop music. I was in control of the sound. I treated it as a part of my education, believing that by learning how to produce, I will understand my favourite genre better.

1998 was a special year, not only did I start producing, I also began to write my own rhymes. I didn’t work out for me that well, but today I understand rhythm better and, you know - vocals and beat concept. And that’s how I divided myself into 2 personalities - the MC and the producer. I was recording over my own beats, but I did instrumental albums as well. During that era I released couple albums of my own, and one as Soundfeel Productions (Dj S-Master and me).

In between 2003 and 2004 Holdcut is born and search for my own distinguished sound begins.

Since 2001, after seeing ‘Scratch’, dj’s shown in that movie caught my attention more and more. I turned myself to Shadow, Z-Trip, Numark, Steinski and biggest influence for my work Cut Chemist. Chemist’s attitude towards hip-hop culture, his music, biography and just everything had a positive influence on me - he is the ideal reflection of how I see hip-hop. In 2003 I already knew, that some day, I’m going to do my own ‘Lessons’. ‘I’m going to take drum breaks and mix them with funk music and my own melodies and samples, and we will see, where it takes me’ - that’s what I thought.

Before I got into that stage, I had to close a chapter in my life. This chapter are those 10 albums, starting from ‘Critical Status’ and ending on ‘You Will Be Witness’, that contained new looks on old ideas. After 2 years of practically non-stop production work, the time finally came to do my own Lessons. SoundWriter was slowly coming to life. The moment, when he truly came to life was my return to Gdansk, after 10 years of living in a province. That’s when I started working on first volume of an album, that I simply named ‘Remixes’ (half of the album consisted of remixes).

A really important thing happened to me before that, though, in 2002, when I accidentally ran into big St. Dominic’s fair. Exactly there, that was the first time, when I got in touch with the true essence of the hip-hop music. On that day, I never saw so many records in one place in my life. First time in my life, I spent all my money on wax (I didn’t have any money for the bus to my town, but I didn’t matter). I found lots of things that I was looking for before.

From that moment, I got into the passion of crate diggin’ and I don’t regret it. From those records, I made most important album in my career so far. And I didn’t learn hip-hop from hip-hopers. I learned hip-hop from the masters of funk and jazz and those two genres were imported to my albums, in different styles and techniques.

2002 was also very important for me, since I started working in one of the biggest internet radio stations in my country - Rapgra, where I had my broadcast Cut Style Time every week. I also started Cut-Orgia Recordz that year. As for myself, I work with many different artists, but in most cases, these projects end up unfinished.

In 2005 I started my job in Magazyn Hip-Hop, where I write news, do interviews, artist’s bios, write articles and piss off the editor-in-chief.

I have many plans for 2006 and 2007. I will try to do something new and fresh. I plan a lot of things and lots of those things are never brought to light, so I would rather not talk about any specific dates or anything. You should know one thing? something is coming up for sure. 

You can listen to Holdcut's music at:
http://www.last.fm/music/Holdcut



Released Albums:
Holdcut - Inept Vision
Holdcut - Remote Vision
Holdcut - Critical Status EP
Holdcut - Night in my Mind
Holdcut - The Only One EP
Holdcut - Break Trouble 2 The Battle
Holdcut - Break Trouble EP
Holdcut - Since I Have Been Here EP
Holdcut - The New Reality

Reference:
(2010). Holdcut. Last.fm. Retrieved from http://www.last.fm/music/Holdcut

please follow me or subscribe to www.the13thplate.blogspot.com

0 comments:

Post a Comment