By night, Beta is Denver's best dance club and North America's number one dance club. By day, though, apparently Beta doubles as a set for music video shoots. Yesterday, DJ Ishe and Dirt Monkey teamed up with John Hunt of Grimey Gatsby to shoot a video for "Slow and Low" from the pair's forthcoming album. We were on hand for the shoot and got some behind the scenes footage.
The video is for a song off the forthcoming Ishe/Dirt Monkey album,
Turn Up the Ride, set to drop on Monday, July 16 on the famed
Play Me Recordsimprint out of Los Angeles. When Play Me co-founder
Reid Speedheard a few tracks, she was immediately interested.
"She liked the tracks a lot, and was disappointed that they were already signed to a label," says Ishe. "Then I told her they weren't." At this point, Speed didn't have to space to release the tracks until next year. "So, what started out as a four song LP actually turned into a full length record set for release on Play Me Records, and I can't argue with that."
A cast of local luminaries turned up on the set, including Ishe's co-host at Hot 107.1 for the Wednesday night FutureBass show, ARich (aka Alvin Richardson), as well as Justin Ryan, the lighting mastermind behind Beta's productions, who held down the music during and in between takes. Director John Hunt assembled a crew of folks from all over Colorado to help with filming duties, everything from shooting at different angles to helping with lighting and various other tasks -- including rounding up stray ping-pong balls, over a thousand of them.
The clip features Ishe playing Dirt Monkey in one of the most epic ping-pong battles ever. Clad in crotch-hugging shorts, solid colored shirts and head bands, the two producers duel it out while a crowd of fans (recruited from Facebook, through word-of-mouth and gaggles of text messages) goes wild during the match. Ishe, who rocks his custom paddle, and Dirt Monkey, fight to the near death in a match of pong.
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