A short minimal-housey thing made exclusively with sound presets.

A simple synth/house song (my first actually), created with the Korg Kaossilator and some distortion effects.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License

Royce is a seven-piece hip-hop band that consists of talented locals Jamie Clemmons (JMEE), Conor Klaus (C-ROK), Justus Roe (J-Love), Ross Wall (Ross Vega$), Nicholas Spizzirri, Ben Spannaus and DJ White Lightning (Dwight Lite). They’ve released two albums on Galapagos4 (the only full band on the label), Subtleties of the Game (2003) and Tuff Love (2006), both of which gained overseas acclaim for the effortless blend of soul, rock, electronica and hip-hop. It’s not easy to define the group’s music, so we thought we’d let them explain it themselves – and explain how finding a Playboy in a back-alleyway can be an incredible source of inspiration.

How did you guys meet?
Jaime Clemmons: Royce began in high school. Justus, Conor and I were obsessed with James Brown, house music, The Meters, and Cymande; we’d hang out, listen and then eventually conspire to assemble a band based on those influences. None of us had any kind of classical music background, which ironically helped us to cultivate a lot of unique tracks. While most everyone else we knew was trying to copy the grunge sound, we were busy assembling driving, soulful, percussive epics. Justus and Ben met the first week of school at the University of Illinois thanks to the Cocktails and Blues Explosion (a New York?based punk blues trio).

Where are all you guys from originally?
Justus Roe: We’re all mostly born and raised in Chicago, except Ben, who hails from Decatur. He’s recently joined Royce to bring us his south central Illinois flavor.

JC: While we’re all from Chicago, we all went away for college. We played together occasionally, but it wasn’t until afterwards that we really started having this more focused path. We asked our friend Ross to play keys with us and his Fender Rhodes lent a new, much needed warmth to the music. Nick joined just a few years ago. Nick is our friend’s younger brother; he’s a freak of nature, in an X-Men kind of way. Together we all switch up instruments and continue to push and evolve, while all the while remaining friends-first and foremost.

Ben Spannaus: North Side, South Side and the super-far South Side in Decatur, Illinois.

How has Chicago played a role in the development of your sound?
BS: Peter Cetera (bass player for the band, Chicago)and Terry Kath (original guitarist and founding member of the band Chicago)are two of the best bass/guitar match-ups ever.

JC: Chicago has played a vital part in who we are and how are music is crafted. There’s an expression we toss around “Too much smart, not enough heart,” and like Chicago it’s got to have heart. Royce is many things, but mostly, it’s honest and that’s rare-like Chicago or like Nelson Algren jokes.

JR: We all grew up being exposed to a huge range of sounds and musical genres. This is pre-internet, pre-iWorld. We were lucky enough to have some friends with older brothers who turned us on to the best of early rap and hip-hop, along with the best of Chicago house music. Pre-CD world we all lived off of mix-tapes, by Hotmix 5, Ron Hardy, Julian Jumpin Perez, Hyperactive, DJ PNS, Kevin Beacham’s Time Travel Radio Show bootlegs and Josh and Jason Grotto. This turned all of us on to collecting music in general, but definitely searching for classic rock, soul and disco records that had been sampled in early rap + house music. I basically lived at Chicago’s Gramaphone Records too, collecting every rap record and decent house record I could get my hands on till the mid 90′s. We also grew up in Chicago when Clark & Belmont was the Chicago epicenter of punk, new wave and industrial. We used to frequent the best all-ages juice bar, Medusas, which was definitely educational and influential on our 12 year-old minds-jumping between each floor hearing bands like Fugazi, Ministry, Naked Raygun plus all the good Wax Trax records.

Take me back to the first time you performed together.
JR: Well, we rocked the socks off of Damon Hall at St. Ignatius College Prep in late 1993, and we crushed the Stossur Fest Block Party in early 2000 during the air-show. But our best real sets came at the Galapagos 4 monthly at the old Hothouse. I believe we set the Tuesday night bar record for the Hothouse during a super-icy February in 2001.

JC: Our first real performance was at a bar that no longer exists called Thurston’s. Like many firsts, it was awkward with a few regrets, mistakes, and some bruises along the way, but it was also an exhilarating experience at the same time.

