Paul Dennis Miller (born September 6, 1970), known professionally as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is an American

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics "

illbient Illbient is a genre of electronic music and an art movement that originated among hip hop-influenced artists from Williamsburg, New York City around 1994. DJ Olive, and DJ Spooky, pioneers of the genre, have both claimed to have coined the ter ...

" or "

trip hop Trip hop (sometimes used synonymously with " downtempo") is a musical genre that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. It has been described as a psychedelic fusion of hip hop and electronica with slow tem ...

". He is a

turntablist Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating new music, sound effects, mixes and other creative sounds and beats, typically by using two or more turntables and a cross fader-equipped DJ mixer. The mixer is plugged into a PA sys ...

, record producer, philosopher, and author. He borrowed his stage name from the character The Subliminal Kid in the novel ''

Nova Express ''Nova Express'' is a 1964 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. It was written using the 'fold-in' method, a version of the cut-up method, developed by Burroughs with Brion Gysin, of enfolding snippets of different texts into the nove ...

'' by

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

. Having studied philosophy and French literature at Bowdoin College, he has become a professor of Music Mediated Art at the

European Graduate School The European Graduate School (EGS) is a private graduate school that operates in two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Valletta, Malta. History It was founded in 1994 in Saas-Fee, Switzerland by the Swiss scientist, artist, and therapist, P ...

and is the executive editor of ''Origin'' magazine.

Career

Spooky began writing

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

and formed a collective called

Soundlab Soundlab was a collective of artists, both sound and visual, that started in the East Village, New York City around the mid 1990s. The founding members were Howard Goldkrand, Beth Coleman and Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky. The collective includ ...

with several other artists. In the mid-1990s, Spooky began recording a series of singles and EPs. His debut LP was '' Songs of a Dead Dreamer''. Spooky contributed to the AIDS benefit albums '' Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip'' (1996) and '' Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon'' (1998) produced by the Red Hot Organization. ''

Riddim Warfare ''Riddim Warfare'' is a 1998 studio album by DJ Spooky. It includes contributions from Sir Menelik, Kool Keith, Killah Priest, Thurston Moore, Ben Neil, Arto Lindsay, and Mariko Mori. Critical reception John Bush of AllMusic gave the album 4 sta ...

'' included collaborations with

Kool Keith Keith Matthew Thornton (born October 7, 1963), better known by his stage name Kool Keith, is an American rapper and record producer from The Bronx, New York City, known for his surreal, abstract and often profane or incomprehensible lyrics. Kool ...

and other figures in

indie rock Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produc ...

, including Sonic Youth's

Kim Gordon Kim Althea Gordon (born April 28, 1953) is an American musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, Califor ...

and

Thurston Moore Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958) is an American musician best known as a member of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Mo ...

. In 2001, he released the CD ''Under the Influence''. He returned in 2002 with ''Modern Mantra''. That same year saw the release of ''Optometry'', a collaboration with avant-

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

players

Matthew Shipp Matthew Shipp (born December 7, 1960) is an American pianist, composer, and bandleader. Early life and education Shipp was raised in Wilmington, Delaware, and began playing piano at six years old. His mother was a friend of trumpeter Clifford B ...

, William Parker, Guillermo E. Brown and

Joe McPhee Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is ...

. In a classical vein, he collaborated with the ST-X Ensemble in performances of the music of

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde c ...

. DJ Spooky collaborated with

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto i ...

on projects including The Discord Symphony. The concert and album were released as an enhanced CD containing both a full audio program and multimedia computer files. It features spoken-word performances by

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

, David Byrne,

Patti Smith Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album ''Horses''. Called the "punk poet ...

David Sylvian David Sylvian (born David Alan Batt, 23 February 1958) is an English musician, singer and songwriter who came to prominence in the late 1970s as frontman and principal songwriter of the band Japan. The band's androgynous look and increasingly ...

, DJ Spooky,

David Torn David M. Torn (born May 26, 1953) is an American guitarist, composer, and producer. He is known for combining electronic and acoustic instruments and for his use of looping. Background Torn has contributed to recordings by artists as diverse ...

, and

Bernardo Bertolucci Bernardo Bertolucci (; 16 March 1941 – 26 November 2018) was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved international ...

. He collaborated with

on the recording of ''

Kraanerg ''Kraanerg'' is a composition for 23 instruments and 4-channel analog tape composed by Iannis Xenakis in 1968, as ballet, with choreography by Roland Petit and set design by Victor Vasarely. It was created for the grand opening of the Canadian N ...

'', with the STX-Ensemble in 1997. 2005 saw the release of ''Drums of Death'', DJ Spooky's CD based on sessions he recorded with

Dave Lombardo David Lombardo (born February 16, 1965) is a Cuban-American drummer, best known as a co-founding member of American thrash metal band Slayer. He is currently playing drums with Testament, Fantômas, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Cross, Mr. Bungl ...

of Slayer. Other guest artists include Chuck D of

Public Enemy "Public enemy" is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society, though the phrase had been used for centuries to describe ...

and

Vernon Reid Vernon Alphonsus Reid (born 22 August 1958) is an English-born American guitarist and songwriter. Reid is the founder and primary songwriter of the rock band Living Colour, Reid was named No. 66 on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's 2003 list of the ...

Living Colour Living Colour is an American rock band from New York City, formed in 1984. The band currently consists of guitarist Vernon Reid, lead vocalist Corey Glover, drummer Will Calhoun and bassist Doug Wimbish (who replaced Muzz Skillings in 1992). S ...

