Coming from an early background in punk rock and rap music, Charlie B. Wilder (aka Captain Planet) began making hip-hop beats at an early age on archaic equipment, digging for samples in the usual Funk, Soul and Jazz wells –all the while developing a taste for Reggae and African music. After being offered a primetime slot playing strictly international music on WNYU’s “Passport” radio show, Wilder began digging deeper and deeper into music from Africa, the West Indies, India, Latin America and the Far East – eventually coming into possession of the entire World music section of Lincoln Center’s Public Library. Flipping these same World records the way Hip-Hop producers traditionally sample, these international sounds began creeping into the tracks that the Captain was producing for a few Hip-Hop groups at the time.
After realizing these beats stood on their own and could function as a different kind of dance music, Wilder’s “Gumbo Funk” style of production was born. His 2005 debut 12” on Bastard Jazz sold thousands of copies and led to remixes for artists like Vieux Farka Toure, Alice Russell and The Pimps of Joytime – not to mention placements on HBO’s Entourage and CBS’s CSI:NY. Since then Wilder has released 2 more successful Captain Planet EP’s on Bastard Jazz Records as well as a slew of remixes (both bootleg & official) for the likes of Little Dragon, Erykah Badu, Mayer Hawthorne, Mia Doi Todd, and Gilles Peterson’s Havana Cultura project.
Charlie is hosting Mixtape Riot on Brooklyn Radio, check it out:
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