The last time I saw DJ Swamp spin, not only did he needle drop, play melodies with guitar tones, break records and continue to scratch with the remaining fragments while tossing other shards toward the audience, but he also tried to cut himself.

I was disappointed.

I wanted him to upend his turntables, launch them through the air, see them crash to the floor; or shotput his mixer, like Al Oerter, across the room. Or light stuff on fire until the marshal blew the whistle and ordered an evacuation.

We’ve all got our demons to exorcise. It’s just that some of us must handle it more vicariously than others. If I were to vent my repressed anger on the tools of my trade, well…let’s just say there’s limited theatricality in me heaving my Pentium across an otherwise tranquil office space.

But Swamp’s different. While no DJ in their right frame of mind would destroy perfectly good equipment, Swamp just might not be in the right frame of mind, ever. Which bodes perfectly well for him, having just released his debut album, Never is Now (Lakeshore), while appropriating the image of a hip-hop pyro-goth: black painted fingernails, demonic goatee, and fire, plenty of fire.

It’s a new phase, this artist thing, for Swamp, known to most battle jocks as the creator of breaks records like Swamp Breaks and the skipless Never Ending Break Beats. Or you might know him as a former DMC USA champ (1996), or as a DJ in the touring band for some guy named Beck.

Swamp will still break records on his upcoming tour, and he sat with DJ Times to tell us why.

DJ Times: First off, are you still breaking your equipment on stage?

Swamp: It hasn’t stopped. It’s fun, you know? It’s not a big thing to me, because I came from a world of people in rock groups and stuff like that. I was DJing in bands when I didn’t know of anybody who had a DJ in their band other than Herbie Hancock. I had a guitar player right in front of me smash his guitar, so naturally I’m going to start smashing stuff, too. I was just trying to fit in, basically, in my world.

DJ Times: What pieces of gear are your recent victims?

Swamp: Yeah, I got this new Pioneer CDJ-1000, and I was up in the San Francisco DMCs and I smashed that. A lot of people were tripping off that. They were like, “Oh, he’s the first to do this.” I wasn’t really thinking of it in those terms. It was just the thing to do at the time. Actually, what I did was hook it up to a long cable, and I was scratching with it, ’cause you can run around and scratch, which you could never do before. With this, I ran out to the front of the audience and I was scratching upside down, sideways, and then my dumb ass with my thumb, I hit the track button, and the shit stopped, and I’m sitting there thinking, “What do I do now?” So I smashed it. The crowd dug it, so it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

DJ Times: Destroying equipment must be expensive, no?

Swamp: It was $1,300 down the drain. But screw it, it was worth it, and I still walked home with change in my pocket. You just gotta do that kind of stuff.

DJ Times: But our average reader couldn’t dream of doing that. It’s got to be a lot easier if you’re endorsed by, say, Vestax, no?

Swamp: Nah, with Vestax, I’ll tell them what I want [on a mixer], and they’ll bounce it off a bunch more DJs who they really care about before it gets done. Until I get a hit record they won’t pay much attention to me. They’re just like, “Oh, he’s Beck’s DJ…” and I’ve kicked it with them, hit them with good ideas, but I don’t think they give me the same respect they give to a lot of DJs. So I’ll bounce to somebody else if I get an offer. They’re businessmen. I can’t dis them. They’re trying to make money, and I look like some crazy fool who doesn’t know what he’s doing. But then again, I asked for that, I guess.

DJ Times: You’d been working on Never is Now for how long?

Swamp: In the works for a while, couple years. The first track, actually, “Disintegrator,” which originally appeared on the soundtrack for Orgasmo, that was the first song that was finished. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be on Never is Now or not, but after it got on Napster and a lot of people started downloading it, a lot of people thought it was the first single off the record anyway, before the record was even done. So I decided it would be a pretty good idea to put it on there. After that, “Wheatgrass and Razorblades,” that got finished while I learned how to use ProTools, and Rebirth – those, and the Nord and a turntable, and a lot of toys on that one.

