Kid FreshWhen I was younger, I used to spend hours with the turntables, trying to juggle, to scratch, do routines, be a true turntablelist. The biggest success: winning a pair of headphones at a local competition. Man, I was proud!
But basically, that was just good practice for playing in parties and in clubs later, I got very fast with the records and it was always cool to introduce some tunes with a little *scratch*.
In the end, I never got a real turntablelist but I still got love for the game. So I was delighted when I met Kid Fresh, playing at Yaneq‘s record release party. Like me, he is from Göttingen, we used to hang out back then (in the 90ies) and I admired his techniques a lot.
Later, he got a multi-ITF worldchampion, also won the DMC and many other contests; solo and with his crew, the Lordz of Fitness. After that, he made a career as a club DJ, playing the big and small and shiny and dirty ones with a irresistible blend of hiphop, funk, pop and whatever mix of classics and clubbouncers. Like a maniac he is changing the records leaving the crowd in a hysteric mood. By the way: he is doing all that with Rane’s Serato system, also called “Scratch Live“. A vinyl-feel-like control for audiofiles, just like final scratch.
Wednesday night was one great party with lots of cheering and dancing and I think he enjoyed to play for such an open-minded crowd. I will try to show some pictures later, in the meantime, let me guide you to some fascinating turntable art.
A 60 minutes Kid Fresh mix including all sorts of music and skills from White Stripes to Dizzie Rascal to M.I.A. Sure it’s funky, not only for turntablelism-lovers. Here’s the tracklist)
A really good video of his crew Lordz of Fitness from the ITF world championship 2003
Another fascinating beat juggling routine of his teammmate Rafik
And finally, I found this crazy Japanese DJ Kentano on YouTube.