You all seemed to have had successful solo careers before Royce, was it hard transitioning from solo work to collaborative?
JC: I love White Lightning’s beats, he loves my solo stuff, but none of that stuff will ever be Royce. It’s the Voltron principle: in our own right we’re fantastic, but put us together and we’re fierce; like a big, shiny robot with lasers…from Chicago.

JR: Voltron, ’92 Championship Bulls, 2005 Championship White Sox, the Obama campaign team; the magic happens when the whole team comes together. Collaborating is sometimes challenging, but working as a group always brings a greater result.

Collectively, what are some of your influences?

JC: We’re influenced by many music and musicians. Some of these, in no real particular order are: New Order, Cymande, The Meters, Sea & Cake, The Obey Your Brain crew, Icy Demons, Chandeliers, Michael Columbia, Michael Jackson, Vincent Gallo, Public Enemy, Aphex Twin and Sam Cook.

JR: Staying with the Chicago sports theme, personally the ’85 Bears. Musically: Chicago House, Westcoast Rap, Eastcoast native tongue-like hip hop, Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes, Talking Heads, Joy Division, Kool Keith, Jay Dilla, Captain Beefheart, Stereo Lab, Brian Wilson, The Damned, Hank Williams, Kraftwerk, Devo, Marcos Valle, Boredoms, The Bomb Squad, Bad Brains, etc.

BS: Anything and everything. Press shuffle on someone’s iPod and it might be Mississippi John Hurt, Fela, Gram Parsons, E-40, The Kinks, Curtis Mayfield, Milton Nascimento, Genesis all into some Slick Rick.

Tell me a little bit about Subtleties of the Game?
JR: Subtleties of the Game was a very special time for us. It’s kind of when we went beyond just making jam-type 4-track recordings and stepped up to try and make something more substantive and unique. It was the moment where we all came together and attempted to refine our sound, our playing and our recording effort. We approached the record as being extremely important for us artistically. With Galapagos4 becoming a viable independent label with distribution, we knew that the record would be able to reach a bigger audience, which made us work harder on making it the best possible recording we could do with the limited recording gear we had.

JC: Subtleties of the Game was our first release. I still enjoy listening to it; there are so many strengths, including the honesty I referenced earlier. In this album, one can really hear a lot of the early funk/prince influences. It was a learning process, one that really solidified our resolve to be better musicians. The record was well-received in Japan and it gave us some credibility at home. The second record, Tuff Love, was built on the successes and failures from Subtleties. While I think that the second record is more cohesive, stronger, the first is powerfully charming, dynamic and sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard. I have a copy of the vinyl pressing we made on my wall at home. It’s a trophy as much as it is ear candy.

Now there’s a lot of different genres mixed into the album, yet you begin and end the album with songs that have a decided hip-hop feel. Is that what you wanted listeners to walk away with?
JC: We give the average listener more credit than most record companies. We’d like for the people of Chicago, Tokyo or Madrid to decide for themselves; there are many different genres on the album but we have one message: More heart. We wrote and recorded Tuff Love after touring Europe with our hip-hop record label. It seemed apropos to represent that while we dabble in melody, we’ve always been percussion-driven. The record, its diverse collection of sounds, mirrors that of our own diversity. Listening to this record is like taking the Red Line from Howard to 95th and back; eclectic, artistic, tasteful, beautiful and honest.

BS: It doesn’t matter what they walk away with, as long as they’re humming something from the album.

Tell me about Tuff Love.
JR: Tuff Love is our ode to Chicago and our experience growing up here. Where Subtleties was a combination of musical influences, and styles, Tuff Love was more about the raw Chicago experience. But for as much as that album comes out of growing up here, the themes and ideas in each song are things that anyone, anywhere can relate to. Tuff Love also developed out of our tours and shows with the Galapagos4 crew. I had been producing and engineering records for several artists on the Galapagos4 label and we wanted to create a collaboration that brought the live flavor of Royce to the hip-hop that the MCs from G4 were creating. We were making music and beats that we could rock to at the G4 shows, while still having the pop genre-less song flavor of Royce.

