This is crazy. DJ Kiva is a friend who I met through teaching at Dubspot but who’s been active in NYC for a good while. He’s a wicked producer, musician and DJ. Among other things you may know him from his feature on ‘Underwater High Rise‘ from Solar Life Raft where he played guitar and percussion. He and I worked on this Beaterator project together for Dubspot and Rockstar Games where we went around to a bunch of schools in NYC and across the country and taught kids how to make music using Beaterator, which is a piece of music software that runs on the Sony PSP portable game system. It’s actually really cool and you can make surprisingly official beats on it, on the train, in the laundromat etc. On top of that it has a built in mic so you can sing on your track, play instruments into it, surreptitiously sample people on the train etc. Kiva, being the intensely creative dude that he is, has gone and made an albums worth of music on this thing in the couple of months he’s had it. And it sounds heavy. A particular favorite of mine is his cover of The Abyssinians ‘Satta Masa Gana’ with him singing and playing horns into the built in mic. MAD. Check it below, download it, show it to your friends.

BTR8ION by DJ Kiva

BTR8ION…NYC artist/producer DJ Kiva presents the world’s first album written & produced entirely on the Sony PSP Beaterator. Created while traveling streets, subways, and skies from Brooklyn to LA and laid out mixtape style…Beateration for the Nation!

all music written, recorded, & produced by DJ Kiva © Adios Babylon 2010 on Sony PSP Beaterator.
* Satta Massagana written & originally recorded by the Abyssinians