Soundmurderer

Soundmurderer is the jungle alias of Michigan producer Todd Osborn. His partnership with SK-1, the name used by Tadd Mullinix, produced records for Rewind, while Osborn’s house and techno music followed a different path as Osborne. The names are useful guides through a musician whose interests reach well beyond one style.

Osborn also ran Dubplate Pressure, a record shop connected with the area’s drum and bass community. Rewind gave his and Mullinix’s jungle recordings their own outlet, and a collection of those releases later appeared through Rephlex. That relationship brought the music into the catalogue of Richard D. James’ label.

Asked by Red Bull Music Academy to describe his aliases, Osborn gave a particularly straightforward answer for Soundmurderer: jungle. His accounts of growing up with Detroit radio, hip-hop concert tapes, and traded Chicago mixes explain the wider listening behind that specific production identity.

He has also described starting jungle tracks with pieces of other music that suggest an arrangement, whereas some of his melodic work begins with a single generated tone. For a listener arriving through Osborne’s house records, Soundmurderer opens up a different part of the same studio.