http://picksterone.com/

Arizona-based DJ and music producer Pickster One has been making waves on the Tempe and Phoenix scene since his arrival in 1998. With his forward-thinking and highly innovative DJ sets, he has put himself into a genre all his own and has developed an incredibly diverse fan base. Pickster One takes influences from a broad scope of musical genres including Hip-hop, Electro, Dubstep, and countless other experimental, electronic genres to form a new-school, high-energy set that rocks the party and keeps the dance floor packed.

Pickster One, a.k.a. Dusty Hickman, born to Jerry and Mercy Hickman of small town Prundale, California, population 7,000 just outside of Monterey. With limited access to entertainment and music as a child, Pickster recorded music off the television onto his boom-box, listening to it over and over again on his headphones, sometimes late into the night while others slept. A natural-born music selector and collector, Pickster quickly began adapting his musical tastes to the booming Boom Bap style of the hip-hop culture in the late 80’s early 90’s.

Post high school, Pickster left the sleepy town to pursue and receive a degree in culinary arts from Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale, Arizona. He made the move with his long time pal, Ricardo, and it allowed him to quickly jump into the DJ scene to further develop his skills as a blooming Hip Hop and Scratch DJ. Pickster quickly began cultivating his skill while rubbing elbows with Phoenix and Tempe heavy-hitters.

As a leader in innovative style, Pickster quickly began to form one of the first ever “turntable bands” entitled Morse Code in the late 1990’s. Made up of 4 DJ’s, the bands concept was to create the individual sounds of a traditional band through scratch composition and sampled beat patterns which ultimately evolved into a perfect musical backdrop for MC’s to rap or sing on. Morse Code blew away the competition with its truly revolutionary rhythmic sounds—the first of its kind. Performing constantly around the nation, Morse Code quickly became an international act as they were asked to perform at the Disco Mixing Challenge (DMC Battle) USA Finals in 2004. Morse Code performed as featured special artist, performing a tribute set to legendary Jamaster Jay of Run DMC at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, CA, in front of a sold out theatre.

Pickster also got the opportunity to play alongside the 8 piece live Hip-Hop band called, “Drunken Immortals”. 8 years, 3 Full length albums, Multiple National US Tours, and a few run down RV’s, Pickster developed his ear and skills to be able to play along with live musicians as a DJ/Turntablist.  No longer with the group. Pickster continues to collaborate and work with all the members of the band, Including Dumperfoo and Scott White which are in Crusher Sound System.

In 2008 Pickster was inducted into the world renowned “Furious Styles Crew”. FSC known for their world class B-Boy crew wining compitions all over the world since 1993.  Joining the ranks of legendary Arizona DJ’s such as DJ Z-Trip, DJ Element, DJ Radar, DJ Senbad and more.

Pickster earned his stripes as a solo artist through the highly competitive AZ rave, warehouse, and club party scenes throughout the 2000’s. At the time, Arizona was notorious for its DJ’s, who sometimes literally pushed others off stage during their set performance, if the DJ so much as took too long to change records mid-set. Surviving massive competition during this time, Pickster One persevered and was further able to develop an even wider spectrum of music to pull from. Today, he can rock any kind of party at any given time.

In 2005, Pickster began touring the United States on a much larger scale, doing fifteen tours as a solo act playing clubs, festivals, and warehouses, and often as the house DJ for touring Hip-Hop Acts . Some of these tours included “We Book Our Own Tour” with Los Angeles-based MC 2Mex that reached fifty US cities in sixty days. In 2009, Pickster took his career overseas to Europe DJing with Crusher Sound System, in Paris, St. Etienne, Lyon, Nancy, and Le Mans, France. He performed in Grenada, Barcelona, Malaga, and Seville, Spain as well as Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland, Praug, Czech Republic, Dresden and Berlin, Germany, and Athens, Greece. Pickster also performed at the infamous SXSW music festival in 2009 on the “Strange Famous Records” stage with 2mex, Free Moral Agents and Sage Francis. The performance was such a success, he was quickly booked to make widely successful 2009 Strange Famous Megamix, a Record Label Sampler that was officially put out by XLR8R magazine. To date the colorful musician has over twenty full-length mix CD’s under his belt as a turntable-artist.

