Selected Discography w/ notes

This was my very first collaboration with the elusive and almighty Invisible Art Trio project - and started it all in terms of this new space and direction in dance floor music for me. Equal parts rooted in the past and future, with a potent simplistic groove and message, the world rightfully felt the energy right away and collectively acknowledged this tribute to the power of our true source of heat, light, love, and life spirit.

The Love Always

Be Like The Sun

Taken from my debut album Open Wide, this is a direct breakdown of my personal musical history, spelled out in chronological poetry by album/song/track titles from the earliest recollections of music I fell in love with up until my favorite cuts at the moment I had written this piece, around the summer of 2007. You never forget your First, especially with so much endless Love to draw from.

Open Wide

First Love

Also from the Open Wide debut, this album closing track oozed so many influences of mine at the time, there isn't room to list all of them - some clearly obvious, some not so much - but many thanks, love, and respects to the teachers and predecessors. Also to those not afraid of some sugar in contemporary song in the right dosage, and to my pops who gave me my first direct production props for this one. Big moment. Always with you too.

With You

This was the first remix I did that felt like a true lesson and musical undertaking. Dflex was a side project of Darren House aka Diesel and Felix Hopkins on the Tiny Sticks label, and the sound stems were a pure thing of beauty, full of live instrument recordings including some lovely piano and synth work, it was an honor and blessing to have the chance to rework it, and the result was eventually a proper meeting of the minds, bodies, and souls. As always, I used only the sound set from the original track, except for finger snaps and backing vox, but in this special case it was more than enough great material to endlessly work with.

Waltz (Remixes) - Single

Dflex - Waltz (Dave Aju Remix)

This was my first musical adventure with the Sol Percussion Ensemble outfit, whose manifesto was simple: to create other-worldy dance music compositions using only one chosen percussion instrument per track, in this case the Flexatone. The resulting pulsating poly-rhythmic voodoo vibe-out here still gets mad love in many a DJ set to this day, and the S.P.E. project is alive and well, due for a return release real soon.

Flexa

This is the B1 cut off my first release for Matthew Herbert's Accidental label, the track and whole EP were made with a few hand-made percussion instruments I collected on journeys to the place of my Ute Indian relatives and ancestors in the Four Corners region of Colorado in the southwest US.

Strolling On Sunday

Taken from my second album Heirlooms, a loving tribute to my late father Joseph Anthony Barrite whose musical teachings and own roots jamming with legends such as Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson were essential to my world, this one is a culminations of the countless family bbqs I attended in my youth and the warm familial feeling of them. There is also an underlying narrative of a typical "cousin" unsuccessfully trying to court a girl at said bbqs which can be followed in headphones, and culminates in the pleading, infatuated chorus.

Heirlooms

You Gotta Know

Also from the love-labored tribute album Heirlooms, this one marks the first moment within the album where my voice actually joins my father's trumpet in unison, as we had intended to do live just before his untimely death, and in my mind and heart is the first of two earnest emotional moments on the album's subject of deep personal loss.

Until Then

One of my personal favorites off the Heirlooms album, as hard as it can be to choose which children you love most at times. A blatant call to action of moving onward, forward ever, and not letting the bs get in the way - a crucial mantra for myself in the time of mourning that spawned the album, it also features some slick sax lines from one of my father's yet-to-be-esteemed peers in the East Bay underground jazz scene.

Away Away

This B2 cut from the EP on Nu Earth Kitchen was my Dilla tribute track, originally composed in early 2006 in reaction to the master teacher producer's tragic early departure from Earth, and finalized a few years later for this release, with some added instrumentation to go with the abstract textures and vocal harmonies bowing to my favorite work of his.

Fall

Still one of my favorite cuts to drop in morning sets to this day, Good Gawd went through about five incarnations over a period of two or three years, finally concluding in this released version. The Invisible Art Trio channeled many things for this one, from the Stylistics to KDJ to Panoramabar window blind-openings.

Good Gawd

The title track to the second EP I did with the inspiring and inspired Invisible Art Trio, overflowing with the special style of free-jazz-schooled voodoo house bump that only they can conjure up. The socio-political angle is more apt and vital than ever now as well.

Look Out Above

I've got nothin but love for this B-side, one-off, bizarre-mix-of-so-many-things-like-it's-creator track. The title is a loose nod to Shuggie Otis, the layers of vocals, samples, machines, and field recordings came together strangely tight, and I'm still grateful for and amazed by the lucky timing of the skipping end.

