TAPE by COLAMP

Record producer, KDT Produced It and rapper, Nathan Nice’s mutual friend, Josh Stone, introduced them to each other in Los Angeles in 2005. They created one song together, titled “Cold Lamp,” for the eponymous “Nathan Nice EP” then went their separate ways. A decade and a half later, they reconnected when Nathan purchased what happened to be the first publicly available vinyl record release of KDT Produced It and Sach iLLpage of The Nonce, titled “Breakfast At Earl’s the EP.” Within weeks, they began building up a new body of work, combining their crafts and shared love of Hip-Hop. They soon realized they’d need a name to release under, and “Cold Lamp,” shortened to the portmanteau, COLAMP, (always all-caps, a la MF DOOM), seemed like the perfect way to represent the full arch of their creativity together. A hip-hop crew is not complete without “the backbone,” hence Nathan’s long time collaborator and friend, Arbs, joined up to bless many of the tracks with his razor sharp turntable wizardry. Then, talented engineer, DJ and Elements founder, Breeze, became the newest COLAMP member, honing the sound in studio and rocking live shows on stage. The term “cold lamp” is most widely recognized from Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav’s single “Cold Lampin' With Flavor.” When you lamp, you chill. When you cold lamp, it's a deep state of relaxation and nothing else. For this crew, it means being comfortable in their creativity, staying in a flow state, for the love of self discovery and the art itself—no other stresses to distract or motivations to muddy. An alternative definition for cold lampin’ refers to the act of breaking open public street lamps to power guerilla sound systems for outdoor hip-hop events in the late 70’s and early 80’s in Bronx, New York City. For the COLAMP crew, it’s both of the meanings intertwined. Juxtaposing effortlessness with a sense of empowerment, improvisation and taking matters into one’s own hands. That is the essence of COLAMP music.

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