DJ Ripley

By DAVID DAY | Photo By Lane Hartwell

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From the Bay Area to Chi-town to Barcelona, the locally born Toneburst Collective has blossomed into a worldwide octopus. Repping Oaktown is DJ Ripley (aka Larisa Mann), who moved from The Hub in 2000 to take on a PhD program at UC-Berkeley. She returns to her native land for the holidays and a few gigs, stressing dub rhythms, mongoloid basslines and pirate booty.

WHAT SORT OF STUFF ARE YOU SPINNING NOW?

What I did in Boston was breakcore and jungle influenced, but I have been getting into dubstep and Baltimore club music. I mix it up quite a bit. Usually I throw in some kind of two-step and random pop music from all over the world. Pop songs from Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan and things like that. Hopefully it will all come together.

HOW DO YOU GET MUSIC FROM KAZAKHSTAN?

Uh, the internet? [laughs] I don't really know what I am looking for a lot of the time. There are a lot of people that post weird things like a tape they got at a bazaar under a bridge in Poland.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN BERKELEY?

The PhD program in the law school. I'm interested in the relationship between copyright law and social action and creativity. A lot of the things that are the most fun to spin are technically illegal.

THE LAW SCHOOL THERE IS AWESOME ABOUT THAT STUFF.

I also work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and write for WireTap Magazine.

SOUNDS LIKE A BUNCH OF HIPPIES.

The lawyers are pretty lawyerly and the tech people are pretty techy, but I'm not techy enough to deal with the super techno-hippy people -- the raver hippies that like natural foods and not washing.

BURNING MAN?

Yeah. I'm definitely a Yankee, so it is funny to be in the Bay Area and the whole Burning Man scene is pretty entertaining: Mad Max belly-dancing cybergoths and whatnot. You go to a dubstep night here and you see a giant tall dude in a three-piece suit with a python. A living python. Hanging on him.

YOU DON'T GET THAT IN BOSTON.

Not so much. Not yet, anyway.

[The Annual Milky Way Holiday Fundraiser with DJ Ripley, DJs Dafna and Stella! and Thru the Keyhole Burlesque, Fri. 12.21.07 at The Milky Way, 403-405 Centre St., Jamaica Plain. 617.524.3740. 9pm/$8-$20. 21+]