In the collective history of the Bay Area, the mid-1990s produced more than just a rash of dot.com launch parties and delightfully irrational exuberance. That was also the era when San Francisco emerged as the new center of the DJ world, following Chicago in the 1980s and New York from the ‘70s. The Bay’s art of spin had been under development for years prior but between 1995 and 1996, key pieces fell into place: the founding of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Dave Paul’s Return of the DJ compilation, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, etc. As this was all happening, a 20-something, half-Filipino promoter named Mark Herlihy started to throw his first set of parties under the curious title of Future Primitive Sound Sessions (FPSS).
The Sessions began as DJ-oriented parties, held at the now-demolished Big Heart City on Mission St. “At the time in San Francisco, everybody was jocking European trip hop DJs,” Herlihy recalled. “Meanwhile cats like Q-Bert and them were playing for $100 bucks at somebody’s debut. I had a chip on my shoulder about getting great American hip-hop DJs into that scene.” The earliest Sessions created billings that invited both local turntablist talent like the Space Travelers and popular down-tempo DJs like Spooky and Thomas the Mammal.
As the trip hop fad faded, Herhily turned his attention to an emerging generation of party DJs with brilliant compositional and scratch skills but who still knew how to rock a crowd. In 1997, he brought together Cut Chemist and Shortkut for a Session that would prove to be a watershed event. “It was an experiment but the thing came together. They hadn’t really played together before but they were two fans of each other and wanted to outdo each other,” said Herlihy. The idea of having two DJs improvise off one another wasn’t a new idea but the FPSS showed uncanny insight into pairings that could produce spectacular results. Later Sessions showcased Z-Trip and Radar, Faust and Shortee, and a special 7”-only night where Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow premiered a set that became their vaunted Brainfreeze mix-CD.
1997 was also when Herlihy formed a crucial partnership of his own with legendary graffiti artist Doze. The two formed a quick friendship and by the 1998 Session with Z-Trip and Radar, Herlihy convinced Doze to paint a piece during the show, right next to the DJ stage. “He’s fluid about the way he paints,” said Herlihy, describing Doze’s style as, “fluid like Jackson Pollack or somebody like Keith Herring because the lines don’t break and it is a performance in itself. There was a parallel between the fluidity of this man’s painting style and the fluidity of the mix. It’s all about getting funk in your letters.” Doze became a fixture at several FPSS events, painting original works on canvas as the DJs splashed their own creations off vinyl.
It’s no wonder then that FPSS has grown far beyond just sponsoring hip-hop/DJ parties but has evolved into a full-fledged institution of artistic innovation. Walk into the FPSS Headquarters at the corner of Haight and Steiner and you’ll find a record label, storefront and art gallery merged into one. DJ culture still figures at the center, but Herlihy and his staff have also spun into a larger world of visual and musical creativity. “We’re living in a multimedia world right now and hip hop was the first one of the first musical subcultures that really embraced dancing, painting, writing, beats. I want to add more to those foundations,” says Herlihy.
Since 1999, Future Primitive has released a select series of albums, singles, and now mixtapes, lead by personalities as diverse as Mr. Dibbs, DJ Zeph, J. Boogie and most recently, Romanowski with his dubbed out Steady Rocking. What almost all these releases share in common is a focus on movement, the fluidity that Herlihy so treasures. Other forays into turntablism have been critiqued as so much head music but FPSS is seeking to move bodies and minds. “I’m a cerebral person at times and I think that has its place,” he says but adds, “ first and foremost, when I step to an artist and when we get demos or whatever, [I want to know], ‘how are you going to perform this and rock a party?’” Distill it down and his philosophy goes right the concept behind that curious name. Explains Herlihy, “To have the vision to create new trends in music you need to understand what’s happened before. Outside that, you’re just repeating things. Future Primitive is a reference to what I think is important about DJing or just knowing your music: understand your roots and from there, move forward.”
-Oliver Wang
