The Garden of Edan

If ever a man deserved the title of The Fourth Beastie Boy it’s Edan Portnoy. The Maryland native sports a shock of white-boy afro hair and bohemian chic, a laconic East Coast drawl and the same love of twisting hip-hop into lysergic shapes. The rapper, turntablist DJ and, recently, filmmaker has teamed up with like-minded b-boy Paten Locke for a tour which takes in Ireland this weekend with dates in Dublin, Galway and Belfast.

Speaking of his previous visits to Ireland Edan recalls, “I like the place a lot. One thing I remember was how the crowd had a knowledge and love of hip-hop music and culture.” While the previous visits were solo, the current tour sees him trade rhymes, rhythms and routines with Paten Locke. “Me and Paten go back a long time. We’d run into each other on the scene, we became fast friends and when we started to collaborate we understood each other from the jump. This show includes solo shit, but also some pre-prepared routines together.”
2009’s warped mixtape Echo Party brought Edan critical acclaim and wider recognition within – and outside – hip-hop. “With Echo Party I was given access to a huge amount of material without copyright headaches,” he explains, “so I was able to create a real kitchen-sink mix, which was full of old shit. But I knew I couldn’t rely on blowing peoples minds with obscurities. I had to try hard to explore the sound, to freak the records much crazier.” A great example is the moment on the mix-tape where dense rhythms give way to a cameo from arguably the most famous break in hip-hop history, The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Apache’. Played on a kazoo. Edan laughs, “The kazoo just gives it that crazy feel, so important to me. I naturally stray away from the pack.”
We’ve had rap duets from beyond the grave such as Tupac and Elton. Now Edan has joined in spirit with one Phil Lynott. In the live show, Edan raps while his hands tear through two vinyl copies of Lizzy classic ‘Johnny The Fox’ on the turntables. “I am a big Thin Lizzy fan,” enthuses Edan. “My copy of Vagabonds (Of The Western World) goes way way back and I love to perform that routine, the break is so funky.” The hip-hop historian in him recounts that “’Johnny The Fox’ has always been part of New York block party culture. Africa Bambaata was the guy who discovered it and rocked it alongside James Brown and such like. It kinda symbolises how open minded Bambaata was. Him and those cats were just looking for records and beats that had the funk, and Lizzy fit right in.”
This eclectic sensibility is best described by Edan as ‘B-Boy psychedelia’, a sensibility most people are more familiar with from West Coast pioneers like DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist. The two approaches merged recently on Edan’s film collaboration with Tom Fitzgerald, visual director for Cut Chemist. Echo Party: The Movie comes across as the love-child of Beat Street and Yellow Submarine and “represents our identical vision of how this music should be portrayed visually”. Although Edan promises two albums by the end of the year, the tour is his main focus. “Me and Paten have made sure that high performance value and giving a bit extra are the key on this tour. People give their time to see the show and they pay good money. They deserve the best.”

Edan and Paten Locke perform live at The Menagerie, Belfast (April 22), The Sugar Club, Dublin (23) and Roisin Dubh, Galway (24) as part of the Red Bull Music Academy On The Floor nights. For a roundup of clubbing news from around the country, see hotpress.com