dave aju

DAVE AJU
San Francisco, USA

Bay Area native Marc Barrite created the DJ/Production alias Dave Aju as a vehicle for his fresh and distinctive take on electronic dance music. Though raised on a steady diet of Jazz and Soul music along with several years of paying dues in various Hip-Hop and B-Boy crews, it wasn‘t until he relocated to the city of San Francisco that the final ingredients to the Dave Aju recipe were added. Immediately drawn to the experimental openmindedness of the SF underground scene, he soon found himself on the vanguard of contemporary dance music – gladly straying further into left field from the traditional club house and electro styles he had been involved with in earlier years.

Equipped with a single sampler and microphone, Aju began carving out his own musical niche with unique and adventurous concoctions of outsider art-styled concepts and handmade sonics blended with natural deeprooted soul and an undying love and understanding of dance floor rhythms owed to his roots as a dancer. Diversity is key to the Aju sound, as he easily moves from intense and darker moods to more relaxed and laidback warm weather bliss.

Working at a steady quality-over-quantity pace, Dave Aju has earned much respect and kudos from like-minded peers with his original releases and celebrated remixes; A true DJ‘s-DJ and producer‘s-producer. The masses have fallen in love as well, turning tracks such as „Be Like The Sun“, „Crazy Place“, „All Together now“, and „Caller #7“ into veritable underground anthems worldwide. Even the critics, who gave his mouth-made debut album Open Wide high praise and saw it nominated for multiple awards as well as the autobiographical funk of follow-up LP Heirlooms and raw sample-flipping third album Black Frames, have appropriately taken notice.

Of course Mr. Aju shines just as bright outside the studio, as his sublime DJ sets and Live performances have blessed crowds from Moscow to Sydney to Mexico City, and everywhere in between, including repeat visits to legendary establishments such as London‘s Fabric, Berlin‘s Watergate and Panoramabar, Paris‘ Rex Club, and Montreal‘s MUTEK festival.

Aju‘s soulful voice, a fixture in his production and live performances, has proven to have a life of its own as well; the formative years adding stripes to his coat as an MC in the underground rap scene paid off, with vocal contributions for fellow artists like dOP, Fred Everything, and Tiefschwarz as well an ongoing collaborations with fellow Circus freak Guillaume& The Coutu Dumonts as lead vocalist for The Side Effects band, and his Berlinvia- SF mates in KAMM.

With a full upcoming release schedule, including a remix retrospective collection and new EP for home-base Circus Company and new material for Matthew Herbert‘s Accidental label, and a variety of new outlets including Detroit‘s Black Catalogue and the revived Music For Freaks, Dave Aju is indeed the opposite of deja vu – we never know what‘s coming next.

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