Random Facts With… Dj E.A.S.E. (Nightmares On Wax)

Distance brings clarity. As the 90s recede off in the rear-view of history, certain artists, albums and movements gain in stature everday, their myth building as others fall away. Nightmares on Wax are one such collective – the DJ E.A.S.E. led hip hop outfit who bought a blunted British sensibility to music born in the Bronx, who combined crate digging and turntablism with the wired, nocturnal rave world they were formed in. NoW are the longest serving group on Warp Records, this alone should get them a medal – along the way they've released a stack of albums, including one, Smokers Delight, that sound-tracked a generation of bong gurgling UK space cadets as much as the Grateful Dead had soundtracked their Californian counterparts decades before.

As ever, there are hundreds of things we could discuss with DJ E.A.S.E. – his movement from creating bleep rave bangers to trip hop head nodders, his pioneering work in live dance, and the sheer longevity that sees him bringing out new music quarter of a decade after he first started. Instead this is Random Facts, so we're going to talk about the the height of Mount Everest, lizards amputating their own tails and why they're not called 'Dreams on Wax'…   

So, I’ve got a few nightmare facts here. People who stay up late are more likely to have nightmares compared to those who go to bed early.

Why?

I don’t know… I’m just about to look that up. 

Delayed sleep might have a sinister side. People who go to sleep late have a greater risk of experiencing nightmares according to scientists, although they add that follow up research is required to complete the link. So it’s not even a fact!

Oh right. 

Apparently being too warm at night can trigger nightmares.

What’s the connection between nightmares and eating cheese before bed?

My mum actually mentioned that last night. She was advising me not to have some strange blue cheese that I was thinking of having. That is actually true though because it’s something to do with the way that your body digests it.

Yeah. I don’t think it’s an actual nightmare though; you’re probably just going to have stomach ache. Save the cheese for the morning preferably.

Apparently people who play video games frequently are more likely to be able to turn a nightmare into a regular dream during sleep. That’s kind of an interesting one.

What about my recurring nightmare?

Maybe.

I guess it depends on what you’re playing really. You could be playing Tomb Raider and you’d just keep dreaming about Lara Croft. It could be a dry dream… Hah! There’s this theory that apparently with two hours sleep a night you can maintain a good level of energy for three months.

Two hours?

Yeah. Now, whether that’s true or not… I’ve definitely done it though and I do still do it from time to time. I know that there’s also a theory that if you sleep over the two hours then you’ll wake up knackered. If you sleep for exactly two hours though, you’ll be fine.

I didn’t know that. I guess it’s the way that your body rests isn’t it. They say that you’re supposed to sleep in even numbers as well. Apparently sleeping seven hours isn’t as good as sleeping six.

Yeah, and also if you go to bed before 10pm. Your body needs a certain amount of time to rejuvenate itself, so you’ve got enough energy after your rest, so if you go to bed by 10pm you’ll get the full injection of new cells, new chemicals and what-not in your system. But if you got to bed after 10, then you miss out on the right amount of rejuvenation. Allegedly… An acupuncturist told me that.

Interesting. Did you know that the average human being spends 6 years of his or her life dreaming?

Does that include daydreaming?

Good point.

But what qualifies as daydreaming? I’m going to Google that now.

Here you go, 5 surprising facts about daydreaming. Apparently you daydream less as you get older.

I’m a bit sceptical about that…

I’d imagine you spend most of your elderly life daydreaming…

If they’re not daydreaming then they’re a separate race to us… When people are on public transport and they’re not daydreaming, what are they actually doing?

Just thinking? What’s the difference between daydreaming and thinking? Ah, your brain, not your mind, controls your daydreams. That’s interesting.

So your mind and brain isn’t the same thing?

Your mind and your brain can be though of as different aspects of the same thing, like the software and hardware of a computer. So the brain is the hardware.

And the mind is the software, so therefore depending what level of upgrade you have your mind at, like if it’s an older operating system, then it’s probably closer to being a daydream.

So as you get older your entire life becomes a daydream… Daydreaming makes you more creative apparently.

I can believe that.

Yeah.

I believe that because I believe in visualising things. When you get an idea, you can see it crystal clear, there’s no doubting it.

Yep.

The only times that that changes is when you start to question it and you then dismantle it and break it down into smaller pieces. Then as you do that, all the doubts and fears creep in and then it no longer becomes a vision, but a daydream.

Got deep on daydreaming there.

Yeah man.

I like it.

We went from nightmares to daydreams.

Much more positive. Have you thought about changing it to Daydreams On Wax?

I’ve actually had a lot of people message me asking why we’re not called Dreams on Wax… I think that kind of sounds like a sex club…

There’s a time limit to how much you can remember of your dream. Within ten minutes 90% of the average persons dream is gone with the wind.

Have you ever had it when you’ve been going about your day and then all of a sudden something reminds you of your dream?

Yeah. I guess it’s the random access of the memory isn’t it.

Yeah, or the subconscious. I always find that the moment I go to describe my dreams it just disintegrates. I’m not allowed to talk about them now!

Like Fight Club.

That’s why people say you should write them down.

Yeah.