Inmahed

The closing track to my third album, the all-vinyl classic LP-sampling Black Frames. Big shouts to WAR, The Liks, and Acrane Mass for this one. Bless.

When We Drift

This second track off the Black Frames album marries two of my favorites, the message-heavy children's story 'The Emperor's New Clothes' and all sounds coming from one of the greatest fusion albums of all time (the clue, as with the rest of the album, is scrambled in the track title).

Nu Threads

"Lovely Ladies and Gentlemen.." I still hear this one getting dropped to hungry dancers all around the world, so a special shout out goes to my fellow DJ and selector brethren and sistren for keeping the Streets Clean and the feets movin'. And of course to the father George Clinton.

Clean St

This remix selection is from the Freaks boys' excellent Psych album, when I had the choice of track to rework, this was an easy pick, loaded with fresh sounds, a wide spectrum of organic and synthetic tones, and of course the inimitable vocals of the mighty Diz Washigton as a cherry on top; melts away any doubts on the floor everytime.

Freaks - Situations (Dave Aju Remix)

This B2 cut off the Freee Lover EP on the wonderfully reborn Music For Freaks label is a Dub version release of a live set classic of mine "Givin It Up", which works wonders in all sorts of sets/settings, from summer eves at CDV to winter warm-ups in the 213.

Givin It Dub

This track was the very first to be made start-to-finish in the now infamous Cave Aju in Xberg Berlin - feeling somewhere between revived, inspired, and homesick, the warm cruisin-down-the-PCH or closing-out-the-Kater-Kiosk-on-a-Sunday-afternoon vibe of this outer space love song bumper luckily found its final home on this release.

Freee Lover EP                

Freeez

This was probably the best-known and received cut off the Heirlooms album, and also saw some additional legs later via the remix set up by our boy Seth Troxler. The original vibe was based on some late-night sessions at Facing West studios in San Francisco with JAW and I throwing around time-period ideas inspired by a janky old synth and recordings specially from the early 80s period my father and his friends had made. Reminiscent radio callers Worldwide were lovers, and the sunny West Coast BBQ vibes endless on this one.

Caller #7 feat JAW

Brand new Soundcloud van damn page fam!

Bookings/Inquiries: contact@elbowgrease.la

Dave Aju is an internationally-recognized DJ, producer, remixer, sound engineer, vocalist and artist known for his distinctive voice and unique blend of musical styles. Born Marc David Barrite and raised by a respected Cali Jazz-head father, an early peer of Pharaoh Sanders, he soon became an avid young B-Boy and MC in the local Electro and Hip-Hop scenes before eventually finding his niche in the deeper left-field corners of mid-90s Detroit Techno and the global underground House Music movement, channeling all of the above influences into his retro-futuristic DJ sets and productions with a natural passion for dance music history, his Filipino/Ute Indian cultural rhythmic roots, and psychedelic-inspired sonic ingenuity into a raw handmade sound truly all his own.

An expansive discography which garners regular support from musical mentors-turned-fans such as Claude Young, Theo Parrish, DJ QU and Pepe Bradock includes his recently released fifth studio album Glossolalia with The Invisible Art Trio, the homecoming LP TXLAX and the follow-up Ciao Sun EP on Tokyo’s renown Mule Musiq, three previous award-nominated concept albums on Parisian outlet Circus Company, coveted remixes for select elite acts from Nicolas Jaar to STR4TA, celebrated EP releases for labels such as Ostgut Ton, Music For Freaks, and Matthew Herbert's Accidental Records, along with a deep history of notable headlining performances at globally-revered venues from London’s Fabric and Berlin’s Panorama Bar to the Sonar and MUTEK festivals, as well as regular contributions to tastemaker radio platforms like Dublab and Gilles Peterson's BBC shows. Dave Aju now finds himself in a well-accomplished creative zone at home in Los Angeles. Forever a fixture in his legendary studio developing next-level material, repping West Coast warehouse roots events with the DISCOS XXX aka DX3 crew, promoting culture connection truths with the LAXD series, penning lyrics and dropping soulful vocals for the exploratory band KAMM, while steadily mix engineering and working behind the scenes in support of a variety of LA projects, teaching production courses to future generations at Hollywood’s esteemed Musicians Institute, dropping DJ set science from his vast record collection, while running the Greasy Listening mix series that promotes new like-minded works that check the mind, body, soul boxes, and his home-base artist imprint Elbow Grease.