King Cannibal

By ADA HUTCHINSON

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Producer and DJ King Cannibal (aka Zilla, aka Dylan Richards) is by no means an average electronic-music mind. More in step with originators like Coldcut than new wavers like Skream, he barely adheres to any one genre. Glitch, hip-hop, dubstep and more get folded into his studio like so many steps in origami. "I wouldn't like to be making the same record over and over," he says via email from his London apartment. "I'm more interested in what record I want to make next and pushing myself in new directions. If I was thinking with genres and scenes, I'd be too busy looking over my shoulder at what the next man was doing."

Despite having been in and around the London scene for years, he's only now releasing material, and on a label considered a titan of electronic music—Ninja Tune. His stop in Boston will be his first visit to the US outside of New York. "Years ago, I'd dream of going to the States and picking up a lot of hip-hop records, but now I guess due to the evolution of digital releases, I'm not scribbling out a list of record stores to visit." Richards is also a huge film buff: "I'll be looking forward to smuggling a few banned films back through Customs."

Though he admits drum & bass is "just under the surface" of his music, there's no end to the varieties of rhythms and rhymes to expect from a Richards live set, though perhaps it's all coming together as one grand, unified genre. "Now we've fully entered an online age in terms of production," he says, "and with so many new genres and micro genres being constantly born, the differences between them shrinks."

[King Cannibal with Steppo and Vinyl Blight. Wed 1.27.10. Good Life, 28 Kingston St., Boston. 617.451.2622. 10pm/21+/$5. goodlifebar.com, godsofwar.wordpress.com]