Some people also believe that if you write them down and keep a log of your dreams, then you can read them in x amount of time later, and they then become more relevant and decipherable.

I didn’t know that.

Dreams are more symbolic than the actual experience of what it is. If you dream about losing teeth, then it actually represents life and new beginnings. We’ve gone from facts to ‘so they say’ now haven’t we…

Hah! Children don’t star in their own dreams until they are about 3 or 4 years old.

How do they know that?

I don’t know… No idea.  

Some smart kid has been logging all his dreams! How else would you know that though?

I have no idea. I’ve never heard a 3 year old saying that he hasn’t been in his own dream yet… 

I’ve got one for you, seeing as we’re talking about sleeping and dreaming. The mighty blue whale needs to come for air, but when it goes down under and goes to sleep, half of its brain shuts down and the other half stays awake and when it needs air the awake half of the brain will take it back up for air.

I didn’t know that, that is interesting.

Any more sleepy ones?

Yeah. Oh wait, no I don’t. I’ve got something about earwax though… Earwax can provide information about a person’s ethnicity health and you can even tell what you eat. It can also help diagnose certain diseases.

You can tell what people eat by looking at their earwax?

Yeah, apparently.

Wow.    

Yeah, that’s a good fact.

Wow. I heard that you should never get your ears waxed, as you’ll just end up with really bad ears full of earwax as the hairs in your ear help to remove the earwax from your ears.

Yep.

So we agree on that one?

Yeah, we definitely agree on that one. I have problems with my ears and they always say that you shouldn’t compact it in with those cotton buds.

Going back slightly, do day-mares exist?

Day-mares?

Yeah.

I don’t know…

Lets have a look. In the mean time, if you flip a Great White Shark on its back it immediately falls asleep.

Wow, I didn’t know that.

That’s a good fact for any great white shark rapists out there.

Ah, so day-mares. A frightening or halucinatory experience whilst awake.

From what I’m reading here it sounds more like a flashback kind of thing.

Yeah. So when you’re having a day-mare, you’re actually wide awake.

Which is kind of like a deja-vu/flashback kind of thing, no?

But are deja-vu’s negative? Because this is talking about something that ahs a negative affect on you and is seen as being traumatic. Nightmares can actually be linked to having post-traumatic stress, but what’s interesting about these is that they’re saying you have to be wide awake. Nightmares only happen at night, when you’re asleep. If you sleep during the day, then you have a day-mare. I wasn’t actually thinking that a day-mare was something that happened when you were awake.

Ah right! Well it turns out there is. To be honest, I think it’s more like psychological disorder.

I think we should move on… I don’t think psychological disorders are something we need to be getting into.

Lets move onto an extension of wax then.

Okay.

There is a record for aliens to listen to on the Voyager Spacecraft. Did you know that?

So they took actual wax with them?

Yeah I think so. Music From Earth it was called. Yeah, it was a 12”.

Wow.

This looks pretty interesting so I’ll send you the link. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

I’m loving the artwork.

It’s amazing isn’t it.

It’s really cool. A great piece of artwork. It actually looks a little bit like crop circles.

It does, doesn’t it. Some weird shit going on there.

That’d make a great t-shirt actually.

A wicked t-shirt. Staying on wax, vinyl records have actually been on the rise since 1993, not just in the last few years like they’ve been reporting.

Yeah, they reckon it’s like a 15% increase a year don’t they?

Yeah. And it’s not just the last few years that it’s been rising, which is good!

When the whole CD revolution happened, they were put out there by commercial labels to try and get everyone into that format. Vinyl, as a format, is still the bees knees when it comes to listening to music.

Yeah, totally. There’s definitely been a fetishisation of it in a way though, by major labels.

It makes sense though because all major corporations try to do things as cheap as possible and they completely disregard the quality of the work and the sound quality, probably just because they’re not being that intelligent. They just think about compacting the whole thing and making it more accessible. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I’ve got another fact here. Lizards can self amputate their tails for protection and it then grows back after a few months.

That’s quite interesting you know, because I had lizards in my garden and some of them had their tails missing, but I just thought it was the cats.

But yeah, they actually self amputate themselves.

You’ve got me wondering now. I always thought it was the cats. But then, they were Geckos, so do they qualify as lizards?

Yeah, they’re lizards.

Or they could be salamanders… We’re getting onto another subject here…

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair. Strange.

What if they’re bald? So does that mean that bald intelligent people have more zinc & copper in their pubic hair?

Due to precipitation, for a few weeks of the year K2 is taller than Mount Everest.

Really?

Yeah.

Does it say what time of the year?

No, but it does say that Mount Everest grows 4mm a year.

It gets bigger?

Yeah, apparently so. The elevation of Everest has been newly defined as 8850m, rather than 8848m. So mountains are growing…

Mountains are growing, sea levels are shrinking. Maybe it’s just that the landscape is growing though and the sea isn’t actually changing… Maybe we need to get a convention together to make people aware that mountains are growing. We need to shrink them, quickly!

Action against mountains now!

Action against mountain growth!

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See Nightmares On Wax at Motion, Bristol on 25th September – find out more here.