. The record was co-produced by Jack Dangers of

Meat Beat Manifesto Meat Beat Manifesto, often shortened as Meat Beat, Manifesto or MBM, is an electronic music group originally consisting of Jack Dangers and Jonny Stephens that was formed in 1987 in Swindon, United Kingdom. The band, fronted by Dangers (the only ...

. DJ Spooky joined the ninth and eleventh annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. He was also a judge for the third Independent Music Awards. DJ Spooky has said that much of his work "deals with the notion of the encoded gesture or the encrypted psychology of how music affects the whole framework of what the essence of 'humaness' is... To me at this point in the 21st century, the notion of the encoded sound is far more of a dynamic thing, especially when you have these kinds of infodispersion systems running, so I'm fascinated with the unconscious at this point."

Other work

His work as an artist has appeared in a variety of contexts such as the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition ...

; the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

; the

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy ...

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, Germany;

Kunsthalle A kunsthalle is a facility that mounts temporary art exhibitions, similar to an art gallery. It is distinct from an art museum by not having a permanent collection. In the German-speaking regions of Europe, ''Kunsthallen'' are often operated by ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

;

The Andy Warhol Museum The Andy Warhol Museum is located on the North Shore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is the largest museum in North America dedicated to a single artist. The museum holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archive ...

;

Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the ''Paula Johnson Gallery'', from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. ...

; the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporar ...

, and many other museums and galleries. In 2007, his work appeared in the Africa Pavilion in the 52nd Venice Biennial. This remix of music from Africa was also distributed freely online, and promoted by the blog ''

Boing Boing ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twic ...

''. "You give away a certain amount of your stuff, and then the cultural economy of cool kicks in", DJ Spooky said. In 2006, the song "Battle of Erishkigal", co-written by DJ Spooky and Frank Fitzpatrick, was featured in the anime-inspired film ''The Rebel Angel''. In August 2009, DJ Spooky visited the

Republic of Nauru Nauru ( or ; na, Naoero), officially the Republic of Nauru ( na, Repubrikin Naoero) and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country and microstate in Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Ki ...

in the

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, and ...

n South Pacific to do research and gather material for a project in development, with a working title of ''The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture''. DJ Spooky's multimedia performance piece ''Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica'' was commissioned by BAM for the 2009

Next Wave Festival Next Wave is a biennial festival based in Melbourne, which promotes and showcases the work of young and emerging artists. Next Wave encourages interdisciplinary practice and fosters the creation and presentation of works by emerging artists wor ...

; the

Hopkins Center for the Arts Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College is located at 4 East Wheelock Street in Hanover, New Hampshire. The center, which was designed by Wallace Harrison and foreshadows his later design of Manhattan's Lincoln Center, is the college's cu ...

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

;

UCSB The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

Arts & Lectures;

Melbourne International Arts Festival Melbourne International Arts Festival, formerly Spoleto Festival Melbourne – Festival of the Three Worlds, then Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, becoming commonly known as Melbourne Festival, was a major international arts festi ...

; and the Festival dei 2 Mondi in

Spoleto Spoleto (, also , , ; la, Spoletum) is an ancient city in the Italian province of Perugia in east-central Umbria on a foothill of the Apennines. It is S. of Trevi, N. of Terni, SE of Perugia; SE of Florence; and N of Rome. History Spolet ...

, Italy. DJ Spooky's ''Rebirth of a Nation'', a remix of D. W. Griffith's 1915 film ''

The Birth of a Nation ''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Clan ...

'', was commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Wiener Festwochen, and the Festival d'Automne a Paris. In 2010, Miller forme
The Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation
a contemporary arts organization dedicated to exploring dialog between Oceania and the rest of the world. In 2011, Miller collaborated with Ballet Austin Artistic Director Stephen Mills on a ballet work titled ''Echo Boom'' as part of ''The Mozart Project''. In 2016, DJ Spooky composed a ''New Forms'' duet for carillon and a computational re-synthesis of the

Tsar Bell The Tsar Bell (russian: Царь–колокол; ), also known as the Tsarsky Kolokol, Tsar Kolokol III, or Royal Bell, is a , bell on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin. The bell was commissioned by Empress Anna Ivanovna, niece o ...

, a Russian bell which broke before it was ever rung. In 2017, DJ Spooky started composing the music for ''Intercepted'', a podcast produced by news publication ''

The Intercept ''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing news website founded by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras and funded by billionaire eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Its current editor is Betsy Reed. The publication initially reporte ...

''.

Family

Miller was born in Washington, D.C. to Paul E. Miller, who headed a panel of 12 African American law professors who assisted defense lawyers in the California trial of

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...

, and Rosemary Reed Miller, historian and former owner, Toast and Strawberries, a Washington, D.C. boutique. DJ Spooky has a daughter born in 2011 to Fumika Yamamoto.

Discography

References

External links

Official websiteSound Unbound siteRhythm Science site
by DJ Spooky in ''21C'' *
The Vanuatu Pacifica Foundation
*

Interviews

DJ Spooky on SYFY Channel: Imagine Greater Azadi: Dj Spooky Shows Support For Iranians' Freedom Quest
at Some Assembly Required
"Blurring the Boundaries with DJ Spooky", ''Bowdoin Magazine'' profileBad at Sports podcast interviewDJ Spooky talks ''The Secret Song''2001 interview with Roy Christopher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spooky, DJ 1970 births Living people American electronic musicians American expatriates in Switzerland American hip hop DJs Articles containing video clips Bowdoin College alumni Composers for carillon European Graduate School faculty Free Kitten members Hip hop record producers Illbient Musicians from Washington, D.C. Thirsty Ear Recordings artists Trip hop musicians Woodrow Wilson High School (Washington, D.C.) alumni

Career

Other work

Family

Discography

See also

References

External links

Interviews