Recent Press

Sneaker Freaker Ayres sits down with the down-under Nike heads
The New Yorker Critic's Notebook writes up Flashing Lights
XXL DJ Ayres Interview "Just don't call em mash-ups"
The New York Times "Houston for Dummies encapsulates the stylistic progression from the raw early rhymes of the seminal Geto Boys to the slow-mo style that later emerged, “chopped and screwed.”
Oxford American "The hottest dj in Brooklyn is a mild-mannered whiteboy from Mississippi named Ayres Haxton, Jr."
Spin "It's The Motherfucking Remix CD" in "Heavy Rotation"
MTV "One of the best-kept secrets on the New York party circuit right now is DJ crew The Rub"
Village Voice Best of 2004 - "Best party in Brooklyn to dance sweatily to smart music - The Rub"
New York Press Best of 2004 - "Best party in New York City"
BPM "The best 3 man team working"
FADER "Mashups? Try essays on musical chronology and geography, ruminations on Southern hip-hop, Bill Withers and one drop reggae."
Urb Guest reviews - DJ Ayres picks six future hip-hop classics
RE:UP "Over the years The Rub has hosted the hottest throw-down around"
Rinse "The Rub has snowballed into... well, everything!"
Spray "Derriere The Rub se cache un collectif de djs new-yorkais..."
The Wire - Hip-House 2 Review
Bedroom Rockers Photography book with large format pictures of DJs' home setups
Vice Hip-House article
Urb Guest reviews - DJ Ayres picks six future hip-hop classics
XLR8R Guest reviews - DJ Ayres & Cosmo Baker write about their favorite Hip-House singles
Vapors "ill remixes covering everything from the Ghostbusters theme song to Eric B and Rakim"
Vapors "Hello, my name is..."
Hip-Hop Connection Hip-House review in the leading UK Hip-Hop magazine
The New York Times "DJ Ayres has quietly become one of New York's best mixtape D.J.'s."
InquiringMind.ca Interview and Mix [MP3] from The Rub
Baby Loves Disco in the New York Times (link) PDF /JPEG
DJ Ayres Interview in Swedish Paper
"Mashmasteren"

 

     
 
The New Yorker, March 2009

 
     
 
Rinse Magazine, July 2007

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ENVY Magazine
June 2007

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Clark Magazine (France)
Spring 2007


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BPM
January 2007

A Snapshot from New York's Next Generation of Self-Made People
(k) DJ Eleven The Rub / Local 1200 > The Hustle: "We travel and tour and make mixtapes." > The Look: "Century 21 Jeans, The Rub T-Shirt and Robopress Nikes." (o) DJ Ayres The Rub > The Hustle: "Hip-hop, disco, Baltimore club, ;80s, reggae, funk, soul." > The Look: Maharishi sweatshirt that I got hooked up with in London. Ten Deep T-Shirt that I got hooked up with in Brooklyn."

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BPM
January 2007
 
       
 
Dazed and Confused
Spring 07
 
     
 
URB Magazine
February 2007

 
       
 

Oxford American
Music Issue 2006

"A Glamorous Life" by Trent Macnamara (6 page profile in Oxford American magazine, Music Issue 2006)
excerpt:
"The hottest dj in Brooklyn is a mild-mannered whiteboy from Mississippi named Ayres Haxton, Jr. ONce a month on Saturday Night, DJ Ayres takes the stage at Brooklyn's Southpaw, a big, dark, windowless club where the Borough's wildest go to dance and sweat. For an hour he wanders among the sound mixers and racks of obscure hip-hop records, greeting people and watching his guest DJ perform for whatever crowd has gathered on the dance floor or at the bar. These are the early hours - before midnight - of The Rub, a party that began in 2002 to celebrate Ayres's twenty-sixth birthday, and which proved so popular that Southpaw's owner asked Ayres to re-celebrate his birthday every month. ¶ By midnight, when Ayres takes over the turntables, the club is usually bursting, with a crowd that dances raucously as he carefully picks his beats - his head bobbing slightly with outsized silver earphones covering one ear - working one or two songs ahead of the crowd. Some beats are staccato and loud to the point of violence, some soft and melodic. Three nights a week, at Southpaw and other clubs, Ayres experiments - with hip-hop, classic soul, reggae, Baltimore club, disco, Miami bass, old school rap, '80s rock, and sundry other genres. He plays OutKast, Notorious B.I.G., and the Tlaking Heads. In real time he will layer the bounce theme song from Ghostbusters over an acaplella rap track containing the Mobb Deep lyrics, 'Show you how we do it in Queens / Where murder ain't shit, nigga.' The main idea, of course, is to get people dancing."

