Drum Machine Technicians

With the initials "DMT," Drum Machine Technicians could easily be mistaken as a cookie-cutter rave act rather than the crafters of chunky, abstract electronic layers. Not knowing they were naming themselves after a fast-acting hallucinogen, Eddie Def and DJ Cue started DMT to further explore the lost days of the fusion between hip-hop and electronic music that was pioneered by such people as Afrika Bambaataa. With both DMT founders having a long history in the hip-hop and turntablist/battle DJ scenes, they wanted to further discover and challenge barriers. They noticed that electronic music producers were experimenting with hip-hop beats, but most of the hip-hop community was ignoring what was going on in the electronic music realms. What resulted are albums full of crunchy loops and heavy slices of sound, all made on Akai MPC 2000 sampling drum machines. Their works fit closer to the darker sounds of chunky, heavier IDM and have almost no traces of scratching or hip-hop. Eddie Def and DJ Cue traded off solo albums for the first four DMT efforts and then joined forces on the fifth. Both men also work on outside, solo production projects and DJ Cue owns Cue Records in California. ~ Diana Potts, All Music Guide