As red-hot underground DJs go, Ghislain Poirier is as understated as it gets. With little hype, the man continues to plug away, booking parties, working in the studio, opening for the likes of Lady Sovereign. The French-Canadian doesn’t blast in all caps, propagate on message boards, or have a garish girls-kissing photoblog. He’s headquartered in Montreal, where he throws the weekly “Bounce le Gros,” the Canadian home of the smash-up/crash-up sound so chic right now with club punks. Unlike Catchdubs and Caps ’n’ Jones, though, Poirier comes from the experimental school, releasing CDs on avant-garde labels like NYC’s 12k and Montreal’s Intr_Version.
His two latest, one on a legitimate hip-hop label and the other self-released, reflect his experimental leanings, though perhaps not nearly enough. Breakupdown, his new one for Lady Sov’s home label, Chocolate Industries, overflows with elegant beat patterns and luxuriant down-tempo sequences. The 20 tracks here take subtle risks; most of it’s instrumental, so the hooks present themselves only after repeated listens. “Travelling,” with its sinister, stuttering beat, is rhythmically intricate and deliberately atmospheric, and it exemplifies Poirier’s MO, which climaxes in “Simplicité volontaire” (“Voluntary Simplicity”), an æthereal clickmosphere that gets heavier and heavier over a simple one-two beat.
Of the MCs willing to pair off with Poirier, NYC spaceman/poet Beans may be the most under-appreciated rapper in the US. The first 12-inch single from Breakupdown is “Cold As Hell,” and the menacing, distorted beat is the perfect frame for Beans’s ridonkulous talent. Of other MCs, Beans spits, “Pick your face up/Use your head for more than a target/When I touch a mic/I’ve seen spina bifida with more backbone.” Smack! Other than that, nothing quite jumps out. But Poirier is slowly creating the blueprint for a new kind of hip-hop, one that incorporates avant-garde production, futuristic digitalis, and complex polyrhythms.
Bounce le Remix, then, is what the future could sound like. Poirier’s handmade 13-track comp (available on-line) includes a cappellas from Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, and others run simple and straight over Poirier’s original electronic booty beats. As with Breakupdown, there’s nothing radical in its hooks, but the whole thing is a pluperfect vision where Neneh Cherry never disappeared, Vanilla Ice has credibility, and the Ying Yang Twins sample Aphex Twin. Poirier’s treatment of “Drop It like It’s Hot” is the baddest thing here. The sine-wave tweet that appears throughout (those ultra-high level pulses familiar to most from hearing tests) is straight futuristic shit. I’ve been waiting for someone to put that in a hip-hop track, and Poirier, as far as I know, is the first one to do it.
The CD gets even more startling when Poirier takes “Ice Ice Baby” and drops it onto a more minimal loop. Somehow, Robert Matthew Van Winkle sounds, well, kinda hot. Other takes, on M.I.A., Dizzee Rascal, and Busta Rhymes, are passably dope and recommended for DJ use. But why use a radio edit of Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” and then stick with the dirty version of the Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait”? No matter. As a DJ and a producer, Poirier is more than simply one to watch — he’s one to believe in. He has a vision and the skills to realize it. That he’s doing so without self-promotional rigmarole and beer sponsors makes him more likable and perhaps even more likely to sustain a lengthy career. Here’s hoping he finds the money, the support, and the (legitimate) hype to hit the next level.
