How The Invisibl Skratch Piklz Elevated Turntablism and Put San Francisco on the DJ Map

The Piklz proceeded to display their musicality, keeping their technical acumen within the groove pocket with synchronized timing. As is customary with the Piklz, each played the part of a specific instrumentalist: D-Styles as the keyboardist, Shortkut as the drummer, and Qbert as the scratch soloist. Mix Master Mike at the DMC World DJ Finals at The Midway in San Francisco, Calif., on Nov. 3, 2023. (Jeff Straw) A live version of “Death By A Thousand Paper Cuts” – a song from D-Styles’ 2019 album Noises In the Right Order – and several unreleased ISP songs showed that ghost notes aren’t just associated with jazz music. The turntable trio used the spaces between to impart a sense of presence and feel, a minimalist approach that allowed their scratches, cuts and juggles to resonate with maximum impact. This would have been a hard act to follow for anyone but Mix Master Mike. The ISP co-founder, who’s been a solo artist since 1995 or so, has a gigantic stage presence and skills to match. A one-man musical blender, MMM unleashed a maelstrom of sonic fury, with bone-crunching drums, an entire range of musical and vocal phrases, and precise turntable cuts that deconstructed...