Rewind: Damir Ivic on “Criminal Justice”

In discussion with Damir Ivic on “Criminal Justice” by D*Note (1995).

D*Note was quite an active project. What made you choose this album out of their varied back catalogue?

Varied, and not always excellent. “Babel”, Matt’s first effort as an album, was excellent, but still naive in some sounds. Breakbeats, for instance – they were quite standard and not so creative, original and classy as they are on “Criminal Justice”, and generally speaking the arrangements were quite keen to the jazzy hip-hop flavour of that era. Later, only some parts of “Fuchsia Dog” matched the unbelievable quality of the first two albums. The rest of the D*Note catalogue is… I wouldn’t say disappointing but… yes, maybe I’m sayin’ it!

On his Myspace page, D*Note’s mastermind Matt Wienevski describes his music as a “cross between Ravel, Miles Davis and Photek”. However high this self-explanation aims, would you agree to some extent?

It’s 100% correct, I think. Plus, there’s room for Michael Nyman. If “Birth Of Cool” was carrying interferences made by Photek and Nyman (and maybe Ravel, ok), we’d have had “Criminal Justice” decades ago. Hey, I perfectly realize that these words sound TOO big. But please, listen to the album… Read the rest of this entry »