Ruckus Roboticus

"Our favorite DJ album of the year", and ranked #83 out of the 97 best albums of the year.
- WOXY - The Future of Rock N' Roll

"This Ohio DJ is the rare crate-digger who can use his obscure vinyl, found sounds, et al. to spin a captivating yarn" - SPIN Magazine (May '08) - Spin Magazine

When asked to describe how something sounds, "Lots of records being played at the same time, with hot sauce" seldom comes to mind. Perhaps this is just because few of us are blessed with the creative capacity of Ruckus Roboticus. And for someone who is emerging from "Under a rock, Ohio," Ruckus seems to know a thing or two about music. How's that? Well, not everybody has shared stages with the likes of DJ Premiere, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Prince Paul or RJD2. With experimental and highly engaging tracks, double R is no ordinary beatsmith. His debut album was not only semi-autobiographical, but it was crafted out of nothing but found sounds! Now if that's not impressive, than kinder-roboticus isn't the cutest next 1000-er we've ever seen. - Urb.com

With technology's growth spurt in the past several years, particularly in terms of music recording technology, now anyone can make mash-ups, cut-and-paste samples from iTunes and become an amateur DJ of sorts. But to go beyond the amateurism, a deft touch is needed: a sense of musicality as well as a strong feel for rhythmic precision. Dayton's Ruckus Roboticus is a mix-master of the highest order, wisely compared to the likes of DJ Shadow and his statemate, RJD2. Roboticus has remixed Bloc Party and jammed the turntable and drum machine on stage with artists like Prince Paul and Mr. Lif. But his debut album, Playing with Scratches, is all Roboticus. Well, and about a million samples, culled most prominently from old children's albums and instructional recordings. Like Girl Talk, Roboticus' music is, first and foremost, fun, and the kid-record samples add to the playfulness. Beneath the merriment is a funky quilt of scratches and endless breakbeats, all craftily weaved together to give the record a high level of funkiness. The humor level is also pretty high -- on "How to Handle Grown Ups," a distinguished announcer gives tips for kids to relate to adults, but ends with a froggy voice instructing tikes to tell their elders, "You smell like a piece of doo-doo." "A Child's Introduction to Drums" is a marvel of beat intertwining, as various pieces of a drum kit are demonstrated, clashing and colliding in perfect sync with numerous outside rhythms. A lot of albums like this can become monotonous and trancelike, but Roboticus assembles his clips and beats together in a compositional manner, making it more than just background music for your next party and actually something you could listen to on a regular basis and still hear something new every time you put it on. Though primarily for grown-ups, Playing With Scratches might just be the hippest kids' album ever made. It certainly is the funkiest. Grade: A - Cincinnati Citybeat

uckus Roboticus produces an incredible fusion of music that incorporates funk, hip-hop, and experimental electronica all in one — a unique sound that's wildly vivid.

The producer's career exploded when he self-released a remix of Bloc Party's "Hunting for Witches." Originally, the track was going to be released along with the Bloc Party single; however, the band didn't approve it as an official release, so he leaked it himself.

Ruckus Roboticus' debut album, Playing with Scratches, is an audio collage that incorporates many different samples. He calls it "part children's music, part hip-hop." - NPR.org

Yesterday's revelatory discovery of Thao with the Get Down Stay Down withstanding, so far 2008 has not been overly kind when it comes to blessing me with albums that truly excite me. I'm not worried though since (as I explained yesterday) the year just started, and as the trickle of new music that's already begun turns into a full-fledged flood I'm sure I'll be veritably overwhelmed by an inundation of genuinely breathtaking records so numerous that I'll be going crazy trying to find time to write about all of them. But in the meantime, business is still slow.


The bright side to this seeming dearth of dopeness though is that when I'm confronted by something that's really worth getting excited about it stands out all the more. Such is the case with award-winning Dayton, Ohio-born turntablist Ruckus Roboticus and his debut LP Playing With Scratches. Self-described as "part turntable, half drum machine, all sex machine," Ruckus has performed alongside Prince Paul, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Premier, RJD2 and The Juan Maclean among others, lent his production skills to Nickelodeon, MTV, the Disney Channel, and LOGO TV, remixed Bloc Party, and been featured on Ninja Tune's Solid Steel mix-show. His opus Playing With Scratches is a turntablist concept album that tells a narrative story about the birth, music-fueled life, death, and ultimate rebirth of a mythologized Ruckus, through sound collages built around scratches and samples culled largely from children's records, which puts him in league with the likes of Cut Chemist, and the aforementioned Prince Paul and RJD2, when it comes to crafting instrumental Hip-Hop that's all at once fun, funky and cognitive.


Conceptually the album Playing With Scratches reminds me most of is Company Flow's instrumental outing Little Johnny from the Hospitul with a pinch of Prince Paul's not-entirely instrumental solo debut Psychoanalysis: What is it? thrown in for good measure. But concepts and sonics are two altogether different things, so don't expect Scratches to bear any discernible similarity to the former release. It shares more than a little bit in common with the latter though, not to mention Cut Chemist's The Audience's Listening and any number of downtempo records from labels like Ninja Tune and ESL. More than anything though it feels like a spiritual successor to my all-time favorite exhibition of Hip-Hop DJ skills (or turntablism if you will) ever committed to wax, Grandmaster Flash's seminal "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel." Perhaps Ruckus is just good at sentimental heart-string-plucking, but the breaks and kiddie-record vocal bits on tracks like "Here We Go" bring me right back to my childhood when the sound of a North Dakota-born storyteller mixed over Chic's "Good Times" pouring out of my boombox made me want nothing more than to be a real DJ and not just some kid sitting on his stoop "air scratching."

- OkayPlayer.com