James De Valera AKA Break DJ Lobito
Vinyl
James is one of the few DJs in Dubai still committed to using vinyl I’m originally Spanish, and growing up we always had records around the house. My dad was a jazz fanatic and my mum into classical. I remember putting on records from a very young age. My collection started when I was about 15 or 16 and I started buying LPs for myself. I’ve been collecting for 15 years or so, and my total collection exceeds 20,000. I love the feel of vinyl, how it works, the artwork and liner notes. As a tool that I use to scratch and do turntablist tricks with it’s still unbeatable. Even with all the CDJ, controller technologies out there, the technical side of using the turntable and vinyl as a musical instrument is unbeaten. I collect all sorts, but mostly I funk, soul, Latin, Brazilian, jazz, breaks, reggae, mashups, good hip hop (most of it these days is bad pop), psychedelia, funk rock, world music, Bollywood, bass and anything that has good beats. When I came here six years ago, a couple of
people had made attempts at record shops, but it was very basic and not really good enough, and to this day it’s hard to find records. It’s a format that is only now starting to attract interest. I set up Deep Crates Cartel as a collective of “diggers”, or vinyl fanatics turned DJs, a few years ago for those who were into multiple genres of music and our crew has 10 DJs who collect vinyl, as well as street artists and b-boys who also collect records. There’s a new generation who are keen on preserving the art form of digging, as well as turntablism and scratching, with new guys starting all the time. One of our crew is a Yemeni vinyl collector living in Saudi, so there’s interest across the region among youth who are growing in the culture. facebook.com/breakdjlobito mixcloud.com/Lobito facebook.com/DeepCratesCartel
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Open skies / nOvember 2013