Uptown Magazine - February 19/09
Eight years ago, people probably thought Joe Silva was crazy to leave his full-time job to pursue his dream of producing house music.
They were wrong.
“It took me about five years to grow the balls to do it. In the meantime, I just stashed away as much money as I could,” explains the soft-spoken Silva. “I knew financially I was going to tank. It was going to be way different than working at the phone company where I was getting a nice cushy cheque. It was really scary for about the first year and a half. I quit in August 2001 and then September 11 happened a month later. The Internet bubble had burst and things were not very certain economically and I thought to myself, ‘Oh shit, what did I do.’ I don’t regret it in the least, I feel like I am doing what I am supposed to be doing.”
Along with turning out well-received tracks for respected labels such as Viva!, Stickman, Red Melon, Nordic Trax and Lunatic Jazz, Silva has increasingly been spending time in his home studio working on scores for films, TV and documentaries. While this is helping to pay the bills, it does distract him from his own production work and makes throwing himself full-force into the international DJ circuit that much more difficult.
“It’s a double-edged sword. The more I work on film stuff, the less time I have to work on the house stuff,” Silva says. “My long-term goal has always been to do house music. I enjoy the film stuff and it’s expanding my foundation of musical knowledge, but it’s not ultimately where I want to be.”
Although Silva hasn’t had as much time in the studio to work on his own material as he would like, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any new projects on the horizon.
After meeting at one of his DJ gigs for Symptom Technologies, Silva is now collaborating with talented MC/drummer/spoken word artist/slam poet/author T’ai Pu (aka Pucona) on a new project that already has resulted in a two-track EP entitled Can’t Hold Back that will be released digitally through Stompy.com on Silva’s new label, Neves Music. Along with Silva’s horn-drenched title track, Australia’s DJ Freestyle contributes a nice after-hours remix that should go over well with DJs at the annual Winter Music Conference this year in Miami.
The duo plans to head back into the studio together to collaborate on new material from the ground up. Silva and Pu have also performed together twice, and have more gigs lined up, including the EP release party at Lucky Mix at Bar Italia on Friday, Feb. 20.
A skilled wordsmith and a veteran of improvised fusion acts such as The West Coast Funk Band, don’t expect Pucona to just try to hype the crowd and mindlessly freestyle over Silva’s smooth deep house.
“It’s a tricky fucking balance. Music can seem easy when it is done right. But everybody knows what cacophony is and when you hear cats making a bunch of noise, it sounds like a bunch of noise,” Pu says. “One of the tricky things about MCing is a lot of cats have allowed MCing to become something that overrides shit. It’s about communication and respect. It’s about the synergy. You’re trying to create something live that people can feed off of.”
Web
Free Download - Joe Silva - Can’t Hold Back featuring Pucona (Radio Edit)
Pucona
JOE SILVA
Feb. 20, Bar Italia
w/ Pucona
