Music: Warmer Communications

Fat Beats Records Glue (L-R Adeem, Maker and djdq) celebrate their new CD with a release party Thursday and a Scribble Jam headlining slot Saturday.

Something's been tugging at the veil in front of Glue. If you pay attention, their latest single presses "play" on this concept: They have "A Lot to Say," but most of all they want to establish a connection.

While their Seconds Away CD and their Shake It Records distributed EP, Sunset Lodge, googled at abstract sounds in the recesses of their minds, the solid song structure of their new album, Catch As Catch Can, accesses the Illinois/New Hampshire/Cincinnati conduit's intentions. Even their randomly picked name spells more intent than a "Hello" sticker — in short, it means, "Girl, Let's Understand Each (Other.)"

There's deft, double-time spit-kicker Adam "Adeem" Arnone of New Hampshire, who has twice won Scribble Jam's annual MC Battle. Tell him parts of the retro-progressive disc feel like "1983, Malcolm McClaren, Tom Tom Club and wanting to break dance at the playground," and he's happy with that comparison.

He might share introspection. He still crams to understand how he beat Slug of Atmosphere at the 1998 Scribble, and he still says being labeled a "battle MC" made him fight demons because he didn't want to be cast in that light.

"I do feel sometimes I get put on a pedestal by certain people and I jump down as quickly as they put me on it," Adeem divulges. "I think that in my battling days they confused the hell out of me. When I look back on them, I honestly say, 'How the hell did I win?' There's a certain amount of cockiness that has to come across when you're a battle rapper, I think.

I don't think I've ever possessed that.

"I was very aware of my faults. But I think the moment got me every single time, and I think that's why I won."

On turntables, there's LP alchemist and occasional pizza-pie deliverer Dan "djdq" Hargraves of Cincinnati, one of the Animal Crackers. He's the Silent Bob of scratching who makes Soul breaks talk to you and each other.

If you find him less tranquil than Bob Ross dabbing "happy trees" under fat, fluffy clouds, then you're beyond help. Like Bob, he's an earnest artist.

"With me, it's never finished," djdq says. "Maybe it's just because I'm a self-deprecating perfectionist. I'm never really happy, and I've never really finished anything of mine. I usually seek out the opinion of Adam and (Maker) so they can tell me to stop doing, changing, and that's when it's pretty much done."

And behind them both is chill Marco "Mister Maker" Jacobo of Aurora, Ill., who during this interview could have been the one on the phone popping ice into a glass. With his presence, he could moonlight as band security, but he holds a soft spot for analog 16-track production and digging for drums that make his tracks bottom heavy, as heard on Psalm One's Death of a Frequent Flyer. He's also Glue's bridge of harmony.

"I think that the way we all are kind of balances out," Maker says. "I don't want to overdo a song. I'm always conscious of that. Adam is always like, 'Let's try this, let's try that.' Then Dan is like, 'I don't know...' Let's just keep it simple."

Back in March, the Fat Beats label (distributor for Rob Swift, J Live and El Da Sensei) signed Glue after a year of back and forth. During that stretch, they kept gassing up the tank and touring a ticker-tape schedule of more than 120 national dates, including the Vans Warped Tour, and distributed discs through Cincinnati-based Shake It Records. They made friends on

Fat Beats Records Glue (L-R Adeem, Maker and djdq) celebrate their new CD with a release party Thursday and a Scribble Jam headlining slot Saturday.

Something's been tugging at the veil in front of Glue. If you pay attention, their latest single presses "play" on this concept: They have "A Lot to Say," but most of all they want to establish a connection.

While their Seconds Away CD and their Shake It Records distributed EP, Sunset Lodge, googled at abstract sounds in the recesses of their minds, the solid song structure of their new album, Catch As Catch Can, accesses the Illinois/New Hampshire/Cincinnati conduit's intentions. Even their randomly picked name spells more intent than a "Hello" sticker — in short, it means, "Girl, Let's Understand Each (Other.)"

There's deft, double-time spit-kicker Adam "Adeem" Arnone of New Hampshire, who has twice won Scribble Jam's annual MC Battle. Tell him parts of the retro-progressive disc feel like "1983, Malcolm McClaren, Tom Tom Club and wanting to break dance at the playground," and he's happy with that comparison.