Over the past 10 years, Pickster has taken on numerous weekly and monthly club events including the longest-running Arizona Hip-Hop club night, The Legendary Blunt Club. Other events include the newly-spawned dance night, Move Somethin, Solstice, Downtime, Ill-Matic, and many other nights. In 2009, Pickster revamped his creative style and hit the electronic music scene like a Cat 5 hurricane. Playing hundreds of rave events and festivals, Pickster continues to tear up the Phoenix Electro and House dance scenes with his Hip-Hop/Scratch roots to party rock, pop wheelies and often brings something new to keep his fan base strong in the ever-changing electronic dance scene. Just this past year, Pickster shared the stage with Z-Trip, Bassnectar, Glitchmob, A-Trak, Diplo, Santigold, and Rusko, to name a few.

In 2007, Pickster began his latest side-project group, entitled Crusher Sound System, which gained widespread acclaim in 2009. Crusher is a DJ-based outfit which delivers centrally as DJ based turntable beats, mixed with live drumming, keys, samplers, and drum machines while keeping it fresh with live canvas painting on stage. Crusher Sound System has certainly hit the ground running with instant local success, selling out their first handful of shows in Arizona. The band has seen their fan base literally double each time they have played, even before having an official album release. Be sure to check them out in 2010.

Pickster One, a revolutionary beyond his years, never misses a chance to lead others into new sounds and musical genres with his kaleidoscopic range of musical taste and innovation. Pulling from a variety of musical backgrounds and genres, Pickster fully embraces the high speed and physto-ADD attention span of his listeners while adhering to the challenges and bends of a changing market in a tumultuous and rampant musical scene. The big pay-off to him is not only a successful show or a good time, but the essential DJ experience of creating a scintillating playground for senses, while controlling the vibes of the bumping crowd. With his eye on the future, Pickster One is heading into 2010 running, hitting the club, electro, bar, rave and music festival scene with never-ending positivity, mold-ability, creative light, and changing approach to rock electronic-based dance music like it has never been rocked before. With open ears and eyes this DJ is certainly one who will be making waves, and we can’t wait to watch, listen, and respect.

Pickster One from PheosiA Films Production on Vimeo.

Share on Facebook

The Electro Wars is a documentary on the electro scene and how it has emerged and changed over the last couple of years. Justice, LMFAO, DJ A-Trak, Chromeo, DJ Premier and many others are featured in it. Look out for a release soon, until then check out the final trailer here above!

It is unquestionable that the Electro genre has reached a broader American audience in the last two years. I am determined to document the scene and its participants, show the inner workings of the genre and what it will eventually evolve into. The notion to document this genre was conceived in 2008 after reading a blog post with the same title ‘Electro Wars’ featured on the Hipster Runoff. The post was a sarcastic outlook on electro/house artists in the United States and Europe, and their impact on mainstream music here in the United States. I found a substantial concept within the snarky commentary and decided to assemble these “electro soldiers”. It seems that every other day a new remix is popping up on the blogosphere, how does this affect marketing for other independent artists? Do they welcome the remixes or oppose them? Is music overload possible? What will eventually happen when all these budding producers grab a hold of a Pro Tools tutorial and develop their own remixes week in and week out? Will the remix itself become obsolete? Will original tracks have to step up to the forefront rather than recede into the background? Themes of this nature are explored in the film.

The Electro Wars Final Trailer from Stephen Alex Vasquez on Vimeo.

Share on Facebook

Video above: Nuit Blanche, from Spy Films, directed by Arev Manoukian. There’s a “making of” video here.

Share on Facebook

Adidas released a line of Star Wars trainers. Some of them are inspired by various characters or spaceships, like a Stormtrooper, Tie Fighter, or X-Wing pilot (above). One style has several iconic scenes emblazoned right on the shoes. Each pair comes in a blister pack, inspired I guess by the old action figures. I can’t decide if I like the line or find it ultra-cheezy, or both, but one thing I’m certain of is that the ones priced at $200/pair are rather spendy. The adidas Originals Star Wars Collection for 2010

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

Pharrell Keynote at MIDEM 2010 from thecashmerethinker on Vimeo.

Pharrell Williams attended the MIDEM 2010 music business conference in Cannes for a Q&A keynote with Rob Stone (Co-CEO of Cornerstone). P spoke on a variety different things including working with Game, who calls him his favorite producer to work with, Luda’s album, Jay’s upcoming techno project, and working with Hans Zimmer for the upcoming 3-D CGI feature film, Despicable Me. Rob also kinda snitched on Pharrell’s son he had nearly a year ago. I don’t think he wanted anyone to know about that one.

Share on Facebook