read the entire article on the Oxford American website

 
       
 
Fader #41, 2006

 
       
 

URB Next 100, 2006
 
   
 




Houston for Dummies
review in The New York Times, Sunday January 29

While New York hip-hop tries to reclaim the national spotlight, first with showy peacemaking and more recently with attempts at fresh beefs, Houston is still enjoying its heyday. The mix “Houston for Dummies” (at djayres.com), lovingly compiled by the Southern transplants DJ Ayres and JD, encapsulates the stylistic progression from the raw early rhymes of the seminal Geto Boys to the slow-mo style that later emerged, “chopped and screwed” (a reference to “chopped” – edited – recording tape and being “screwed up” on cough syrup, the scene’s preferred inebriant). The collection renders the soul of the city, as well. DJ Ayres, part of the team behind the eclectic monthly Brooklyn party The Rub, plays historian and neighborhood cartographer while never letting those goals put a drag on the parking-lot-party arc. Hits like “Still Tippin’ ” (the Slim Thug and Chamillionaire version) are here, juxtaposed with classics like UGK's heartbeat-deep 1996 track “Diamonds and Wood.” We get one glimpse of the block when the tough Scarface links up with the laid-back Devin the Dude on 1998’s “Southside: Houston, Texas,” and another when the underground favorite Lil Keke raps about the “Southside.” This mix shows the late Fat Pat and DJ Screw at their best, celebrates well-paired teams like Paul Wall and Chamillionaire and drops in worthy rarities like Raheem’s “5th Ward” from 1992. To capture the melancholia behind the icy fronts, Ayres and JD include songs like “So Real,” by DJ DMD, of Port Arthur, and Al B and DJ Screw, which rolls on a smoggy sunset groove. Even when they aren't shouting out sectors, these tunes bleed place-love, reminding aficionados running down the latest mixtape why they messed with Texas in the first place.
[edited to fix errors]
-Laura Sinagra



 
     
 

XXL, February 2006



 
     
 



Urb March 2006

Who are these guys pictured?! >>


 
       
 



Fader, January 2006


 
   
 

Spin, May 2005

 
     
 

RE:UP 08, September 2005

For Discriminating Booties

New York City is known for its grime, late-night debauchery, and heat waves during the summer, and three of New York's best party DJs know how to throw a jam that glorifies these attributes. On the first Saturday of every month, Brooklyn's divey music venue Southpaw transforms its stage from being the floorboard for live acts to a mere dj booth that consists of the standard 2 Techs, mixer and a table, turning the club into a no-holds barred house party. The tendency for this soiree to be a complete sweatbox is natural to DJs Ayres, Eleven and Cosmo Baker when they put 'The Rub' in effect. Ayres founded The Rub in 2002, which quickly became the place to be for discriminating booties. Over the years The Rub has hosted the hottest throw-down around, not to mention the countless mixtapes and vinyl mash-ups to help push the sounds of this party to the streets. With special guests ranging from Mark Ronson to our man DJ Zeph, people with different musical tastes can always find something to dance to: the dirtiest of the dirty south, earth-shaking electro, some dub/roots, an occasional '80s flashback and all that good hip-hop from coast to coast. All these styles get put into The Rub's blender and creatively mashed out with one goal in mind: to make you move. And with the $3 Rheingold special, along with the colorful patrons devouring them, The Rub stays loose 'til last call comes at 4AM. Just in time for church.

- Joshua Lynne
 
       
  Chronique Magazine,
France
 
     
 

Spray Magazine 08, Aug '05 (Paris, France)

See The Rub Playlist from the same issue.

