We love finding a fresh new banger. We especially love discovering a fresh new artist behind that banger. This week’s Track Of The Week, “Boom Beat Heart Box,” is a head-spinning tech house cut from up-and-coming producer, Kidd Mike. The UK-based producer first emerged onto the scene in 2009 under the alias, Stealth Labs, but retired in 2013 to focus on fatherhood. Seven years later, the South African artist began pouring himself back into his passion during the Covid-19 lockdown, and the Kidd Mike project was formed.

While the project is still in its growth stages, Mike undoubtedly demonstrates the power of quality over quantity. “Boom Beat Heart Box” is not only a Dirtybird debut, it’s served as a secret weapon of label head, Claude VonStroke’s, Your Dad Plays Great Music Tour. Press play and it’s easy to see why.



This track is deep. This track is weird. This track is filthy. And we absolutely love it. The thumping kicks set a buoyant tone to match the tight claps and razor-sharp kit. The distorted vocal entrances listeners, otherworldly fills spiraling in the background, while the rolling bass line and unwavering beat serve as our only tethers to this reality. You may feel inspired to dance. You may feel inspired to chant. We encourage you to do both.



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Kidd Mike Makes a Dizzying Dirtybird Debut with 'Boom Beat Heart Box'

On Saturday, July 16, Claude Von Stroke—aka Barclay Crenshaw—brought his Your Dad Plays Great Music Tour to an unassuming secret warehouse in Oakland.




It seemed perfectly appropriate for the tour to stop where his journey in dance music coalesced. "I came to the Bay from Detroit in 1999, and it opened up my mind to new levels of creativity, community, and fun that I was not able to find in Detroit at that time," Crenshaw remembers about his 15 years in San Francisco.




After a decade and a half of running the stalwart label and releasing groundbreaking music, the head of the Dirtybird flock has ascended to legendary status in dance music. And while he's grown to be a staple on the massive stages of the festival circuit, he seemed perfectly in his element in a tiny DJ booth at the center of a dark and dingy warehouse just a few miles from where he first lived when he moved to the Bay Area 23 years ago.




The limited engagement tour sees him playing open to close sets and trading larger-than-life production for the simplicity of the old-school rave aesthetic. It's just a DJ and his records all night long with plenty of time to build the vibe.




We arrived early to the nostalgic thump of the bass through the walls of the warehouse. Crenshaw stood in a simple DJ booth at the center of the room, beaming from ear to ear, lit only by a cadre of electric votive candles, the cool LED glow of the CDJs and a few strands of white Christmas lights.







From the moment the doors opened for the night, he was establishing a relationship. When the DJ booth is that close, it feels like you're dancing with the DJ. It solidifies the connection and democratizes the dancefloor. The DJ is our guide for a night of musical exploration. However, he's also one of us.




"This is the best tour I've ever done simply because the pressure is off to play all my bangers in 90 minutes," Crenshaw tells Gray Area. "I can really explore all my favorite music from deep cuts to breaks to bangers to tech house and techno. I get into the funk, the jungle, all kinds of stuff… I can create a mood of camaraderie with the audience all night long when we are on a mission together. We are all there as a community having fun without all the pressure of busting it all out in an hour."




While a frenzied hit it and quit it festival set doesn't leave much room for musical worldbuilding, the open-to-close is a true test of the skills of a selector. Crenshaw took the challenge in stride, building from cool and funky deeper cuts as the dancefloor filled up to brutal sub-thumping techno as the feeling of a full-on rave began to take hold. There were moments of transcendent melodic bliss, growling bass-fueled euphoria, and times when the entire crowd felt like we moved as one collective unit.




When he dropped "Jolene," his collaborative hit with Green Velvet, there wasn't a person in the room who wasn't singing along to the quirky lyrics. And when the wonky synth line from an ID he's been playing from Dirtybird up and comer (and San Francisco local) n808 shook the warehouse walls, the dancefloor exploded. As he flawlessly moved from the syncopated Latin rhythm of "Cubism" by Davide Squillace to the pumping groove of "Strike" by Realsortis and the funky minimal shimmy of his debut on Sven Vath's Cocoon, "Moody Fuse," hundreds of us raged around the DJ booth. It was giving Boiler Room, but make it Oakland.









Being at the center of an entire night of memorable moments is a massive responsibility. And while there's a beautiful spontaneity to a well-curated DJ set, there's also a lot of preparation.




"The way I prepare is by creating tons of genre folders of music and then drifting between the folders as I read the room. Sometimes I feel like the room will respond to really latin vibes or really hard techno vibes or really bassy vibes - I'm super prepared for anything."




But beyond the masterful DJing, there was something almost spiritual at work. Without the spectacle of cryo blasts, LED screens, and light shows, we returned to what brought us all into this community in the first place: the love of music and movement. It was beautiful to see so many people dancing.