JC: Sometimes, being a city kid, you see more bad than good, more hate than love, more flash than substance, more hustlers than squares. People outside of Chicago – state-side, Europe, Japan, Brazil, etc. – think of fantasy images of Al Capone or Kanye West, but that is a misrepresentation of what we value here. Chicago is not a pinstriped suit, or a neon handkerchief tied a la Gene Autry; Chicago is family, alley sports, BBQs, baseball, bitter winters and sweltering summers, food so good you feel like slapping someone. People try to use money to erase the Chicago we grew up in and before they succeeded we wanted to make a gesture of sincere love back to the people and places so unique, so dear, so vulnerable to corporate colonialism.

BS: It’s everything that happened in Chicago. It’s hot. Real hot. The new album’s coming out and it’s even hotter.

Any spots you go to in the city to get your creative juices flowing?
BS: Backyard BBQs and anywhere with foosball.

JR: PJ’s for special quarterly taste testing, Irazu’s for a mango milkshake, Taste of Lebanon on Foster for some mean lentil soup, and Bob San on Division for an urchin sake shot.

JC: I like alleys. The alley behind the house I grew up in, the alley behind White Lightning’s parents’ place, the alley I found my first Playboy. I also like the Art Institute. Unfortunately, a lot of the places I found inspiration from are now gone.

BS: The lake, Humboldt Park, the Shape Shoppe, the roof of the Shape Shoppe, etc.

Finally, describe the sounds of Royce.
JC: Royce sounds like a stick of butter sliding across a hot griddle.

JR: The sounds of Royce are like a vast, never-ending intoxicating forest full of pop rocks.

Check out Centerstage Chicago food and drink deals!

Bonobo
Sunday, January 4 at Sonotheque, 9 p.m.; $12
Despite the blog-house craze and the preponderance of overpaid Serato “DJs” (I’m looking at you, Samantha Ronson), it’s good to know that talented and thoughtful producers and DJs can still get the attention and respect they deserve. Take for example Bonobo; he doesn’t fall into a specific dance-music category and he isn’t concerned with the latest trends in electronic music, but he’s developed a strong following thanks to his releases on the prestigious Ninja Tune label. With little to no advertising, he packed Sonotheque when he came to town last year. Best of all, he draws the kind of crowd that cares less about what you’re wearing and much more about just having a good time and appreciating a talented musician who only makes it to the States once a year.

Sizzled
Friday, January 9 at Lava Lounge, 9 pm.; free

Lava’s house-music party, Grizzled, is taking on a sexier, more inviting name, Sizzled. For 2009, resident DJs Karl Almaria and John Mork (The Sound Republic), are moving away from strictly jacking house to encompass a larger selection of all the many subgenres of house music. Tonight, special guest Mr. Timms from Milwaukee spins an early downtempo set and a late-night deep house set. Oh, and there?s also free bacon (seriously) until it runs out.

One Love
Friday, January 9 at Butterfly Social Club, 9 p.m.; Free
Last time we recommended this event, we weren’t sure how the turnout would be since Butterfly lost its pristine, superfoods-club vibe and went for more of a traditional beer-and-shot crowd. But Papa G’s One Love party turned out to be one of the more happening events in December, with a multi-ethnic crowd of cool kids, pseudo-hippies and yes, even Buddha rejects, all getting down on the tiny dance floor. Just be warned, bartenders here can be extremely slow and the more people belly up to the bar, the slower they move. Just be patient, don’t let it ruin your night and you’ll have a good time.

Africa Hi-Fi: Barack Obama/Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration
Saturday, January 10 at Sonotheque, 9 p.m.; $10
Africa Hi Fi is likely the only party that could have a legitimate celebration for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as well as the election of Barack Obama without it coming off as contrived. Host Sonia H. and resident DJ and dance-music legend Ron Trent have built the AHF name to be known as an event not only for good music, but also unity, appreciation of culture and positive vibes, things that both MLK and Mr. Obama would definitely support. Let’s face it, you?re not getting anywhere near Washington, DC on the night of the actual inauguration, so make this the night you celebrate a historical figure and history in the making.

