Gum Studio

Gum Studio x Mark Sabino | Cycling Jersey

Brick Magazine | Interview

Interview w/ 454

In print for Brick Magazine #11.
*Read the text*.

YINYO - Last Call (Single)

Production

Featured on Spotify’s +81 Connect: J-Hip Hopの「今」と「その先」and Monday Spin playlists.

gum.mp3 - Black Life, Red Planet (LP)

Visit now: blackliferedplanet.com

Resident Advisor | Essay

Gum’s Gin | c/o Mark Sabino

Made with Juniper berries from the Dinaric Alps, cacao, chai, raspberry, and cardamom.

Night-Runners | Soundtrack Contribution

“Cartz” by gum.mp3 as it appears in the Night Runners video game by Jem Byrne.

Lan Party | madeintheurl x USB Club x Gum Studio

P2P Competition and File Sharing

LAN parties offer a unique and immersive gaming experience that fosters social interaction and friendly competition among attendees. Players can communicate with each other more directly, share tips, strategies, and excitement in real-time, enhancing the overall gaming atmosphere.

These gatherings often include elements beyond just gaming, such as food, drinks, music, and even occasional prizes or giveaways. LAN parties have historically been popular among gaming enthusiasts, providing an opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and enjoy multiplayer games in a controlled and optimized environment.

How was ours different? Better?

We offered the city’s hottest up and coming DJ talent, and the event was held inside a Dominican restaurant-turned-nightclub – a far cry from more traditional LAN parties. We offered games both retro and modern, single and multiplayer, while highlighting indie games from developers in our social group using the various setups and the USB Club ATM.

dazegxd & MON - Gospel Overture (EP)

Project Delivery

o·ver·ture (n):
an introduction to something more substantial.
The duo’s illustrious work is a fusion of gospel and jungle influences.
*Featured on Spotify’s “Planet Rave”*

Raegun - Kayfabe (Single)

Project Delivery

"**Kayfabe**" is an identity piece that shatters the barrier between artist and audience in its contemplation of the artist's growth.

gum.mp3 - My Own Private Virginia (EP)

Project Delivery/Marketing

*Quartered in the lush and beautifully green mid-Atlantic, everything else slips by.*
*Humble, daily toil passes the time.*
*A not-so-imaginary place, wrapped in the arms of love.*
Baile Funk, Deep House, Acid House

swoozydolphin & Misery Elliott - Dolphin Soul

Project Delivery/Marketing

***Summer’s coming to a close…***
A bespoke mix, performed by swoozydolphin, visualized by Misery Elliott, and hosted via Gum Studio in collaboration with Dublab.

dazegxd & gum.mp3 - Girls Love Jungle

Collaborative Album

A new collaboration between restless North Carolina polymath **gum.mp3** and Brooklyn breakbeat wunderkind **dazegxd** – ***Girls Love Jungle*** - a playful, vibrant exploration of jungle music reinterpreted through the prism of their unique personalities and styles of production. First connecting on Twitter, the unlikely duo have forged a real life friendship, often appearing on bills together around the world, and this LP marks their latest collaborative project, released on gum’s own Gum Studio label.
In gum.mp3’s words, “***Girls Love Jungle*** is a stylistic cross-pollination of dazegxd’s youthful, electric new-age jungle and gum.mp3’s old-school, jazzier melodic taste. The result is a novel project — lightning in a bottle that represents the underground dance music scene bubbling to the surface from the depths of the internet. Otherworldly breakbeats and spiritually soothing melodies result in jungle like you’ve never heard it before.”

Rasheed LaPointe - Denim Family

Marketing & E-commerce

Denim Family (2023)

VHS video, archive magazine collage, animated by hand.

As Jannah Handy of BLK MKT VINTAGE said best, denim is often portrayed in American media as a “raceless” staple of American fashion. Some staples of Americana are recognized as having roots in indigenous cultures by the general public, despite opaqueness. For example, the appropriation of patterns originally created by Indigenous people who lived in North America and use of their caricatured likenesses in sports memorabilia and other clothing comes to mind. While the names of the Nations these patterns originate from are often lost on Americans, it is widely understood that they predate Western colonization.

Denim is largely looked at as having its symbolic roots solely in fiction, ranging from depictions of cowboys (popularized by John Wayne) to the white rebel archetype (popularized by James Dean). These fictional depictions and their monolithic presence contribute to the erasure of the black history of denim and the legacy of young activists and farmers who originally championed it.

