DJ Rupture

• Hometown: New York
• DJ Rupture Website

About

DJ Rupture is based, for the moment, in Brooklyn, but he's a more global citizen than most. Born Jace Clayton, the Harvard-educated producer, label owner and DJ spent several years in Spain before relocating to New York, and he routinely gigs in places like Japan and Dubai. The globe-trotting makes sense, given the worldly reach of his music: Beginning with a foundation of Jamaican dub and American hip-hop, he draws in Middle Eastern and Latin American styles. His fusions aren't so much seamless blends as onionskin overlays, with dark parallel lines, representing universal tendencies, branching out into thickets of local variations. In addition to running the Soot label (home to acts like Timeblind and Maga Bo), Rupture has recorded for Tigerbeat6, Broklyn Beats and theAgriculture; he also plays in the Middle Eastern-influenced group Nettle and has toured and recorded with improvising guitarist Andy Moor of Dutch post-punks The Ex. Perhaps appropriately for an artist born with a critic's perspective, Rupture is best known for his DJ mixes. His multi-deck, polyglot sessions aren't just meant for dancing; they're dissertations on the possibility of a borderless world.

- Philip Sherburne