Big Fun
Saturday, January 10 at Crocodile, 9 p.m; free
Yes, it’s true. Spend $5 on a cocktail at Wicker Park’s Crocodile and you’ll get a free personal margherita pizza. It’s a great deal in these harsh economic times and the pizza is the perfect size to soak up a few too many cocktails and/or keep you from making those dreaded late-night burrito mistakes. But this is Best Beats, not Cheap Eats and the weekly Saturday-night party, Big Fun, is shaping up to be a major contender in the neighborhood. The usual suspects from neighbor Subterranean, DJ Trew and Maker, are joined by DJ Butterfly for a night of reggae, house, hip-hop and dance music.

Check out Centerstage Chicago food and drink deals!

The Lowdown Brass Band is a collective of horn players from DePaul that consists of Steve Duncan, Lance Loiselle, Chris Neal, David Levine, Shane Jonas, Raphael Crawford, Andrew Zelm and Adam Sorenson. Many listeners have made comparisons to the Budos Band, NOMO or even the Chicago Afrobeat Project are clearly there, but what really makes the band unique is its ability to develop and accentuate each player’s voice. Centerstage caught up with these self-proclaimed “horn nerds” to talk about Lowdown’s origins and its future.

Where are you guys from and how did you link up to form the Lowdown Brass Band?
We’re local boys who basically got together while enrolled in the DePaul School of Music. We found ourselves hanging out and playing music together on a casual basis pretty often. It was only natural that we formed Lowdown, when seven-plus horn nerds were spending that much time together.

As a group, what are some of your influences?
Typically, the band comes from a strong jazz and improvisational background, but virtually everyone in the group has three or four other projects of varying styles, allowing us to branch out and try new forms. Our influences include New Orleans second-line street grooves, Afro-Cuban styles, modern funk, hip-hop and Hall and Oates.

Where did you guys first perform as LBB and what was it like for you?
Our first performance was back in 2003 at the Beat Kitchen, opening up for Family Style at their CD release party. It was a nerve-wracking experience with 10 guys on stage, but we somehow rallied and had a good show.

Has the local music scene contributed to your style in any way?
We’ve tried to set ourselves apart from the local scene in order to carve a little niche for the band. There are, however, some really good brass bands and marching bands in the city like Mucca Pazza, BS Brass Band, and Revolutionary Snake Ensemble. Overall, it helps bring the whole genre to the forefront, despite the style differences.

Bringing this genre to the forefront, from an outsider’s perspective, can seem like a nostalgic thing to do. How has the new wave of funk bands rekindled the interest in the genre?
I think that there’s been a resurgence of people who have a reverence for “traditional” musical styles, while trying to meld them with modern sensibilities and technology. The digital revolution of the music business has really opened up the game and has fostered new forms of the old styles.

There are other bands out there looking to capitalize off the funk revival, what is it that separates you from others?
We pride ourselves on our original compositions and the fine line we tread between progressive musicality and raucous party band.

Chicago is absolutely rife with jazz and soul musicians. Have you connected with any of them?
We’ve recently done a little work with former Sonia Dada frontman Paris Delane, on his upcoming album. Beyond that, we’ve got a good crop of “young lions” from the Chicago jazz scene that keeps our sound moving forward. We would love to collaborate more if the situation presented itself.

I see that you have a song called “Jell-O Pudding.” Maybe you can link up with Bill Cosby like Quincy Jones did. What was the premise behind making this song?
Basically, Jell-O Pudding came about when we were recording our album. There was a period of about 15 minutes where we just rolled tape to see what we could come up with. I think it started with a tuba groove that was just layered with bones, trumpets and saxes. We edited it down to about 45 seconds after the fact. After listening to what we had, it just sounded like a groove that “Coz” would do his little sweater-shuffle dance to. And consequently, Jell-O Pudding was born.

What are you working on right now?
Right now, we’re getting our song list together for a new recording. We’ve got about 12 original compositions that are ready to go into the can. Beyond that, we have a monthly gig at Quenchers on the second Wednesday of every month. That keeps us “in shape” and lets us stretch out more than we would in a 45-minute, hit-it-and-quit-it club set.

Ultimately what kind of impact are you looking to leave with your music?
We want people to let go of themselves a little bit and not take themselves so seriously. The Lowdown Brass Band lends itself to an irreverence which we think is in short supply these days. We also want to challenge the listener, and any preconceived notion of what they think a brass band should be.

Check out Centerstage Chicago food and drink deals!