Deadbeat

Deadbeat is the main alias of Scott Monteith, a musician, sound artist and music technology educator originally from Kitchener, Ontario. He moved to Montreal in the late 90s, working by day for the software synth company Applied Acoustics Systems and spending his evenings building the deep, dub-rooted electronic music that would define his career. He became part of the city's fertile laptop scene alongside artists like Akufen, and released his debut Deadbeat 12", "Cesium Beam," in 2000. In 2006 he relocated to Berlin, where he has been based ever since.

His early albums found a home on Stefan Betke's ~scape label, among them "Wild Life Documentaries" and "New World Observer," the latter weaving vocals into his dub-heavy framework. Alongside his solo work he recorded as Crackhaus with Steve Beaupré and collaborated with Robert Henke of Monolake as Atlantic Waves, and he became a recurring fixture at festivals like MUTEK and Sonar early on.

Berlin broadened his sound. "Journeyman's Annual" pulled in dancehall and dubstep, while "Roots and Wire" on Wagon Repair went more stripped and club-ready. In 2011 he launched his own imprint, BLKRTZ, partly in the spirit of ~scape after that label folded, and it became the home for much of his later work. His music has also carried a political edge at times, as on 2018's "Wax Poetic For This Our Great Resolve," which wrapped dubwise rhythms around spoken contributions from seventeen different voices.

As a DJ he has built a deep dub archive that runs from Jamaican roots through the European steppers tradition and into contemporary dub techno. His 2010 mix "Radio Rothko" is still cited as one of the most definitive dub techno mixes of its era, and his Infinity Dubs series brought a long, fruitful partnership with vocalist Paul St. Hilaire, also known as Tikiman. Away from music-making he is a dedicated educator too, leading workshops for the likes of Red Bull Music Academy, Ableton and Native Instruments, and running his own quarterly series, Mondays Are For Music, built around applying dub logic to production.