Trippin' With Purpose

Z-Trip (aka Zach Sciacca) may be the Godfather of the Mash-Up, a style popularised by 2ManyDJs, Girl Talk and countless others, but he's more about the ethos than any title. “It's kind of a redundant term, 'cause mashing-up music is just mixing music,” Sciacca quips, referring to its derivation from reggae culture. “If you're a fucking DJ, you should be mixing music to begin with!” The American rolls with the tag only because he appreciates that it summarises his approach for a wider demographic – and, Sciacca says, “it's not like anything I can shake.

“I think it's a term that people have been able to identify with because it's like coining 'dubstep' or 'drum'n'bass' or 'jungle' or whatever – everybody needs to put something in a box. But what I do, my nature, is out of the box.” Indeed, so played-out is the catchall 'mash-up' now that many are re-branding their steez as “party”. Sciacca is glad that DJs have ditched the bandwagon. “There was a lot of it that was bad. There were people who were mixing together a pop vocal with a funny anecdotal thing that made for an interesting combo, but musically sounded like shit. To me, it was always the music that came first – and should come first – and it was always about mixing different kinds of music, not just making a cute little thing.”

Sciacca originates from New York but moved to Phoenix, Arizona, with Mom when his parents separated. The b-boy joined the Bombshelter DJs, buying records on trips to NYC. Sciacca eventually settled in Los Angeles to further his DJ career, but he attributes his unique blending of hip hop, electro and rock to those days of isolation in the desert. Sciacca first generated heat internationally with 2001's mixtape, Uneasy Listening, Vol 1 (alongside DJ P). In 2005 he issued an acclaimed 'artist' album, Shifting Gears, containing the hit, Walking Dead, with Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington, on the Disney-affiliated Hollywood Records. Since then, Sciacca has sired side-projects (Ahead Of The Curve with Lateef), cut music for video games (he's heavily involved in DJ Hero), and remixed everyone from Nirvana (officially!) to The Jackson 5 to, recently, will.i.am.

Sciacca is “stoked” to be returning to Australia. He's toured here for years, even playing 2009's Big Day Out. And Sciacca raves about our crowds being “up for just about fucking anything... You [Australians] always go hard – wherever I play, and wherever I go, you seem to go along with [it]. And you don't just go along with [it] for the sake of going along. You're riding shotgun – you're in the car with me.”

This time the technology geek is bringing a new fluid audio-visual show entailing a (responsive) VJ, enabling him to “read the crowd like a true DJ… It allows me to be versatile with what I play and when I play it and how I play it – to not have to worry about having every visual sync-up and have everything be the same over and over and over,” he explains. “I like to change up my music – and change up my sets. Every show has got to be a little bit different or else I get bored.”

Sciacca, who once opened for The Rolling Stones, has been playing to a very different audience lately – and “a dream come true” - as LL Cool J's tour DJ. “It's great! I mean, the dude's a legend. For me to be working with him, I'm completely honoured. It's very validating for what I do and how I do it.” The MC, an “open-minded guy”, has permitted him to 'flip' his tunes. “We have a dubstep moment that we do in Going Back To Cali.” What's more, the pair have ventured into the studio for jams like Super Baller.

Touring with LL Cool J, in addition to prepping his own show, has delayed work on Sciacca's long-awaited follow-up to Shifting Gears. But he's deliberately taking his time, having no label to dictate deadlines. “The cool thing about it is I keep making more – and [more] interesting – music and it's getting to be more and more diverse. So, when it is time to put it out, it's gonna be very dense. There'll be a lot to it.”

Sciacca is aiming to finish an album by year's end or in early 2013. In the meantime, he's teamed with Canada's Datsik for the wobbly Double Trouble on the latter's Vitamin D LP. Sciacca is obsessed with dubstep, being into all “low end” music (including Miami bass). “There's a lot of people who shit on it, but I'm a huge fan, man. I think if it's done right, it's amazing.” And Double Trouble is indicative of Sciacca's new material. “It's just working with different rappers or different artists, different producers – and trying to come up with completely different stuff.”

Sciacca is excited about the current fusion of rap and EDM arising from the US dance explosion. Hip hop, he feels, “had kind of really run its course” and needed to reinvent itself. Not that Sciacca is disloyal. “I don't want people to think that I've jumped ship or anything, 'cause I'm still a hip hop head – always will be.” In fact, he remains the nonconformist. “It's really great to see cross-pollinisation within music – I'm a huge fan of that. I've built my whole career off that so, to see it happening, I'm stoked.”

These days DJs are as wary of engaging in political debate as the prissiest of pop stars. Sciacca? Hell no – he has opinions. Such was Sciacca's early support of Barack Obama that he unleashed the mix-ups Party For Change and Victory Lap. Obama is now running for a second term with many Americans disillusioned. Sciacca understands. “I'm still a fan of him and his politics – for the most part,” he cautions. The DJ certainly doesn't want the Republican Mitt Romney to win. “I think Romney'd be a fuckin' travesty for a United States President!” Sciacca hopes Obama might yet implement more of the changes he promised – changes that have been actively resisted. “They've been fighting him left and right this whole time – and I will even go out on a further limb and say that I think half of the reason is just 'cause he's black. It's not even 'cause of his fuckin' politics. There's a lot of white racist people who are still in power in the US and who have a very fuckin' hard time with a black person running the country. That's the reality of it.”

Nowhere is this more evident to Sciacca than in the apparently grassroots backlash to the health care reform dubbed 'ObamaCare' – touted as a Socialist conspiracy by conservatives. Sciacca sighs, “There are a lot of forward-thinking people in the US, but there are more people who are sheep, who just follow along and are afraid of anything that's gonna take away the status-quo – even though the status-quo is fucked. And that's the sad truth. It's really fucked-up to see it, because I've gotta live in this country. I've gotta deal with these people – and mostly it's people I bump into in traffic. They're everywhere. You can look at them and just go, Yep, that guy, he doesn't know how to merge – he clearly doesn't know what the fuck's going on.” Merge, shift gear or mash it up?