DJ Times: Toys, like effects boxes?

Swamp: Toys like you get at Toys R Us. Like little laser guns and stuff that you talk through and change your voice. There’s this store in L.A. called Wacko, and they sell all kinds of cool toys and junk, and adult toys, too. Crazy noisemakers that make your voice sound robotic and trippy like that, all the vocals were done through things like that.

DJ Times: Like the robotic vocal on “Worship the Robots”? Swamp: Now that’s different. That was done by typing in all the lyrics. I wrote the lyrics and then typed them into the computer, using this program called Simpletext. It’s pretty common, that’s why I used it. Radiohead used it for OK Computer, same voice on that, couple of other people have used it, but I’m the first to make it rap. It’s pretty simple, in terms of how other people have used it, basically you type it on and the program just says it, and that’s pretty simple. Making it rap is a whole other level of doing that. First of all, it’s going to spit it out randomly. However, you wrote that rap, the computer ain’t going to say it back that way, in no way, shape or form. It’s going to say it all screwed up, and you have to go back, re-write it, change things. There’s a lot of randomness to it. Then I throw it all into the beat and I have to chop it up, syllable after syllable, to get it to sound the way I want it to sound. That song, that took like, a year of editing and remixing. I originally edited it to a different beat. It was a more Cypress Hill-sounding beat, that’s what I edited the vocals to. But then after all the vocals were edited, I went and re-did all the music around the vocals and kind of re-wrote the whole song, and it became a whole lot more electro and robotic.

DJ Times: Is “Ring of Fire,” too…pyro-intensive?

Swamp: I don’t know. I think “Ring of Fire” is a little too, I wouldn’t say dirty, it’s not a dirty song, but it’s a little too dark to be a single – or at least the label doesn’t have as much faith in it. But I don’t think there will be a single off my record. I think the album just is what it is. There might be a single for “Demon in the Suburbs,” because I’ve done a radio edit of it, and done a video for it. But I’m basically looking at it like, you license a song here, you license a song there, whoever plays whatever plays, you know. If there’s any radio play on my thing, it’s just because we lucked out and somebody jumped on it sort of thing. But the video, “Worship the Robots,” I think has a good chance of getting played on something. It’s a pretty good video, it was done low budget, but considering, it goes with the song. “Ring of Fire” is a good video, too, I probably like that one better, but I don’t know, I think the timing might be bad on it. Any time you kinda glorify pyromania, people are kinda tripping, because they think kids are gonna start running out and setting things on fire. But it’s really not that. It’s just performance art, you know, and I got a lot of stunts going on, and the song is about fire. It’s an artistic statement. It’s not out to corrupt our youth.

DJ Times: When you take this on the road, what will you do differently from the past? Swamp: The only thing that I’ll do different is trying to re-create some of the scratching songs live, by getting all the pieces together back to back. So I’ll probably press them up on one piece of vinyl so I can play them live, or at least that’s what I’m going to try to do. I already have what I do already, and what people expect from me, what they don’t expect, but at the same time this is my new thing I want to try. I think if people dig them and they hear it re-created live, it could get a good reaction. But then again, no one might care.

DJ Times: Are you pressing up vocals? Swamp: I do those live, although I might press up some a cappellas. I don’t know yet. Although I do know there aren’t many turntablists rapping, so it gives me a lot of opportunities to do things that haven’t been done yet, which I’m planning to try. A lot of your typical shit is getting boring now and people are ready to see anything different.

DJ Times: On the road, what are your equipment preferences?

Swamp: Generally, I’ll ask the promoter what he’s got and, if I can perform off it, I’ll just use whatever they’ve got. There’s a lot of scratch mixers out right now, I can use whatever. If it’s something I can’t, I’ll ask if they have a Vestax ’cause that’s what people would most commonly have.

DJ Times: Feature-wise, what can you not live without?

