|
Tree
Thirteen on Circle Campus!
Smooth Delivery with Rough Grooves Surface
BY
ERIN BROADLEY
Hip-hop mastermind
KRS-One once said of his genre, "Hip-hop has no
inventor. Hip-hop has no beginning. Hip-hop has no end.
It is here now and will always be here."
 While
a statement that grandiose may sound a bit philosophically
yawn-inducing, KRS-One has a point: A genre like hip-hop
– one that reaches back and references a multitude
of other artists with the potential to bring together
different musical styles more so than any other genre
– really has no beginning or end. It just has
tradition.
One of the
most important qualities a hip-hop artist can possess
is an understanding of tradition, more specifically
oral tradition, and the Chicago-based alternative hip-hop
duo Tree Thirteen definitely has it.
"In
the tradition of storytelling, my background is in spoken
word, open mic and rap," explains MC Tree Root.
"But coming from hip-hop, coming from a music that
samples heavily from other genres, we’re really
influenced by lots of other music. That came through
hip-hop and came from searching for what the basis of
a certain sample was or where the original sample came
from.
"I’m
constantly writing, every day. I consider myself a storyteller
in the tradition of the town crier," continues
MC Tree Root. "I tend to liken our type of music
to what ‘Seinfeld’ was as a sitcom. It’s
nothing and everything at the same time."
Tree Thirteen,
made up of MC Tree Root Turner and DJ/producer 007 (Lonnie
Bonds), met in a Chicago kindergarten class. From those
early roots, the two formed a collaborative –
a creative team they likened to a brotherhood. The pair
fine-tuned their act by organizing hip-hop events at
various Chicago nightclubs as well as performing with
Tree Roots and the Traveling Caravan, a nine-piece,
live hip-hop band.
Tree Thirteen’s
debut album Rough Grooves Surface, released Oct. 19
on Out the Box Records, is a sublimely potent collection
of songs mixing hip-hop, classic rock, alternative and
jazz.
For Tree
and 007, making the most out of their influences provides
endless creative fuel.
"The
person that concentrates too much on trying to be original
is not the most original person," Tree says. "I
think ‘original’ is a title placed on something
after someone else has heard it. Nothing is original
because everybody’s thought every thought –
no word is original; no thought is original –
so it’s a lot of reinterpretation. Every form
of music that we listen to, classical to death metal,
it’s all an extension of some prehistoric human
dumping on a damn log."
With influences
extending from Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix and Nine
Inch Nails, Rough Grooves Surface showcases the duo’s
near flawless dynamic with each other and their ability
to mix digital loops and samples with live instrumentation,
stylistically fusing their eclectic musical tastes without
breaking the cohesiveness of the album.
007 says:
"Of all music genres, I identify with hip-hop the
most. But that doesn’t limit what I listen to.
I’m a big fan of industrial and alternative, especially
a lot of the stuff coming out of Chicago, like Nine
Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Filter and all those
groups." 007 concludes with a smile, "I love
turning that up loud and rocking out to it. |