 
     
 

The Fader
July 2005

 

 
   
 



The Wire Issue 251 January 2005
Hip-Hop reviews, page 74

DJ AYRES & COSMO BAKER
HIP-HOUSE 2
Promo CD
I once heard Africa Bambaataa accuse the short-lived Hip-House movement of being a crypto-corporate contaminant deployed to destroy Hip-Hop culture from the inside. Listening to DJ Ayres and Cosmo Baker's two recent House-tinged mixes, it's hard to argue - I don't think I've ever heard a Hip-House song that is about anything other than how great Hip-House is, and how you should submit to its every Acid-rinsed whim. Since their first installment, Ayres and Cosmo have added an array of more modern fast ones to the pile - Q-Tip over Seiji's "Loose Tips," Cassius and Ghostface's "Thrilla," the killer Yam-Who remix of "frontin'" and Ayres's own remix of "Warzone" all intrigue. But there's something eerily compelling about the hyper-rigidity of the straightforward House numbers. Most of the tracks Ayres and Cosmo dig up sound like little more than propaganda. Twin Hype's "For Those Who Like to Groove" is an appeal to the curious; Doug Lazy's "Din Daa Daa's Doin' It" describes a George Kranz-facilitated paradise and Tyree's "House Music is My Life" is a four-on-the-floor anthem for the conscripted.
- Hua Hsu

 
   
 


The Rub "It's The Motherfucking Remix" on MTV Mixtape Mondays http://www.mtv.com/bands/m/mixtape_monday/013105/

"One of the best-kept secrets on the New York party circuit right now is DJ crew The Rub: DJ Ayres, Eleven and Cosmo Baker. They've just released their first official mixtape together, It's The Motherf---ing Remix, a blend-style joint that mixes up a lot of hip-hop, rock and soul mash-ups. They get some friends like Mark Ronson and Diplo of Hollertronix involved, too. Our favorite is the Cherrelle "Saturday Love" classic over the Coolie Dance riddim [DJ Ayres remix] and the Joe Budden/ Jimi Hendrix [DJ Crooked] mash-up. Cop it - only if you're ready to dance."


 
     
 

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Bedroom Rockers Book (Photos of DJs' Homes)
Photography by Christopher Woodcock

Bedroom Rockers book is available only at Adidas Originals stores free with purchase:
Boston, Miami, New York, Portland & DC.

 
   
 


Urb Issue 120 (October 2004). page 111
DJ Ayres - Guest Reviewer


photo by Beth Fladung

 
   
 


Village Voice
- Best party in Brooklyn to dance sweatily to smart music - The Rub @ Southpaw

"Dirty hipsters have been trying so fucking hard to make rock music danceable that they've been ignoring the obvious: Franz Ferdinand is a dance band only if you've never met a person of color. Thankfully, the next gen has no problem communing under the tent of black and brown polyrhythms, and it does so at THE RUB @ SOUTHPAW, the city's most promising and unassuming new party. On the first Saturday of each month, signal di plane and rock away to a perfect blend of dancehall, hip-hop, '70s funk, and recently, reggaeton." -Jon Caramanica

Village Voice Best of New York, Oct 6-12, 2004, pg. 25
 
   
 


New York Press Best of Manhattan 2004, September 29-October 5 2004, page 163

Best Party: The Rub

DJ Ayres, Cosmo Baker & DJ Eleven

"Don't pass it on. There are plenty of talented jocks in this city who are overlooked because they haven't figured out the mysterious art of promoting. New York City is huge, always offering an alternative to the alternative. Most club owners have skimped out on promoting by asking the dj to do all the work. Cosmo Baker, Ayres, and DJ Eleven have figured it out, and are throwing the best party in the city, with a fun crowd and properly mixed rekkids. Their revelers come from all kinds of different backgrounds and ethnicities, but are joined together in just blamin' it on the boogie, dancing to hip-hop, disco, funk, 80s, and guilty pop pleasures. It's hardly forward thinking, but that's beside the point. Uncross your arms, lean back, dip it low, shake your goodies and yell back that you don' care...you don' give a fuck, whuuut!"

 
   
  Undercover Magazine (UK)



DJ Ayres and DJ Eleven
Spitkicker Collabos Vol 2
(9/10 stars)

Dedicated to De La Soul, this is a mixtape featuring numerous members of the true school affiliated with and/or inspired by the daisy age. Ayres and Eleven have provided a heavy weight of old school rarities, fresh redubs and collaborations to get any party cracking. Pairing together some great artists, you get everyone from Jay-Z, Scarface and Redman to Jean Grae, Madvillain, Kanye and Talib Kweli. Blatant highlights are the combo of Jay-Z, MOP and Jean Grae on You Don't Know, preceding the rare Negro League Baseball (on which Jean does sound ten years younger), and the trilogy of Common tunes: The Light (remix with Pharoahe), new track Food with Kanye and Chapter 13 (from Resurrection). Classics like Scenario sit alongside MOP's Ante Up (100 Guns remix with Busta and Remy Martin) and Fu-Schnickens' La Schmoove, and Jazzy Jeff and Jay-Live have A Charmed Life between Zion-I, Grouch and Goapale's Flow and Travelocity featuring Masta Ace, Punchline and Wordsworth. A heavy blend that consummately showcases these artists at their very best, this is a great testament to De La's legacy and, with 28 of the finest cuts, you couldn't get a better tribute.
 