Swamp: I don’t really need too much, ’cause I’ve gone off of stupid mixers that nobody would use and put on good shows – stupid shit, stuff like no crossfader. But it don’t matter, I make do with my situation. You get thrown in a situation where you’re making some money, you figure out stuff real quick – ’cause you’re not going to be there, saying, “Screw this! I can not perform under these conditions!” I’ll just be like, “You got that money? Cool. Let’s do this.” A lot of time, you do that, you perform under weird conditions and you pull it off, people will be like, “Oh dude, that was the best show I ever saw you do.” It’s weird. I like seeing what I can get away with. I try and look at what people are going through…but a lot of people who are throwing raves, they’re not…the smartest people in the world. So you gotta be cool.

DJ Times: With raves, how much time are you getting behind the decks?

Swamp: I tell them I can do everything I need to do in one-half hour. I can cram everything into that, but if they need me to do an hour, two hours, three hours, whatever, I’ll do it. If I have a weird mixer, I’ll immediately think, “Can’t do this, can’t do that,” and then I’ll take it from there. If I ended up with something where the crossfader was really lame, obviously there’ll be no crab scratching, or if it’s a big old mixer that I can’t get my hands around…you know. But I’ll never sit there and say, “I can’t do shit with this.” But that’s with anything, even in the studio, you try to figure out what you can do with anything.

DJ Times: For these raves, you’re headlining?

Swamp: Lately, yeah. I think the “Beck’s DJ” thing has sort of died down.

DJ Times: Is that good for you?

Swamp: Well, it kind of sucks when that’s all that people know you as. When you’ve done other things, like put out 10 break records, have won a DJ contest, stuff like that. But at the same time, it’s cool that a lot of people have found out about me through that – that’s one of the reasons why I did it. But it sucks to show up at a rave and the flyer says, “Tonight! Performing Live! BECK’S DJ.” That’s pretty wack. But I only let that happen a couple times.

DJ Times: Are you booking your own gigs? Swamp: Right now, the label [Decadent] that’s taking care of my record, they’ve got me hooked up with an agent. In the past, I just kind of did things by myself, or through friends.

DJ Times: Is it better now, with someone else booking your shows?

Swamp: No, I liked it better knowing every aspect of what’s going down. And a lot of times, now, when people talk about money, they’ll be like, “You’re going to get X amount.” But you’re only getting half of that after everybody gets their cut. It becomes crazy.

DJ Times: When you were booking your own gigs, would you ask for half the payment before the show?

Swamp: The first couple years, from ’95-’97, doing raves, that was a rough period to get through, because there’s people who don’t know who you are, and don’t care. And you go through that and find who’s cool. If someone’s cool with me, I’m real cool with them, ’cause I feel like I got family. From doing this, I feel like I got family in every state, ’cause I kick it with the people I do business with, I try to be down with them. I ain’t really had too much family, personally, so a lot of these people treat me better than my own family has. So to me, they are family. For those who do screw me over, I do everything in my power to get them out of the game. I’ve flown across the country to New York and there’s no one to pick me up at the airport and I have to stay there all night to get another flight out to LA, and you try to call somebody and the number is disconnected, and there’s nothing you can do. You know, it’s just crazy. DJ Times: Have your breaks records sold well?

Swamp: Considering that it was all me doing it, they’ve done good – better than I thought they would. Like with Swamp Breaks, I didn’t know if I was going to sell them all. They’ve all done well. I don’t want to say how many I’ve sold, but obviously I’ve kept making them, so I must be doing something. That was also the first one with a hip-hop tempo lock groove on it, a formula that was later used for Never Ending Break Beats, that sort of thing – 240 hip-hop beats per record set, where every single groove was a lock groove. It took a lot of math to get that done. And so many people have been like, “How did you do that?” I think a lot of people had thought of it, but they just couldn’t do it. I was just happy to beat everybody else to it. Same thing with Skip Proof Scratch Tools.