And when I ask Crenshaw how being so close to the dancers changes the energy of the performance, he says, "You called the people 'the dancers' instead of 'the fans.' That's kind of the key difference. At a festival 'the fans' are there raging for a short burst of time, but at these all-night warehouse shows people are there to dance. It's not all about me. It's about actually dancing and experiencing the music. It's not just fist pumping. Its grinding, stepping, shuffling, spinning, and enjoying life. "



It's not hard to understand how impactful a night like this is for the Bay Area community (and Crenshaw). Dirtybird hatched in San Francisco. Before there was Campout, there were free Dirtybird parties in Golden Gate Park and quarterlies at Mezzanine. The singular energy in the room rivaled the feeling of camaraderie in the early days, and Poppa Claude was always at the helm.




"I lived in Lower Haight during a real golden era of house and jungle where lots of people were DJing just for fun and starting labels," he says. "We were outcasts at first but then eventually won the city over and I will never ever forget my amazing time living in the Bay for 15 years and starting Dirtybird hand stamping vinyl on the floor of my studio apartment on Belcher Street."











































































[Interview] Claude Von Stroke Reminds Us Why We Dance

One of the most fascinating aspects of music is the relationship between artists and their chosen apparatus of creation. Jimi Hendrix didn’t simply play his guitars; he had a relationship with them. Every time he stepped into the studio or onto the stage, he further explored that relationship, and listeners continue to marvel at that exploration to this day.

Lubelski, the ascending LA-based producer, DJ, and label boss of Percomaniacs, has a studio full of different apparatuses of creation. And his latest LP, Happy Accidents, out now on Dirtybird Records, explores his relationship with modular synthesizers.

Where traditional, non-modular synthesizers retain a particular sound pallet, some of which have become unmistakable throughout decades of electronic music (the low-end womp of the Roland TR-808, for example), modular synthesizers allow the artist to create sounds that have never existed before. 

Every different knob and cable on a modular rig alters the sound in its own way. There are infinite configurations and settings, and that level of creative control opens the door to pure improvisation. 

Lubelski, real name Jake Lubell, crafted Happy Accidents through improvisation, and the title of the album refers to the basis of all 12 tracks.

“A happy accident is a found sound,” says Lubell over a recent Zoom call. “I’m letting the music itself be found in my modular jams. It’s not anything that’s pre-conceived. It’s finding the music as opposed to sculpting it.”

During Summer 2021, Lubell broadcast a series of modular jams on his own Twitch channel, under the same name: Happy Accidents. Every track on the album resulted from these jams in some way or another.

“I was able to go back into those individual recordings and nitpick what I wanted to use,” Lubell says. “Maybe I liked the drum idea and I would use that, or maybe I just like one little lead and I would start a new song based on it.”

Every time Lubell started a new stream, he searched for something he didn’t know that he wanted to find, a relationship with his modular rig that he likens to a conversation.

“It’s a conversation between me and the synthesizer,” Lubell says. “I might say for it to do something, and then it tells me something back that I didn’t expect.”

This relationship with modular persisted long before Lubell even started the Lubelski project. While attending UC Santa Cruz, he took an electronic sound synthesis course, and the school housed an extensive modular rig that students used for assignments.





One key aspect of modular synthesizers is they can grow to immense sizes. A single modular synthesizer holds a series of different modules. There is no limit to the total number of modules a synth can include, and each provides a unique quality to the music. 

Lubell used roughly 20 different modules in his setup for a Happy Accidents jam. Artists like deadmau5 and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails have synthesizers composed of hundreds of individual modules.

Each module furthers its relationship with the hardware, refining its ability to make music that sounds unequivocally singular.

“It’s like the LEGOs for adults,” says Lubell with a laugh.

Lubell applies jargon comparable in its esotericism to constitutional law or nuclear physics in discussing modular synthesis. Using terms like “ring modulation attenuation” as casually as most people use words like “the,” which expands further as he describes techniques he applied during the Happy Accidents jams.

“One thing I really love doing is throwing a pitch sequence on a filter cutoff with a high resonance on a filter. You can get these really interesting tones that you can’t get just by sequencing the pitch of an oscillator,” Lubell says. “The pitch comes from the resonance of the frequency as opposed to the actual pitch of the thing making the sound. If that makes sense.”

Most people would have lost him at pitch sequence. However, Lubell has been fostering his relationship with modular for years. It also makes sense to someone like DJ, producer, and head of Dirtybird, Claude VonStroke, who has his own decades-long relationship with synthesizers and electronic production.

Lubell and VonStroke, real name Barclay Crenshaw, had been in close proximity long before Lubell began producing Happy Accidents. 

