As well as being one of the ablest solo turntablists on the globe,
Cut Chemist is also a member of two highly rated crews: underground rap kings
Jurassic 5 and the Los Angeles Latin funk band
Ozomatli. He came up with the L.A. rap group
Unity Committee, and debuted on wax with the B-side of
UC's 1993 single "Unified Rebelution." The track "Lesson 4: The Radio" was a tribute to and continuation of
Double D and
Steinski's seminal hip-hop collage masterpiece "Lessons 1-3," and included nods to
Indeep,
Bob James,
Spoonie Gee, and
Dan Ackroyd. Soon after the record's release,
Unity Committee came together with another group,
Rebels of Rhythm, to form
Jurassic 5.
Cut Chemist kept quite busy with the group, contributing "Lesson 6" to the group's eponymous EP and producing the entire record. He also delved into remixing (
DJ Shadow,
Liquid Liquid) and outside work (scratching for
Less Than Jake; appearing with
Ozomatli).
In mid-1997
Cut Chemist recorded his album debut,
Live at the Future Primitive Sound Session, with
Shortkut of
Invisibl Skratch Piklz. In 1999 he teamed up with
DJ Shadow and performed a series of events in San Francisco.
Brainfreeze is a live recording of a rehearsal for one of those shows, and became a popular and hard to find album. In 2001 the duo followed up its previous success with
Product Placement, a studio record that stylistically followed the pattern of
Brainfreeze (two long tracks, two DJs). In 2004
Cut Chemist issued
Litmus Test, a remixed collection of his previous work. It was followed in 2006 by an album of his own productions,
The Audience's Listening. In 2010 he released the mix album Sound of the Police, which featured Ethiopian and Afro-Brazilian recordings. His tracks have also appeared on two seminal turntablist compilations,
Return of the DJ, Vol. 1 and
Deep Concentration.
–
John Bush, Rovi