Gillian Moore

There's a fresh new face on the lo­cal mu­sic scene–and on Fri­day night, he'll be mak­ing a bold new state­ment. David Hamil­ton, known in per­form­ing cir­cles as Da Face, will launch his new CD, Hitch­hik­er's Guide to UWI, at Equinox pub, UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

The 12-track al­bum fea­tures orig­i­nal rap­so/hip hop tracks, all deal­ing with stu­dent life. UWI is cen­tral to Da Face's sto­ry as an en­ter­tain­er; it's where he got his first taste of the stage. "I start­ed out do­ing po­et­ry," he ex­plained. But his work did not earn him the re­sponse he had hoped for. In fact, he said, "one of the main things that in­spired me to add mu­sic was get­ting booed off the stage," at one cam­pus event. Af­ter that, he ex­per­i­ment­ed with beats and came up with his own style that was a bet­ter fit with his young au­di­ence. "In rap, I had a Tri­ni ac­cent; that made me unique–and peo­ple liked it. Be­cause it wasn't like every­body else, it seemed like it had a good chance of suc­cess." Since he start­ed per­form­ing, main­ly at open-mic shows like One Mic, Song­shine and UWe­S­peak, he feels he has made progress.

"It's good see­ing peo­ple re­spond­ing well to your per­for­mance, see­ing your­self per­form­ing and get­ting bet­ter." Da Face, who grew up in Pa­lo Seco, com­plet­ed a BSc in Com­put­er Sci­ence in 2006, and since then has re­leased Re­ces­sion mu­sic, an 11-track CD fea­tur­ing the pop­u­lar Girls Like Ra­dio. In the song he hu­mor­ous­ly likens girls to ra­dio sta­tions, each with her own per­son­al­i­ty, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive sides. "I felt there was a void in mu­sic and at the same time re­ces­sion was the buzz­word. I felt as in a re­ces­sion, the best way to get out is by in­no­va­tion. This was my way of in­no­va­tion to get out of the void in mu­sic." Now work­ing at a Port-of-Spain com­pa­ny that pro­vides SMS tex­ting so­lu­tions and Web site con­struc­tion, the 27-year-old says the new Hitch­hik­er's Guide to UWI is a CD that "any­body who went to school at all could vibes it and un­der­stand."

"It's about just life at UWI: not hav­ing mon­ey; stress with the ad­min­is­tra­tion; peo­ple who stay at school too long; girls you liked but who didn't like them back... "It doesn't at­tempt to just blast UWI, but to show the good and the bad." He pro­duced the mu­sic at Li­on's Den with Lamar "Bee­bo" Pol­lard, and feels Bee­bo was a big part of his cre­ative process and "im­prov­ing my tech­nique. "When we were record­ing–it took over a year–his com­ments and feed­back were in­stru­men­tal." The disc was mas­tered by Mar­tin "Mice" Ray­mond. Al­so on the bill for to­mor­row's launch will be One Mic founder Kyle "Skee­to" Amos, Make it Hap­pen, Frost Blaze and Kee­van Lewis. Ad­mis­sion is free. For more in­for­ma­tion on Fri­day's per­for­mance, call 766-3443. Lis­ten to Da Face's mu­sic at http://un­der­groundtriniartiste.blogspot.com or mu­sic: http://www.youtube.com/daface24