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0000017c-60f7-de77-ad7e-f3f739cf0000Arts & More airs Fridays at 7:50 a.m. and 4:20 p.m.Theme music: "Like A Beginner Again" by Dan Barry of Seas of Jupiter

Indie Record Collective Creates Psychedelic Hip-Hop Band

courtesy of Maraj

Best known for producing local indie and folk albums, the DoublePhelixCollective's hip-hop creation is turning one year old. Marajis playing Bell's Brewery on New Year's Eve along with The Go Rounds and Kansas Bible Company. Maraj will close out the show at midnight.

Hip-Hop: A Producer's Final Frontier

Double Phelix has produced albums for all kinds of music, but the collective's Andy Catlin says creating a hip-hop band is something he's always wanted to do. After all, with so many samples and instruments to work with, it's the ultimate producer's dream.

But don't expect your garden variety genre, Maraj rapper Dary G calls their sound "hip-hop gumbo." In any given song you could hear rap, four-part harmonies, and psychadelic instrumentals all rolled up into one. Catlin says every song starts with a sample, often from an album he finds at Goodwill.

"I'm an excessive thrifter and I try to make that my distinction as a producer - that I'm not sampling tracks that you've ever heard," he says.

Catlin says some of his favorites to use are obscure Latin records, classical music, and old film scores.

Changing The Rapper-Producer Relationship

Catlin says the usual way a hip-hop track is made is when a rapper picks a beat out of a set that a producer has already created. What you get is what you get - there's no hope for your own personal remix. But Catlin says it's not like that in Maraj, it's more of a collaborative band.

"Once the vocals are on it, we go back and kind of like then do one more long ten-hour day where you kind of re-cut the beat to the vocal. You know it's like 'Oh, when we made this beat we thought someone would be rapping here but like Darius sang, so maybe that means we cut the sample here and put a piano under the singing. Our sound kind of requires every part of this whole thing. It can't just be that Ben [Lau] and I make a beat and then they rap over it. It's a little more of a give and take."

Making A Track A Week 

Dary G says even though there are seven members in the band, the process of making a track is so structured that they have what they called "Maraj Mondays" where they put out a song a week on Facebook. When asked how the band manages to stay so prolific, Dary G replies:

"You've got to want it. If you don't want it, it's not going to happen. So we definitely want it - I feel it as a cohesive group."

Catlin says he and co-producer Ben Lau chip away at beats every day, if only for just two hours. 

"It's like working out or playing sports or anything else. If you're not in your groove all the time, it gets harder. If you do it for a couple hours every day, it gets easier and easier," he says.

Catlin says it also helps that he and Ben Lau have home studios as well, so they can save a sample as soon as they hear it. 

Maraj_full.mp3
The full interview with Andy Catlin and Dary G

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