   
 


Vice Magazine Volume 11 Number 5 (June 2004) - Pockets Dumb Fat
http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n5/htdocs/pockets.php

Just like the best below-the-radar hip-hop instrumental of all-time is East Flatbush Project's "Tried By 12" (freestyle bed for discerning rappers up and down the FDR Drive, the Belt Parkway, and the Deegan), the worst-kept-secret of house music has always been "Hot Music," by Soho, one of the recording aliases of NYC nightlife lifer Pal Joey (Central Islip—holla!)

Dating to around 1990, the song isn't even house music as anyone would recognize it today, based largely on a simple piano loop, garnished with skittish snares and recurrent blasts of a disembodied voice yelling: "Hot!" There are echoes of soul and jazz in the track, but Joey found at the time that the love the song was getting was universal: "That was one of those records you could throw on at a hip-hop club, at a regular club. All the party DJs and the serious DJs played it, too. It was a worldwide record."

Perhaps its longshot embrace by the hip-hop world wasn't much of a longshot after all. Pal Joey had produced tracks for Boogie Down Productions ("Love's Gonna Getcha"), among others. But the relationship between hip-hop and house wasn't always so sweet, as evidenced in the short history of that most-maligned of subgenres, hip-house.

Whether or not you know it or admit it, hip-house is the real party shit. And you probably thought it was just "I'll House You." Well, there are loads of things you can blame Mike G and Afrika Baby Bam for, but they only get partial credit on this one. Take a two-hour flight to Chicago and you'll find hip-house ground zero. An offshoot of that city's famous (and famously insular) house music scene, the nascent genre minted its own set of stars in the late 80s.

Producer Tyree Cooper is often credited with helping to create the hip-house movement, thanks to his track "Turn Up The Bass," a collaboration with local MC Kool Rock Steady. The rhyme wasn't complex (it was what Pal Joey calls a "jack-your-body type of rhyme") but the idea of bringing someone in to rap over an otherwise spacious house track began to gain traction. Chicago's Fast Eddie, in particular, became widely known for his nimble flow, and he paved the way not only for "I'll House You," produced by legendary house maestro Todd Terry, but also for Washington, D.C.'s Doug Lazy, the lone hip-house artist signed to a major label (Doug Lazy Gettin' Crazy was released on Atlantic in 1990).

In 1989, Doug, who was primarily a producer, released "Let It Roll" with his own vocals because the rapper he'd asked to drop by the studio never did. It became a hit almost instantly. "I didn't really talk a lot. I was shy. But three weeks after the song came out, I was booked for a two-week promo tour in London. My first show in New York was a disaster. I was so scared. This girl at the bottom of the stage untied my shoes."

It didn't matter whether or not Lazy was long for fame, because the one-two knockout punch for hip-house came in 1990, just as the movement was getting its balance. First came Hammer, whose club-friendly pop raps set a new template for danceable hip-hop. "The label was asking me, ‘Can you do stuff like that?'" Doug recalls. "And that just wasn't me." A moot point anyway, because then came the mainstreaming of gangster rap, which closed the casket on Hammer, Lazy, Eddie, and all their uptempo peoples.

Fortunately, no good genre goes unappreciated—or unarchived. Usually we'd be buying this stuff on some Japanese or British trainspotter website. But on Hip House, the excellent mix-CD by DJ Ayres and Cosmo Baker, the local boys hold it down, mixing classics from KC Flight and Chill Rob G with little-known hip-house experiments by Craig G and Big Daddy Kane and equally hot-stepping raps from Ghostface Killah and Joe Budden.

And nostalgia for that time is beginning to creep into hip-hop itself. Canadian MC K-os rapped over the "Hot Music" instrumental on his song "Superstarr Pt. 0," which became a staple on BET and likely begat the most recent high-profile use of the Soho classic: the video version of Missy Elliott's "I'm Really Hot." During the video, after Missy spits a couple of slithery verses, the action stops, and two dance troupes battle it out over 16 bars of "Hot Music" like You Got Served filmed in a Japanese recreation of The Tunnel circa '90, before Funk Flex took over and you had to tuck your chain in.