Lubell put out his debut EP on Dirtybird, Impulse Response, in November of 2019, with a second EP, Lost My Senses, landing in September of 2020, as well as several offerings on different Dirtybird compilations.

As a seasoned Dirtybird Player, Crenshaw asked Lubell to contribute to Dirtybird Live, Dirtybird’s Twitch channel, over quarantine. Most of the programming centered around DJ sets, but Lubell had something different in mind.

“I didn’t want to be another DJ doing a DJ thing on Twitch. Everyone was doing that,” Lubell says. “I felt like I could really take the opportunity to dive into the live modular stuff.”

And so Lubell started Patchwork Sessions, a weekly live modular session very similar to Happy Accidents. The primary difference between the two shows is Patchwork Sessions wasn’t building towards a specific outcome. 

Crenshaw was aware of Lubell’s relationship with modular. Yet, after witnessing Lubell captivate audiences during Patchwork Sessions, Crenshaw asked Lubell for an LP’s worth of material based on modular sessions, a humbling and contemplative moment for Lubell.

“I’ll be totally honest I was a bit reluctant at first,” Lubell says of releasing an album on Dirtybird. “I have a very big vision for what my music should be, and I didn’t want to relinquish creative control of an album to somebody else, but luckily Barclay trusted me. He said ‘This album is about you. I want you to do your thing.’ So it felt really great to have someone I’ve looked up to for years ask me to do something like that.”

Following Lubell’s agreement, he migrated to his own Twitch and launched Happy Accidents. Crenshaw gave a strict deadline for the album, so Lubell spent six weeks streaming jams and then another three weeks dissecting and reworking the recordings into the final versions for the record.

The album took nine weeks from conception to completion. The result of the expedited process is 12 heavily technical tracks balanced by a sense of raggedy humanity. 

The improvisation in the jams provided an authentic quality to the foundation of each track while the quick turnaround left limited time to scrutinize the minor tweaks. These tweaks exist as little reminders of how despite house music’s metronomic underpinnings, there is room for some soul, some mortality, an idea advanced by Lubell’s relationship with production.

“I know myself, and if I keep working on something it will be a totally different song,” Lubell says. “I would rather call it, be done with it, and move on to the next project.”

Perhaps the only track on the album that received meticulous attention to detail was “Ice Cream Cone,” the co-production between Crenshaw and Lubell with Life On Planets contributing vocals. 

“[Crenshaw] is way more of a perfectionist than I am,” Lubell says. “He really knows his production and how he wants things to sound. He’s like ‘If it’s not perfect, I’m not putting it out.’ He’s sort of like the Gordon Ramsey of dance music. If it doesn’t taste good it’s not going on the plate.”

Lubell finalized the bulk of Happy Accidents in three weeks. Crenshaw spent over two weeks on “Ice Cream Cone,” by itself. Yet despite their completely inverse relationships with their creative apparatuses, they explored those relationships together. It’s truly fascinating, and the listeners get to marvel at the results.






Lubelski's 'Happy Accidents' LP Explores Improvisation and Modular Synthesis

Above all else, Claude VonStroke is grateful. His smiley persona behind the DJ booth shows that he’s grateful to be creating, curating and performing music. It just so happens that he's also released some of the most iconic house tracks of the last two decades.

Claude VonStroke–real name Barclay Crenshaw–spent his formative years in Detroit, Michigan, a hotbed of great underground club music. In high school he had his own radio show. He leaned more towards hip-hop at the time, but began to explore the blossoming electronic music scene around him. After moving to Los Angeles as an adult and spending some time working on movie sets, he got the idea to start his own record label. With the help of his wife Aundy and brothers Justin and Christian Martin, Dirtybird Records was formed in 2005.

Through his own imprint he’s released four full-length studio albums, each one uncoincidentally bird-themed in some way. He was also able to build an impeccable roster of acts like Justin Martin, Julio Bashmore, Eats Everything, Shadow Child and Shiba San to name a few. Today, Dirtybird is recognized as one of the top independent electronic labels in the world.

In the 15 years since its inception, VonStroke’s label has grown into an event series and a clothing brand. The flagship festival, Dirtybird Campout, started in 2015 and showcases some of the best acts in underground house and bass music. Keeping with his brand of fun-loving energy, the festival puts a special emphasis on games and activities for happy-go-lucky festival goers.

In more recent years, Crenshaw has been experimenting with creation outside the Claude VonStroke moniker. In 2014, he began collaborating with singer and DJ Green Velvet as the duo Get Real. In 2015, he debuted another project, Barclay Crenshaw. Using his given name, the producer took a departure from his well-known alias in favor of "slowed-down, emotive collection of collaborations and instrumentals."

It just goes to show that in a day of increasing exclusivity, Claude VonStroke sits at the forefront of all that is authentic and fun.