Boston-bred, Brooklyn based music producer Handcancel (that's me) started playing with musical gadgets as a kid with a Casio keyboard his grandmother bought him ,and the unique 16 key musical toy Major Morgan. Of course there was radio and the making of crazy faux radio station tapes with my friends and family, then came puberty RUN DMC JMJ, Beasties, P.E. De La, Tribe, Dre, Don Fury and so much more that enticed me to become the music fan-addict I still am today. I used to BMX bike and our whole radster crew was just as much into Hip Hop as Hardcore Punk, Metal, Reggae, Funk, Soul and everything we thought sounded lovely. I used to make insane pause tapes for my friends at Brockton High School, and after I discovered local college radio there was no qualling my interest- my collection grew and so did a need to become more than a fan- I needed to drop in!
By the late 90s I had a sampler and an 8-track and went through the various stages learning about our past through the present- then through now- where the beats came from, the technology and the methodology that went into great sounding records and the excitement of creating original material. Before my music-vet friend Jimmy blew up with that Jimmy Luxury we jammed out a one-off project group called Doublemint Fresh, which was him amazingly freestyling over my best beats at the time- man the sound sounds rough now, but at the time our friends were loving it, and my skills sharpened to the point a where I wanted to keep producing no matter what. I dropped this beat tape Musica Mass Disruption, that opened some doors and even got play on college radio (thanks Magnus). I continued to produce for underground artists from Massachusetts- Buttaskotch and Special Forcez (where you at Jay W?), The Rhyminal who went on to start Ballcklub, and even a little Rock engineering with my friend Jeffrey Simmons. Things heated up when I started doing beats for punk-rap MC Cathy Cathodic. We banged out The Cathy Cathodic EP, which got some good write-ups and she was (and still is!) getting booked live extensively.
I entered musical hyper-drive when I started my own renegade recording studio in Dorchester, MA called Triple Decka. Pro-Tools, some mics, some pre-amps and I was doing bands, rappers, mixtapes- whatever, whenever. It was there that some of the seeds which would become songs on Sampeloco started.
I did a full-length for Mission Hill psychedelic punk rock group BEAST. I recorded with Iceman Records (whatup Darmu!) with Backdraft, W.M.S. The Sultan and Cool Gzus (formerly of TDS Mob and Mademen). I recorded and mixed an e.p. for Josephin Lyons' Hardcore Allstar project Jo and the Motherfuckers (now called Sonic Bomb) featuring Jo on vox, Ryan Branigan and Lance Terror of Tommy & the Terrors on Bass & Guitar, Greg Prestash of The Tampoffs on Rhythm Gits and Matt Kelly from Dropkick Murphys on drums. Air Guitar (with Mike Dylan, William Dwyer and Chris Gogan) was another project as well as Sparrow and the Jade which featured future "loco" collaborators Gogan and Son of Hippie Katherine Kelly.
I ended up ditching the full-on recording studio and O.P.S. (other people's stuff) to dive deep back into my own personal beatmaking projects. I self-released an instrumental album The 48 Beats of Power which got some good press in The Boston Phoenix and Urb. More doors opened and through Gretchen Elise I met DJ Lady Lee, who's song "Somtimes" I was a huge fan of. Lady Lee brought along Silva Duss and Max "Dread" Minaya for the ride, and along with Bassist & Guitarist Felix and Derek (Rude Awakening) a new urban-island sound started to come into focus. I linked with Boston Hip Hop classic dudes DJ On & On and MC NoDoz (formerly of O.V.M.) and put in work on the Golden Brown Back To Live Action e.p. I also got into doing sound for film courtesy of director Tyrone Tanous. I did the live sound and recorded original music for his short film Fade To Static, and also did a little sound editing for his documentary Rates Of Change. I had learned a hell of a lot from my good producer friend DJ D-Money, and benefitted from a very chance meeting with Mr. Mars Jupiter. I made the migration to New York City where I began to finish what I had always wanted to do: release a killer compilation album containing the styles of music I was a mega fan of- Hip Hop, Rock, Reggae and more! That's what I did. Hope you get a chance to play the album loud, and if you see something that's produced by Handcancel in the future I hope you'll enjoy checking it as much as I enjoyed making it. I can't wait to finish more material! I do a blog too at handcancel.net, where you can get a direct line into what's going through the mind of an audio-pro like me at any given time if I have time. Much respect for yours.