Music

Brooklyn DJ Riobamba Loves “Super Hype” Songs with “Raw Energy”

Whether it’s for playing out at a club or listening at home, DJs and producers typically have an encyclopedic hoard of music, new and old. In The Last Record, they tell us about the last three songs or albums they’ve purchased, and why these were important additions to their music collection.

This week, we spoke to Sara Skolnick, aka Riobamba, a Brooklyn-based DJ and cultural promoter. Skolnick is the founder of the APOCALIPSIS creative agency, co-creator of Boston-based transnational bass night Picó Picante, resident at New York global bass night Que Bajo?!, and a member of the Dutty Artz collective. Catch Riobamba next with Santa Muerte and Lil Jabba at Sunnyvale in Brooklyn.

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DJ Scuff x Gtracks – “Tu No Vive Asi (Soca remix)”

DJ Scuff from the Dominican Republic is on the shortlist of Soundcloud pages I habitually check to see what he’s got in the works. Scuff and his Nueva Vaina brand always breaks new releases for hip-hop en español, dembow, reggaeton, and urbano todo. He’s also experimented more lately with flipping samples from these tracks into remixes, like this one that takes Arcángel and Bad Bunny’s “Tu No Vive Asi” cut into an edit that goes hard in intervals between downtempo hip-hop track and bubbling/sped-up soca.

DJ Chap – “ESC”

This was a favorite from DJ Chaps’ Drum Pakk 1 EP that dropped at the beginning of this year via Discos Peligrosa out of Austin, Texas. It’s a super hype footwork to baile funk to rave track that has a raw energy that’s perfect for throwing in the middle of a set to transition between club tracks into half-time perreo.

Dubosky – “No Te Queman”

Panameño artist Dubosky takes on the Se Llama riddim, one of my favorites from the end of last year from El Combo de Oro. Some of my other favorites like Akim, Yemil, and Sach also hopped on this same riddim, but Dubosky’s verses are super smooth and took the plena medal this time around for me.