Brooklyn-based soul, dub, electronic artist/producer Jay Spaker aka J-san's musical journey has been a shape shifting experience spanning 20 years of soul & roots music. Son of radical vietnam veteran father & Okinawan mother J-san was raised on the road, living with artists, musicians, ganja growers and hustlers. He was an original member of John Brown's Body in the 90s, then went on to form dub rock/jam band J-san & The Analogue Sons during the the next decade, a band described as Bob Marley meets M.I.A. produced by Manu Chao… After a few featurings, including vocalist on 10ft Ganja Plant's album Bush Rock released in 2009, J-san has launched two new bands, Double Tiger, an electronic dub / dubstep project who's just released the No Give Up single on Hydra Records Japan, and J-san and The Big Mean, a rock/reggae/afro project fusing the rhythms of Afrobeat and R&B with the sounds of Dub and Soul to make your body move. When their first afro-reggae single Moving Too Fast reached Paris DJs' shores, we contacted J-san right away, offering him to try and have Grant Phabao dress the song with pure Jamaican roots vibes. The man was already a Paris DJs follower and we hooked up instantly. This deadly rough & tough remix is the another step for Paris DJs in their ongoing collaborations with brothers from Brooklyn and we can hope that J-san and Grant Phabao will do a proper EP together at some point!

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Clutchy Hopkins - The Interview That Never Happened
Questions by Djouls & Nicolas Ragonneau for Paris DJs, early 2012

Who is Clutchy Hopkins? The question still remains unanswered. We met with Shawn Lee in Paris this month, and asked him about his tweet saying he was representing Clutchy Hopkins for booking purposes… The man smiled and replied that he had no idea what we were talking about. Nearly two years ago, we published an exclusive mix of Clutchy Hopkins productions, Clutchy Hopkins' Psychedelic Hip Hop, Funk & Jazz, and since then we've been discussing with different people from his organization about inviting him for a guest mix and an exclusive interview. We wanted to know more about his mysterious vintage funk beats, dirty drums, fuzzed bass, and Middle-eastern flutes, warmed with tape hiss. We know he has been working on this mix for Paris DJs… We know Clutchy is in the studio right now, collaborating with an amazingly talented guest artist. The new tracks are unlike anything we've heard before. As always, details are coming soon… Meanwhile, The Life of Eugene Harrington has been released, it's "an LP featuring Clutchy and another mysterious musician" (listen/buy here). Now months have passed and we never got the replies to our interview questions nor the mix, so we decided to publish our questions anyway, hoping you'll have as much fun reading them as we had writing them.