Word: claytons
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...violent breakcore shards from DJ Scud and militant boom-bap from Dead Prez early on, yet an hour later the listener is swimming deliriously in the audio experiments of Oval and Muslimgauze. But DJ /rupture’s real brilliance lies not in his eclecticism, an aspiration that Clayton finds “horrifying” for its implications of cultural dabbling. Instead, it’s in how effortlessly he makes sense of these seemingly disparate genres—ranging from dancehall reggae all the way to avant-classical—and recreates them into a singular body...
...thing’s for sure—Harvard’s conservative music scene had little to do with it. As a first-year looking for a creative outlet, Clayton was immediately disillusioned by WHRB’s top-down hierarchy and retreated to MIT’s comparatively freeform radio station, WMBR. “I was playing what I loved. It was the total opposite of WHRB, where you have to fit these pre-slotted categories and it’s under their full control,” he says...
When he was a junior, Clayton started an audiovisual collective named Toneburst with like-minded friends from Harvard and the Massachusetts College of Art. Though it has since fallen into abeyance, Toneburst set a precedent for leftfield electronics in Boston’s house and techno-centric club scene. The group hosted DJ and live performances that culminated in a self-produced disc of excursions into hip-hop, jungle...
True to his penchant for change, Clayton was also involved with activism at Harvard, directly targeting the outspoken Kenan Professor of Government Harvey Mansfield ’53 at one point. DJ /rupture’s mixes aren’t overtly political, but they do “make the space for political discussion to happen,” as he puts...
...Still, Clayton is no self-righteous preacher. He points out that despite their conceptual depth, his mixes aim to move bodies. “I want to maintain the primal force in the mix,” he says, “to create those moments of rupture, when the ground you’re standing or dancing on sort of falls away.” Far removed from the dreary academicism of the likes of DJ Spooky, /rupture builds upon the sonic foundation laid by Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa. Like those hip-hop pioneers, /rupture creates...