CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL

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For D Wattsriot aka Dave Watts the playing of music results in physical pain. The moment the first beat reaches his ears, the body seems to no longer worry about the unnatural angles it is forced into. Despite the back injury and tinnitus, D challenges sound barriers. “I do not understand DJs who play records without really feeling the music. When I play I am attacked by the beat, the song, the sound, and I strike back.” Wattsriots first musical memory is his mother giving him a tape recorder and a cassette with Jimi Hendrix. He still lived in London then, growing up to BBC Radio 1’s legendary Dj and journalist John Peel. The station was one of the first to play American psychedelic rock, reggae and punk in the UK. When the family moved to Toronto in Canada, it was hip-hop from New York that inspired. “I knew hip hop before it was called hip hop.” In the late 80’s D moved back to London “to see what was going on” and got a job at the record label Virgin Records. During his years there he worked with Future Sound of London, Iggy Pop, Les Negres Vertes, The Micronauts, Ice-T, Ben Harper and Snoop Dogg, just to name a few. In 1993 Wattsriot took over as heavy weight Dj in Fun-da-mental, who did a legendary gig on Clandstino Festival 2004. Expect heavy dubstep, roots, spoken word-muezzin from the Middle East, sharp objects scraped against each other, political rap, distant vibrations and escalating beats, or “global chaos” as D calls it.