As described in the Decibel Festival newsletter:  Get ready for the genre-bending, sound-blending styles of the Made Like a Tree collective. Their "Tree & Mountain" showcase brings together West Coast talent popular for cultivating unpredictable, majestic, and gorgeous soundscapes that unite blips, beeps and beats from around the globe. If you crave unique music with universal appeal, this show is not be missed.

San Francisco-based DJ and producer Dave Aju weaves fresh funk, house, hip-hop, soul and more, using unconventional sources and samples that are as expressive and sincere as they are novel. Seattle-based producer Codebase unleashes an energizing storm of electro, techno, and house that will keep you stepping, swaying, and guessing what is coming next. Made Like a Tree's own Struggle and D'jeronimo (both DJing) develop unique blends of bass-heavy dubstep and house, tribal percussion, Latin grooves, and provocative electronica from soft to hard, smooth to grinding, hypnotic to ecstatic. This showcase will take you through lush forests of rhythm and sound to sublime peaks of pitch and glitch that will resonate and energize all night long.


DAVE AJU -- Accidental / Circus Company / Context Free Media


San Francisco DJ/producer Dave Aju has been rocking to the beat of his own drum for nearly a decade. He works traditional elements of electronic dance music with a true music-lover's palette. Everything from free jazz, soul, and funk, to hip-hop, post-punk, and musique concréte inspires his consistently fresh and expressive sound, seeing him in demand for both remix work and performances from Moscow to Sydney to the highly-respected MUTEK Festival, and supported by a variety of forward-thinking peers including the illustrious Matthew Herbert, who has recently commissioned Aju for an EP release. Open Wide, his 2008 debut full-length on Circus Company, is still causing a stir in the electronic music community. It was nominated for the honorable Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and praised by many esteemed colleagues for it's bold diversity of musical styles and the strict but effective use of only his mouth and voice as sound sources to make it.

CODEBASE -- Force Inc. / Intrinsic Design / Swayzak


As Codebase, techno producer Tom Butcher made the leap from the overcrowded underground scene to the international name-brand when he signed to Force Inc in 2003, following years of independent projects and laboring. Born in Houston and classically trained on the piano from the age of eight, by the age of twelve he was already recording his first compositions. Now based in Seattle, Butcher’s career was jump-started by a chance encounter with Swayzak, who went on to release two of his tracks on their 240 Volts label.

Codebase is equal parts techno, electro, house, and subversive pop sensibility. One of the strongest attributes of Butcher’s work is that it will leave you wondering where exactly to place it. Even in today’s culture of genre-bending and genre-delineation, C odebase stands out as a transition, an anomaly.

STRUGGLE -- mlat / Subsistence


While most know of Struggle's enthusiasm for the eclectic bass heavy sounds of dubstep, what may not be known is that this DJ's first true love is house music. Spanning almost 20 years, this love began the night he heard a tape of a NY radio show featuring the likes of Marshall Jefferson, DJ Pierre, Lil Louis, and Adonis. From that point on his story is not a unique one. He, like many others, learned to build on his passions by mixing records and becoming a DJ. Through the years he has played many genres, but has always come back to house. Struggle believes, in it's pure form, house is a truly timeless music and there are always possibilities to move forward from there. He and D'jeronimo collaborate as Made Like a Tree, a DJ project that intends on showing Seattle a more soulful side of things.

D'JERONIMO -- mlat / Oi VAY!


Taking incredible influence from contemporary Chilean, Swiss, and French Canadian electronic music, the efforts of original Detroit players like Derrick May and UR, minimal classical (among others), D'jeronimo has found comfort in throwing back explosive and creative dance textures on a graduating scale. A Seattle native, currently involved in several collaborative efforts exploring dance music and new media, he continually seeks to reinvent and perpetually reinvigorate his sound. D'jeronimo focuses primarily on plush and funky electronic rhythms steeped in Latin and tribal percussion, currently all rhythmic elements and dance movements exploring tech house, funk, soul, dubstep, rhythma, sensual percussive and beyond. None of the music played at his sessions is without recognition of various levels of sensuality, sexuality and funk, built from a vivid ideology of provocative vibes and an obvious recognition and appreciation of energetic dance floors. He has founded the Made Like a Tree collective with DJ Struggle.

DJ Eddie

No local DJ, except for maybe his mentor Riz Rollins, radiates such a strong, pure love for the music he spins as does DJ Eddie. Thankfully, Eddie's (last name: Nonog) vinyl arsenal is among the best in the Northwest. (Fellow DJ Paul Edwards states that Eddie possesses the city's finest record collection.) Over the last two decades, Eddie has established himself as an omnivorous music lover with impeccable instincts, a connoisseur of many genres—heady techno and ambient, especially—who has DJed everywhere from Chop Suey to SeeSound, Re-bar, Aristocrats, and Mantra. He's a holy goof who always drops the perfect track.

Eddie elaborates on his approach through an anecdote. "At Mutek, when [Bruno Pronsato] was about to go on, I asked him what his modus operandi for his set was going to be. He said, 'I'm going to start out sexy, and hopefully by the end I will have blown it all.' That's how I attack the dance floor. I hope that can happen just out of the sheer love of music and movement." Eddie further muses, "DJing is a chemistry I still have yet to figure out. That's why I keep on doing it. I used to be that DJ who would get crowds to this crazy point—and then I would play a downtempo song. Just because I thought it was like the coolest thing. It was appropriate in some crazy way to let them have a breath and to impart a different texture. I think of it like this: You're walking through a funhouse, and you don't really know what's ahead of you. But do you really need to know?"

Jose Soul

Jose Soul, aka DiscoverY, aka ChocoLott Perez, aka Drag-on is just a dude on the move; spreadin Love and lacking hate. "Dancefloors transcend me and put me in a positive state," proclaims this soulful lovechild. "Representing sounds words vibrations positively... Music SAVES Lives.....half of the band Deacons Of The Dust (Oakland), House Of Bohemian Soul (Oakland), R.I.S.E. Crew (Maui), and Afrosonic Intelligence Music.......Stay Tuned.......!"


As it has been clearly laid out in the above flier, this is the last of the mlat parties in the Clubhouse loft. Eddie and Jose are going to execute a four-team weave with Struggle and D'jeronimo until the late, late hours on for this farewall gathering. Come out and spend the evening with us. There are many surprises in store.