Dank Chamber came together in Pasadena, CA in 2000. Consisting of DJ Ironic, EnsiteNonStop (AKA MICjordan), Spacenvaders (Sunny D*Cypher & NASAone), Joselph, Black Monk, and a large rotating roster of emcees, musicians and artists, Dank Chamber was a place, a crew, and a workshop all in one. Almost every day, this motley crew would all meet up at the Chamber (Ironic's house), where we'd compare our latest vinyl acquisitions, introduce each other to new sounds, compare beats, play classic Atari games, and write, play instruments, or freestyle while Ironic mixed and scratched..... chain-smoking blunts the whole while.
It wasn't at all uncommon for the cypher to include 8 or more emcees as well as 2 or 3 musicians playing instruments, and maybe another DJ on the wheels with Ironic. The music was often murky and experimental, with most production handled by DJ Ironic and Spacenvaders, who originally hailed from South Central LA. Although most of the original recordings were done on ADAT, the finished songs were distributed on analog cassette tapes.
Dank Chamber was somewhat of an incubator of young talent. In 2000, EnsiteNonStop and Joselph were almost completely unknown young hungry rappers. They both went on to become notable underground emcees over the next decade, with ENS (now known as MICjordan) as a part of Sacramento's Tribe of Levi crew, and Joselph as an affiliate of the world-famous Project Blowed camp. DJ Ironic went on to become the proprietor of Poo-Bah Record Shop in Pasadena. He also founded Poo-Bah Records and released a number of his experimental sound works on vinyl, as well as projects by Chamber veterans Black Monk and Ras G. Sunny D*Cypher currently resides in Texas, and remains active in hiphop; he and MICjordan continue to collaborate and are working on a number of new songs for their forthcoming projects.
We conceived of Dank Chamber as an autonomously self-aware information processing organism. Imagine a computer designed to analyze every human-produced signal that wakes up and goes insane, thus distorting, fuzzing and blending all the signals it processes before allowing them to proceed. Our motto was "distort everything!" By the time Ironic was done with a piano loop, it would sound like an electric guitar. The name "Dank Chamber" was actually taken from a line spoken in the 'Return of the Jedi' record (the narrated story, not the soundtrack).
This track originally appeared on the underground tape "Hidden Agenda" by Dank Chamber.
Poor's incredible full-length LP, featuring production by Lee Bannon, Sour Beats, and more! One of the best hip hop albums of 2010, period. Tribe Of Levi
Prolific Mexico City rapper SPEAK ponders the self-isolated age on a booming EP, recorded live in his kitchen during quarantine. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 24, 2020