Denim Family is a work engaging with the largely erased history and symbolism of denim as the fabric of black youth and the working class. It is a symbol that represents the rejection of race and gender-based hierarchies. Subjects of focus are the fabric itself, originally named ‘Negro Cloth’, and the Indigo dye from the West African slaves who carried the knowledge of its cultivation to the United States. The rejection of respectability politics found in streetwear today traces back to the black women-run political movements of the 60s, namely the SNCC, and by extension the black field workers who came before them.

— Rasheed LaPointe

FiFi Zhang - SBSL -REMIX- (EP)

Project Management, DSP Delivery

Writer, Producer, Recording, Mixing: **Xuefei Zhang**
Featuring gum.mp3 as Remixer
Editorial Playlisting
Spotify’s ***Fresh Finds Dance***, ***Monday Spin*** and ***Dope AF***
Press
*Billboard*, *ENVI*

*Booked for Head in the Clouds Festival [Los Angeles] w/ 88rising.*

WOO! We’re so happy you came by 💚 pic.twitter.com/oBOgWiNUOD
— Spotify (@Spotify) May 26, 2023

dreamcastmoe - Sound Is Like Water, 202% THC Remix Package

Remixer

Since the splash of Sound Is Like Water, the acclaimed Spectral Sound debut from DC-based singer, songwriter, and producer Davon Bryant, aka dreamcastmoe, the ever-collaborative and versatile talent has kept moving. Beyond charismatic DJ/MC sets from Amsterdam to New York, Bryant is splitting time between various projects now beginning to surface. But first, he closes the Sound Is Like Water era by inviting new perspectives to the material, a far-reaching remix package featuring 30/70, Black Rave Culture, gum.mp3, NAPPYNAPPA, Sirens Of Lesbos, and Tom Trago.
02. Love Songz (Gum's Footwork Remix)
07. Work On It (Gum's LA Funky Dub)
Featured on Apple Music Eelectronic’s ***Footwork*** playlist.

gum.mp3 - Riddim Seeker (EP)

North Carolina's gum.mp3 makes his Spectral Sound debut with Riddim Seeker. The latest in a prolific run for the polymath producer, the EP follows a breakout 2022 packed with city-spanning DJ sets, inspired efforts in academia, and collaborative projects with his Gum Studio community. He sees Riddim Seeker as a form of art-as-research, "an investigation into common threads of rhythm throughout black music." The three tracks access a riddim lineage under a futurist agenda, sending pop vocal cuts — from collaborators Netanya and Leon English and his own — through a wildstyle of house/garage drums, familiar basslines, and funk/jazz-oriented melodies.

Gum adds, "The aesthetic and story idea for the project is that of a futuristic shaman, consulting with ancient tomes and musical relics that speak to a common thread of magic throughout his people's cultural history."

In its sonic and philosophical seeking, which coincides with several university lectures for Dirty Bird in 2023, the EP deals with riddim, the Jamaican Patois pronunciation of the English word "rhythm," and its various forms, from dancehall to dubstep. He positions vocals above the beats like an in-house MC delivering bars over the riddims.

On the lead track, "Cellphone," Gum's smooth cadence at the mic and keys weaves through patterns of hyper-percussion. Next, he hands vocal duties to his childhood friend Netanya, in her first-ever recording, for "Love You Better," a shuffling club cut-up of breakbeats, hi-hats, and an effervescent synth line. The rhythm bounces, skitters, and exhales on the closer, "Furious," featuring the soulful falsetto of Leon English, a frequent collaborator between Gum and dazegxd.

The EP’s accompanying artwork, by Rasheed LaPointe, embodies the music's fusion of historical motifs with modern sensibilities. The "R" logo evokes "both a submarine and a mystical mark one might use in ceremony," says Gum, alongside a serif text treatment that lends an overall air of fantasy.

By engaging the origins of dance music to find new understanding, Riddim Seeker presents Gum at his most intentional. It's a compelling leap forward from a shape-shifting artist as his ascent aboveground continues.

Logos by Rasheed LaPointe

Photos by Chris Robinson

Mastered by Torin Clay

Featuring Netanya and Leon English

via Ghostly International / Spectral Sound (SPC-153)