Get your slice of the good life with the always irreverent Murphy, as he takes to the decks in Toronto. Diplo closes the deal for B-LIVE Toronto with the final set of electro-pop infused beats.

Years of obscurity and the occasional poor decision preceded this. Just before Murphy began to cut his teeth throughout the '90s, first as a member of Pony (an average post-hardcore band with heavy debts to their inspirations) and then with Speedking (a much stronger, more unique band), he passed up the opportunity to write for the popular sitcom Seinfeld. All the time spent toiling in indie rock took a toll on Murphy, but he built his own studio and became increasingly adept at engineering and producing other bands.

While working on David Holmes' Bow Down to the Exit Sign, he struck up a relationship with programmer/producer Tim Goldsworthy that developed into a partnership. By the end of 2002, there were several releases on Murphy and Goldsworthy's DFA label, most of which involved the duo in some capacity. LCD's "Losing My Edge," backed with an excellent neo-post-punk dance track called "Beat Connection," was one of them. Murphy scattered three other LCD singles through the end of 2004 and released a self-titled full-length in January 2005. At the time of its release, the DFA label was more popular than ever; Murphy and Goldsworthy had remixes for Metro Area, N.E.R.D., Le Tigre, and Junior Senior behind them, as well as failed sessions with Britney Spears that might've benefited from an interpreter. Janet Jackson was another unlikely admirer seeking the duo's assistance, but Murphy didn't bother to follow up on her request. Sound of Silver, the second LCD album, came out in March 2007.

Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy are the DFA, a production team that became known in the early 2000s for delivering a raw, thick sound steeped in post-punk and other movements that crested in the early '80s. Trademark production work and a series of low-key releases on their own DFA label in 2002 gained them a steadily developed word-of-mouth fan base.

By the end of 2001, the DFA had racked up mixing, engineering, programming, and production credits for Turing Machine's A New Machine for Living, BS 2000's Simply Mortified, Zero Zero's AM Gold, and the Rapture's Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks. Perhaps the best indicator of where the duo would take their sound is "Blood Money," a track that the duo worked on with David Holmes and a host of others for Primal Scream's XTRMNTR. Full of rumbling bass and a mass of noise that chewed up and spat out post-punk, no wave, garage rock, dub, and proto-house, the track seemed to forecast some of the early releases on DFA, the label Goldsworthy and Murphy launched in 2002.

While they continued their work in 2002 for bands like Radio 4, often using Murphy's New York City-based Plantain Studios as their lab, DFA was initiated the same year with a quartet of 12" releases that also featured the duo's production work. The Rapture's "House of Jealous Lovers" was the first release and turned a decent but sloppy indie band into one worthy of inclusion in a DJ set between A Certain Ratio and PiL. Two robo-disco releases from ex-Six Finger Satellite member John Maclean — as the Juan Maclean — also caught some notice. But the biggest ripple of all was created by LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge," the A-side of which played out like a "You might be a redneck if..." routine for music snobs, set to a bottom-heavy electro/rock fusion. Primarily the work of Murphy, the 12" generated both love and hate/denial among music snobs.

Diplo
One thing of which Diplo (aka Diplodocus, Wes Diplo, and Wes Gully) cannot be accused is being afraid to experiment with new music. With his mash-up mixtapes, he found and created a sound where his musical tastes — '80s pop, electronica, Dirty South hip-hop, and his major influence, Miami bass music — intersect. His attention-grabbing projects Hollertronix, with partner DJ Low Budget, and the Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 mixtape, with elusive British-Sri Lankan MC M.I.A., made a heavy impact on the alternative electro-pop scene, amassing him rave reviews from music critics and indie kids alike, including Spin magazine, which named him DJ of the Year in 2005.

Diplo was born Thomas Wesley Pentz in Tupelo, MS. Although he lived in a few different cities in the South, he mainly grew up in south Florida. He spent his youth in his father's bait shop, fixated on manatees, alligators, and dinosaurs with hopes of becoming a paleontologist. However, he wound up pursuing an education in film studies, starting at a couple Florida colleges but then finishing up his undergraduate degree in Philadelphia at Temple University in 2003. Before his move to Philadelphia, Pentz had moved temporarily to Japan to escape daily life in America. From Japan, he sent a demo tape of his beat concoctions to Will Ashon, founder of U.K. independent hip-hop label Big Dada Records, and once signed to the label, he relocated to Philadelphia.

To support himself, during and after graduating from Temple, Pentz took on a few different jobs in Philadelphia: social worker, after-school mentor, movie theater employee, and gig-by-gig DJ. He was barely able to pay the rent, and the frustration was stunting his musical development (although he does credit one of his musical epiphanies to the after-school students who exposed him to crunk and Baltimore club music). Thus, Diplo and like-minded DJ Low Budget pooled their resources to start up their own club nights in Philadelphia, which they branded Hollertronix. It simply began as a fun night of genre-warping dance music, but it blossomed into an underground subculture drawing out crowds from all over the East Coast. Under the Hollertronix moniker, Diplo and Budget released the highly praised Never Scared mixtape; it was listed as one of the New York Times' top albums of 2003.

The following year, Big Dada released Diplo's solo debut album, Florida, a more downtempo piece focusing on melody and instrumentals that was a departure from the melee of mashed-up vocals and beats. His unrelenting work ethic produced a considerable number of acclaimed mix CDs and 12" records; however, none of them accumulated more interest and Internet chatter than the 2004 Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 mixtape that introduced M.I.A. outside of U.K. borders. Developing a yearning to produce more worldly music, he also began to throw his energy behind the Brazilian youth- and street-based music known as funk carioca (also referred to as baile funk), a derivation of Miami bass music. So, it was no surprise that when he established his own label, Mad Decent Records, around 2005, his first signee was the funk carioca group Bondo do Role. Becoming an internationally recognized artist, Diplo developed a knack for championing new world music that seems natural given his dynamism and boundless musical outlook.

Nasty Nav
Nasty Nav cranks out "a pretty bangin' opening set," according to Now magazine's boy-about-town, Benjamin Boles. Formerly known as Deejay Nav during his days with the prolific DJ collective 'Movement,' Nav has since moved into the indie dance scene with great results, using the skills he developed mixing vintage 45s to bring a bit more technical finesse to this sound.

Nasty Nav has opened for who's who of who's hot: Boys Noize, A Trak, Kid Sister, Dj Mehdi, Kavinsky, Catchdubs, Whitey and Rory Phillips, Girl talk, Dan Deacon, blah blah blah. He probably opened for Daft Punk. And Bruce Springsteen.

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