Cuts above the rest

Much like the way that the Premiership would never survive without a constant feed of new talent from the divisions below, hip hop would never be the biggest selling music in the world if it weren’t for people like Mark Murphy. For the last five years the Choice Cuts founder, along with right-hand man Loughlin McSweeny, has been bringing some of the freshest talent we’ve ever seen to Ireland, without bombast or ego. He recently brought the legendary Ultramagnetic Kool Keith over, hosted the prestigious ITF DJ competition finals and has repeatedly brought in reputable live acts like The Breakestra and The Rebirth. Choice Cuts don’t book bigger acts simply because their hearts are in it for the right reasons, to provide strong acts with a decent platform and share good music with their audiences. He talks about the music scene as a collaborative culture, replete with shared values and common dreams. He’s not so much a big hippy as an optimist who soldiers through the tough game that is independent promotion in this country because he genuinely believes in its importance.

“Some of the stuff that we put on, we put on before it’s even gone to London,” says Mark, “an example would be Alice Russell – the first time I put her on no-one fuckin’ came, and then I put her on last September and we sold out the Spiegeltent. It’s just getting people into the whole vibe that there is music out there that isn’t being marketed to them.”
This is something that larger promoters don’t often have to think about; the rapport and relations with your peers, helping to keep each other's heads above water. Of course there’s a reciprocal side to this independence, as Mark points out.
“Kool Keith hung out with us for a week when he was over and he wants to work with us in the future, so when we start churning out beats he’ll definitely be involved with it. Q-bert spent a few days with me as well, and that was cool. Obviously being a DJ he’s a big hero of mine. I also got to spend a month in LA playing all the clubs that Jurassic 5 and The Pharcyde came out of.”
Murphy has also been a champion of our brightest new stars. Our reigning Irish DMC DJ Champion Gem was an early protégé.
“When we brought the kid [DJ Gem] over, it was great to see because I used to smuggle him into shows when he was 12,” Mark recalls. “He’d always ring me up because he was in boarding school and we’d ask the venue, ‘Can we stash him up at the top here?’ Now he’s the Irish DMC champion.”
Murphy reckons hip hop is “the biggest cultural movement of the last 30 years. In Ireland I think the goal is to come out with an Irish identity, but this can be a shortcoming, because in one way you’re relying on your Irishness to sell yourself within a global culture. But you don’t see many people from the States constantly going on about where they’re from anymore. It’s more about dropping knowledge in their rhymes, using clever alliteration and good synchronisation, all the good poetic vehicles to get a rhyme across. I’d like to see a band, a live band, something more than just a DJ scratching. It’d be great to see a real Irish slant, whether it’s Irish instruments being played or whatever.”
The free CDs Choice Cuts give out at gigs generate a significant amount of positive feedback.
“We gave out eight compilations last year and we’ve had people like Ninja Tune and Stone’s Throw, and people from Scotland to Japan, saying they’re really good,” Mark says, and this bodes well for Choice Cuts’ future plans to kick-off a label and branch out into international promotions.
“On our new choicecutsonline.com website we’ve archived the last four years’ of shows, with photos and audio and some video clips, like Kool Keith. Websites are a great platform if they’re done well. Digital sales are really getting record companies and shops into trouble, so it’s definitely the way of the future — I don’t expect 18-year-old kids to go over to the States, like I do, to buy records! If you collect vinyl you’re always going to collect vinyl because it’s what you’re into. I don’t want to be aloof or snootish to a 16-year-old kid who likes a track I play and say to them, ‘You’ve got to get it on vinyl, in a certain city, although it’s out of pressing now’. I’d much rather be able to say, ‘Well, you can get it on my site and it’s only 90 cent.’ I really just want to get new people into the music.”