Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/532701
66 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.15 K L Kentucky local acts The Kentucky Landing emphasizes local: food trucks (Longshot Lobsta, Holy Molé, Lil Cheezers), shopping (WHY Louisville, the Diaper Fairy, Regalo), a gig-poster sale (some of our favorites are by Louisville Magazine contributing artist Ron Jasin, aka Madpixel). Also, there's a tent where you can drink bourbon. Lots of bourbon. Before Roman Aprile became the rapper/drummer/producer called Dr. Dundiff, he picked up double bass in the Highland Middle School orches- tra. His frst band, the Smoke Shop Kids, included other young musicians from his Seneca Gardens neighbor- hood. Eventually, he dropped the bass for drums and beat his way through the Smoke Shop Kids' fun funk sound. They made a music video for their song "Butt Cheek Bandit," dancing around in Zorro masks in a backyard, singing about the power of booty. Now Aprile has a degree in music technology from Bellarmine University and a Saturday slot at Forecastle. The 23-year-old's music incorpo- rates all kinds of sounds: samples from multiple genres, YouTube and Vine clips, feld recordings, anything digital. He says he can spend an hour on eight seconds of beats. "My music is a multi-sample-based fusion of hip-hop, jazz and soul," he says. "I love to incorporate little bits of different genres to create a new piece of mu- sic. [The samples become] indistin- guishable to anyone, except maybe the person who made [the original]. And maybe not even they can catch it, which shows I'm doing something right. "I hear it all. I'm all about…listening a million times and maybe you'll hear something different every time." Dundiff's Forecastle performance will include rapper Touch AC and a number of others. (Aprile's senior recital at Bellarmine featured a 12-man ensemble, including fve rappers and horns.) His collaborators will have to savor their hour onstage together because Aprile plans to move to Los Angeles soon after the festival. He says going to Los Angeles is a rite of passage for producers. (His favorite producer, J Dilla, left Detroit for L.A. in the late 1990s, for example.) Aprile's ultimate goal on the West Coast is to sign with a label and release a record on vinyl. Ben Aguilar, one of Aprile's music technology instructors at Bellarmine, says, "To make a living in maybe the most saturated market for the arts is statistically pretty unlikely, but if anyone's going to make it, he will." Whatever happens in L.A., Aprile eventually wants wants to return to his native Louisville and create his own label. Recording, mixing, mastering, releasing — he wants to do it all. "I want to grow old here," he says. "I want to make Louisville to hip-hop what Nashville is to country and rock." — Will Ford Forecastle is always good to Louisville bands: the Pass, Jalin Roze, Cheyenne Mize, Slint, Seluah, Wax Fang, Nerves Junior. This year, be sure to check out Houndmouth, White Reaper and Twin Limb. And Dr. Dundiff and Friends. That one has us really intrigued.