But if you're looking for the real throwback, you might have to crack Pal Joey's vaults. At the time of its release, no MC rapped over "Hot Music" (at least, not officially), but sitting in the archives is an alternate version of "Radio Song"—the highly gauche collaboration between REM's Michael Stipe and KRS-One—performed over that indelible instrumental. "I don't think either of those people is at a point in their career where they want to see that song put out," Pal Joey says. "But I could always bootleg it… "

JON CARAMANICA
Send materials to 217 East 86th St. #226, NY, NY 10028. Go to turntablelab.com for the Ayres/Baker Hip House mix.



 
     
 


XLR8R #78 - June / July 2004


photo by Beth Fladung
 
     
 


The Rub 2nd Anniversary in New York Press's Summer Guide 2004


What if heading out on a boat full of house- heads makes you green? What if you like your feet planted firmly on the ground? What if...you live in Brooklyn? Also Sat., July 3, it's still the best party in Brooklyn: the monthly jam at Park Slope's The Rub at Southpaw with DJs Cosmo Baker, Ayres and Eleven. These DJs keep their floor moving and packed with deep crates filled with soul, funk, hiphop, dub, dance hall, house, guilty-pleasure pop and bumping disco. Last month, they featured an entire evening of 45 platters. Tonight, the Rub celebrates its second anniversary of no pretentiousness and great tunes. Southpaw, 125 5th Ave. (betw. Sterling & St. John's Pls.), Park Slope, 718-230-0236, 9, $10.

- Dan Martino

 
     
 




"Hip House" reviewed in the Village Voice, May 2004

"Rap and house is kinda different," Juice Crew non-biscuit Craig G insists in "Turn That House Into a Home." "To do this, you must be gifted." That's not totally true... but the swinging style isn't for everyone, only the sexy people. Special Ed got down, as did Big Daddy Kane

Best are the latter-day quick-spitters who get shoehorned in nicely: Rah Digga, Joe Budden, even Cincy arty-partys Five Deez.

-Jon Caramanica

 
   
 


Vapors magazine
Issue #24, album reviews, p. 94

 
   
 


Read the whole article here: Arts section Page 1, June 1 2004. (at NYTimes.com - requires login)


POP REVIEW
Mixtape Stars Spinning and Flipping Fresh Tracks
By KELEFA SANNEH

On Friday night the Brooklyn nightclub Southpaw was host to a more low-key hip-hop party. The headliners were Hollertronix, a Philadelphia D.J. duo, and DJ Ayres. Together, this three-man team played a casual, exuberant set celebrating the gleefully synthetic sound of current and recent hip-hop: Lloyd Banks's densely (and chintzily) orchestrated club hit "On Fire"; Khia's Casio-powered sex rap "My Neck, My Back"; B.G.'s cheap-sounding high-rollers' anthem, "Bling Bling."

All three D.J.'s do their best work on mixtapes. Hollertronix released 2003's best party album, "Never Scared" (Turntable Lab), which makes unexpected connections between Southern hip-hop and 1980's new wave: Soft Cell, meet Trick Daddy. And DJ Ayres has quietly become one of New York's best mixtape D.J.'s. (Ordering information is at www.djayres.com.)

First there was "Hip-House," compiled with Cosmo Baker, devoted to that brief, weird moment, 15 years ago, when hip-hop and house music seemed ready to merge. And now comes "Flashback," which uses sly segues to show which new rappers are borrowing beats and rhymes from their 1980's predecessors.

 
     
 

Hip-Hop Connection, April 2004.

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Hip-House is available at turntablelab.com; MP3s and more info are here.


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VOICE Shortlist Pick for Friday, January 9, 2004
(January 7-13 Russell Simmons cover)

Hollertronix + DJ Ayres [The Rub]

Taking the 2 Many DJs [live remix] concept and swapping out the global cosmopolitan for the Southern crunk thug, Hollertronix have perked up nightlife first in their native Philly and now here with lengthy dj sets that forego shame in favor of genuinely unstoppable musical assauls - tear-the-club-up anthems, dancehallshot-licking, blissful '80s pop, and whatever else might inspire a milkshake or three. And we'll always remember DJ Ayres fondly from the Indie 5000 days, when hip-hop parties could just be, without having to be something more too. CARAMANICA
At 9, Southpaw, 125 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, 718.230.0236

 

 
     
 




New York Press, October 15-21, 2003

 
     
  Vassar Quarterly Summer 2004




 
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