DJ Times: What’s the secret to making Skip Proof Scratch Tools?

Swamp: Basically, you time it out so the same sound comes around every time, so even if the needle skips you’re on the same sound, so you can keep doing your thing, which I first thought of in 1989. I think everybody back then thought the same thing. If the needle skipped on the same sound, like a tone or word, you could totally go insane and not worry about skipping. Once again, I’m sure a lot of people thought of that, but I was just lucky to beat everybody to it. I’d been wanting to do it forever, but I just didn’t have the money to invest. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty amazed that it actually did work, and that now I have a formula for it. It took three pressings for it to work. After the third time it was 90-percent of what I was hoping, and it was good enough for me to put it out. A lot of people laughed at it and thought it was stupid, ’cause it was only three sounds per side, but then after awhile it seemed like everybody started biting it. Now that I’ve got it to Volume 4, I’ve got the formula down where I’m doing skip-proof beats –they’re in synch. A lot of people buy it, and they’re just treating it like all the skip-proof imitations. The beats are synched, and I’m wondering if someone’s gonna catch up to me, the imitators. But right now, with Skip Proof Tools, I’m still ahead of the jump. But also, a lot of energy that went into Tools now goes into songs. And when people used to bite me, I’d get real mad, like so mad I’d want to beat people up. But I’ve grown, and now I focus my energy on copyright-able things.

DJ Times: When you’re set to scratch, what’s the weight of the tonearm?

Swamp: For some reason, I always set it on four. The weight on the back I push all the way as heavy as I can make it, and then dial it to four. I don’t know why I do that. It probably doesn’t make any difference, but it’s what I’ve been doing since I’m 17.

DJ Times: So you’re not looking for the tone arm to float…

Swamp: No, ’cause when I do my needle drops, I want it to just drop. If it floats it’ll bounce too much.

DJ Times: Are you still practicing behind the decks?

Swamp: I’ve actually gotten a newfound interest in practicing turntablism. Although a lot of people might not consider it scratching, the new CD scratchers, wow…

DJ Times: The new Pioneer [CDJ-1000] piece?

Swamp: It’s like the day I got my first 1200. I got a couple of those and Z-Trip came over my house and we were like 15-years old again, trying to do everything with it, for like 12 hours. DJ Times: What surprised you about the piece?

Swamp: If you do a tone with it, you can set your pitch where you got pretty much a full octave, which I never understood why they never did that with the turntables. On the 1200, you put a tone on there and try to do melodies, you can’t do a full octave. You can only do three notes and then you’ve got to flip the 45. With this, you can set it where you can get a full octave, so I was figuring out all sorts of tones I could never do with the limited 1200. I don’t even think Pioneer meant to do that. I think it was just luck on their part that it did that. I was stoked about that. Also, every CD that you put in there, the marks were already in there, and if you put two CDs of the same CD, the marks will match. There’s so much more in there that I haven’t even figured out. It’s amazing, basically. I’m not saying it will take over the 1200, ’cause there’s definitely a lot of things I can do on the 1200, like needle drops. I think vinyl is a better show. It’s like watching a guy on a tightrope without a net.

DJ Times: I don’t suppose you can use the Pioneer with shattered CDs.

Swamp: We tried it. It didn’t come off too good.

DJ Times: No more competition for you?

Swamp: I think the contests are played out, to be honest. When I got in it, I entered the contest just to get a name. Nobody knew who I was – a few people in Ohio ’cause I was doing contests there. But you do it to get a name for yourself. For me, that’s over. Pretty much, pretty much everybody who won the DMCs have gone on to do something. Now, there are so many different contests. Every music store has a contest, every magazine has one, so you’ve got 20 people running around saying they’re a champion. Besides, by me being in it, I’m taking away from someone else who’s trying to get on. So it’s not for me anymore. And I’m trying to do other things, get on writing songs. I want a hit record. I want to be driving somewhere I’ve never been before and hear my song on the radio. I want that.