He might share introspection. He still crams to understand how he beat Slug of Atmosphere at the 1998 Scribble, and he still says being labeled a "battle MC" made him fight demons because he didn't want to be cast in that light.

"I do feel sometimes I get put on a pedestal by certain people and I jump down as quickly as they put me on it," Adeem divulges. "I think that in my battling days they confused the hell out of me. When I look back on them, I honestly say, 'How the hell did I win?' There's a certain amount of cockiness that has to come across when you're a battle rapper, I think.

I don't think I've ever possessed that.

"I was very aware of my faults. But I think the moment got me every single time, and I think that's why I won."

On turntables, there's LP alchemist and occasional pizza-pie deliverer Dan "djdq" Hargraves of Cincinnati, one of the Animal Crackers. He's the Silent Bob of scratching who makes Soul breaks talk to you and each other.

If you find him less tranquil than Bob Ross dabbing "happy trees" under fat, fluffy clouds, then you're beyond help. Like Bob, he's an earnest artist.

"With me, it's never finished," djdq says. "Maybe it's just because I'm a self-deprecating perfectionist. I'm never really happy, and I've never really finished anything of mine. I usually seek out the opinion of Adam and (Maker) so they can tell me to stop doing, changing, and that's when it's pretty much done."

And behind them both is chill Marco "Mister Maker" Jacobo of Aurora, Ill., who during this interview could have been the one on the phone popping ice into a glass. With his presence, he could moonlight as band security, but he holds a soft spot for analog 16-track production and digging for drums that make his tracks bottom heavy, as heard on Psalm One's Death of a Frequent Flyer. He's also Glue's bridge of harmony.

"I think that the way we all are kind of balances out," Maker says. "I don't want to overdo a song. I'm always conscious of that. Adam is always like, 'Let's try this, let's try that.' Then Dan is like, 'I don't know...' Let's just keep it simple."

Back in March, the Fat Beats label (distributor for Rob Swift, J Live and El Da Sensei) signed Glue after a year of back and forth. During that stretch, they kept gassing up the tank and touring a ticker-tape schedule of more than 120 national dates, including the Vans Warped Tour, and distributed discs through Cincinnati-based Shake It Records. They made friends on Myspace.com and sold CDs on the road.

When Fat Beats gave them a green light, Addeem and Maker traveled back to Cincinnati to link with djdq. The three signed their contracts and ate at Amol India in Clifton to commemorate the moment.

For them, the meal signified the beginning and the end of an era. There was finally time to pause and reflect.

"I guess this was one of the most pure experiences I think any of us have had with music," djdq says of Glue's five years together. "We didn't have any premonitions. I think we all went out there with the idea of kinda hanging out, making a song or two, and it just perpetuated from there. It just kinda stumbled and turned into 'this album.'

"After that, we parted ways and just kinda sat there, like 'Are we sure we're a group yet?' (Glue) just kinda took on a life on its own."

"When we did Warped Tour the first year, I think that's when we got super serious about it," Adeem says. "That was a way for us to tour the whole entire country and to be at all these venues that normally wouldn't care about what we were doing. Nobody was giving us an audience. We just had to convert them by really learning how to give a killer stage show.

"It's all been grassroots. We've never had a manager. We had a booking agent for a small amount of time, but everything was really through our own hard work. We've really been touring our asses off."

The crew also cut corners. Crashing on each other's floors, traveling the U.S. in a Honda Civic, working their own merch tables and session recording all over Maker's mom's house made them master the DIY approach.

"We definitely didn't have a choice, but it made sense because the music we were making was so organic," Adeem says.

Decidedly, Catch As Catch Can is just as organic, but it's a controlled experiment.

"The beat has more of a structure, with hooks," Maker explains. "It's not as sporadic and all over the place. It's really up-tempo."

Djdq also says it's the music Adeem always wanted to do but never had the chance.

"Our first get-togethers were just so open and so free," he says. "A lot of it wasn't so personal because we were just kind of experimenting and feeling each other out. And I think as far as Catch As Catch Can, we went for being more accessible with the music."