About me:
Spencer, has been absorbing rhythmic pop all of his life, beginning with the Michael Jackson records his mom favored during his growing-up years in Sacramento. An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, he took his first step toward a career in music when his father presented him with a saxophone. “My pops never had the opportunity to play music, though he always wanted to,†Spencer explains. “So when I was nine, he pretty much forced me to play sax.†It took a while for it to grow on him – baseball and football were more his style – but by the time he got to high school, Spencer was happily playing in the marching band, concert band and jazz combo. He remembers vividly the impact of what he still calls his favorite record, A Tribe Called Quest’s landmark 1993 release, Midnight Marauders. His voracious musical appetite thereafter led him to electronic music, particularly trip-hop and drum & bass, then to jazz (fellow horn players John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon, to name a few), and back to hip-hop, especially forward-looking artists like The Roots. It was inevitable that Spencer would start making his own beats and programming what he calls “weird electronic music and progressive trance†on his computer. But when he went off to college at San Diego State to study international business, he put music on the back burner. “Music was my life,†he concedes, “but it didn’t seem like a realistic career option.†Then a friend played him the first N*E*R*D record, 2002’s In Search Of …. “I said, ‘Shit, that is dope,†he relates. “He told me it was The Neptunes,†the production team (of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) that had enjoyed stratospheric success with Britney Spears’ “I’m a Slave 4 U†and Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,†among other smashes. “That’s when I started teaching myself how to produce records.†This roughly coincided with another friend encouraging him to attend a local open-mic night. “I remember one show in particular where everyone was going bananas,†he says. “I was playing sax and keys and beatboxing, and it was groovin’ and groovin’ and groovin. People started telling me, ‘You should do something with this.’†Before long, Spencer was producing and writing for a local outfit that would, over time, metamorphose into Jupiter Rising. All at the same time this producer's talent has taken him to the top of his game in producing music. He beats are an untouchable balance of a diverse range of music. With the skills of beatboxing, playing saxophone, and piano he is able to create music that reaches across a wide range of genres from beats that have that old school feel to raw hiphop. And the "Heat Roks" keep on comin...Hollla..
