BIOGRAPHY
Scott Monteith is a musician, sound artist and music technology educator best known for his work under the stage name Deadbeat. Ever since launching his production career at the turn of the century, the dub techno auteur has been nothing if not deeply prolific. The Canadian-born, Berlin-based producer's nine Deadbeat albums and nearly two-dozen singles represent one of most prolific and consistently rewarding catalogs in 21st century electronic-music canon. It's a spectacular run of records that continues to hit new heights with each new release.
Certainly the city of Montreal played an outsized role in the sonic depths of his early works. "I worked for a music software company for several years, a proper 9 to 5 situation, or as close to it as any small tech start up gets. At the end of everyday though I'd head home and quite literally lose it making sounds until I I was too tired to hold my head up" he remembers of this period in his life. "When I eventually left the company in 2003, this became a full time affair and I often didn't even bother to get out of my pajamas for days. My studio at the time was very meager, a little grey room with a half-rotten balcony, some not very good speakers, and even worse computer. It was my first full-time studio though, and I made things in that room that very quickly made me realize what I wanted to do with my life."
Outside his tiny studio, Monteith was surrounded by a community of musicians who, along with the Mutek festival, were in the midst of putting Montreal on the international electronic music map. Creativity and, more importantly, productivity, were in the air, and those underpinnings helped set the tone.
In the spring of 2006 Monteith would make the move to Berlin, joining a generation of Canadian producers who'd launched careers only to become frustrated with the limited growth potential of the North American market at the time. The move proved fruitful as Monteith's creative focus shifted from the studio to the stage. Few if any producers have bent the dub techno template to suit their creative vision and demands of the moment as successfully as Monteith, and it is in his now much lauded live performances where this is brought most sharply into focus. Having drawn performance invitations from the most respected clubs and festivals the world over, audiences are as likely to be treated to great swathes of noise and ambiance as they are impossibly heavy dub reggae reconfigurations, pummeling warehouse techno, or kaleidoscopic house grooves. Wherever he decides to go on a given night, the ever present, tectonic bass weight serves as a steady anchor in the raging sea of echoes and ideas jockeying for space around it.
As a DJ, Monteith is a dub techno archivist second to none, with a collection spanning the genre's early Berlin roots to the current crop of producers worldwide pushing the sound into previously unheard directions and widely divergent rhythmic structures. This was most clearly highlighted with the release of his critically acclaimed DJ mix Radio Rothko in 2010, rated by Resident Advisor amongst others as one of the most genre defining mix CDs of all time.
In addition to his production and performance activities, his skills as an educational speaker and workshop leader have been regularly called upon by the world renowned Red Bull Music Academy, as well as technology leaders such as Microsoft and Ableton among others.
A tireless innovator of vast creative vision, 15 years on Scott Monteith's restless creative spirit shows no signs of being quieted for many years to come.
DISCOGRAPHY
Singles & EPs as Deadbeat
Tesla | Revolver | 2000
Cesium Beam 1 - 2 - 3 | Hautec | 2000
Tinkertronix EP | Background | 2001
Miso | Revolver | 2002
Garble And Slur | Cynosure | 2002
Disaster In The Dancehall | Klitekture | 2003
Preliminary Findings | ~scape | 2005
Version Immersion | ~scape | 2006
Versionist Carmot | Wagon Repair | 2008
Eastward On To Mecca | Wagon Repair | 2008
Take Me Back To London Town | Cynosure |2008
Vampire | Echocord | 2010
Drawn And Quartered Remixes | BLKRTZ | 2011
The Infinity Dubs Vol 1. | BLKRTZ | 2013
The Infinity Dubs Vol 2. | BLKRTZ | 2013
The Infinity Dubs Vol 3. | BLKRTZ | 2013
Mercy Cage | Echocord Colour | 2013
Adventures In Hyper Reality | Rhythm Cult | 2014
Walls & Dimensions I BLKRTZ | 2015
The Jacks EP | Visionquest | 2015
Walls&Dimensions II | BLKRTZ | 2015
Our Rotten Roots | Echocord Colour | 2017
Babylon Correction Dub | Tuppence | 2017
In collaborations
Deadbeat & Monolake | Random Brown | Cynosure | 2006
Deadbeat & Fenin | Romeo Kalimba / Teach The Devil's Son | Echocord Colour | 2009
Deadbeat & Danuel Tate | Lazy Jane | BLKRTZ | 2012
Nick Höppner & Deadbeat | The Weed EP | Echocord Colour | 2012
Deadbeat feat. Gregory Isaacs | Claudette | ZamZam Sounds| 2012
Deadbeat vs Hreno | Nightshift | Sound Architecture | 2015
LPs as Deadbeat
Primordia | Intr_version | 2001
Wild Life Documentaries | ~scape | 2002
Something Borrowed, Something Blue | ~scape | 2004
New World Observer | ~scape | 2005
Journeyman's Annual | ~scape | 2007
Roots And Wire | Wagon Repair | 2008
Drawn And Quartered | BLKRTZ | 2011
Eight | BLKRTZ | 2012
Walls And Dimensions | BLKRTZ | 2015
Collaborations
Deadbeat vs. Stephen Beaupré | It's A Crackhaus Thing | Onitor | 2003
Deadbeat And Paul St Hilaire | The Infinity Dub Sessions | BLKRTZ | 2014
LP as Scott Monteith
Scott Monteith | Qawwali Quatsch | Field | 2016