What’s up party people’s!?  Been busy playing with some new DJ toys, picked up Ableton and an APC40 recently and it’s been just keeping me so damn busy! We’re releasing our last tee of the year, Derezzed.  This one was a lot of fun, inspired by the movie Tron which came out almost 1 year ago but we still love it. So enough said, enjoy!

Our latest addition to our collection includes the BONSAI tee, a design deeply rooted in musical instruments — a mixture of turntables, headphones, drum machines, mixers, records and more.  Made with our usual 6.1 oz 100% cotton with a sewn on label at the bottom.

BONSAI in CHARCOAL

We’re doing our thing here at Dbmlabs and constantly coming up with fresh designs to keep your juices flowing. We just printed our new Sonic Tee, the first of our newest season of shirts. DJ Etronik competed in the recent DMC 2010 West Coast finals sporting the shirt just hours after it left the presses — and he won! He’s heading to NYC for the finals so we’ll keep an eye out to see how he does. We know he just needs to wear some more Dbmlabs tees and it’s a guaranteed win. BAM!

Sonic Tee in its full glory –

DJ Geometrix hit up me the other day to tell me that he was featured in one of America’s most popular newspapers, The Washington Post. I’m sure you all have heard of the Washington Post but they delivered an article showcasing his latest DJ school Geometrix is opening up in DC. It’s called Beat Refinery. He’s doing big things over there and leveraging his years of experience to teach others the art and skill of mixing and remixing records.

From Washington Post

“Great DJs are like demigods around here: You depend on them to drop beats you’ve never heard before, and, if they’re really on, to keep you moving long past last call. They provide the soundtrack for almost every night that we’re out.

It’s no wonder that practically everyone in this town with a full iPod and 15 records wants be a DJ, too.

Banking on the idea that the area is teeming with wannabe DJ Shadows, a pair of D.C.’s better-known turntablists are helping to launch a local DJ school modeled after New York’s famed Scratch DJ Academy (which has branches in Miami and L.A.).

The Beat Refinery will be run by Chris Stiles (who, as DJ Stylus Chris, has regular gigs at Modern, Current and the 95 Live party at Steve’s Barroom;) and Brian Sadiarin (better known by Eyebar and Ibiza patrons as DJ Geometrix or, for short, DJ Geo). It will be run out of Bethesda’s Bach 2 Rock music school, and it opens May 3.

Stiles, who was one of the proprietors of DJ Hut, the late-great Dupont Circle go-to-spot for equipment and records, says he sees the school as the next step in his career (being a club DJ at age 50, he says, is not).

“Isn’t this what we’re supposed to be doing? Each one teach one?” he told me when I went to check out Beat Refinery’s turntable-filled classroom last week. He was handpicked by Bach 2 Rock’s chief exec Michael Chung last summer to curate the curriculum; Chung, a former DJ himself, had long wanted to launch a school for turntablists, and the moment seemed ripe.

For now, the school is offering an introductory course, Basic DJ Techniques. (Intermediate classes and a pair of Scratching & Turntablism courses are on the way). The classes — each accommodating 8 to 10 students — will be 90 minutes apiece, once a week for six weeks. Students can sign up for 18-and-older sessions, 18-and-younger sessions or choose one of the mixed classes. Sadiarin told me that every class, beginning on Day 1, will incorporate both traditional techniques and Serato Scratch Live, a “DJ emulation” software that some DJs publicly balk at, but if you look closely, many are using.

Which brings us to the pricetag: $375 for the intro course (private lessons are $76 an hour). It seemed pricey to me, so I checked in with Scratch in New York. The six-week introductory course there is $300, with each class clocking in at 70 minutes. So, it turns out, they’re pretty comparable.

With so many self-taught DJs in town — and I mean everyone from the fuzzy rockers playing vinyl-only nights at Velvet Lounge to the club DJs spinning “Single Ladies” — we want you to weigh in.

D.C. DJs: Do you think would-be DJs need lessons to get in the booth? Do you wish you had something like this when you were cutting your teeth?

– Lavanya Ramanathan”

We recently unveiled our latest creation in the labs, our new Waves Tee.

Waves is our most complicated design to date, especially because of how many rounds it took to get it just right.  The further you are from the shirt, the more coherent the design becomes, making this tee a head turner for sure.  Our new season includes the woven label at the bottom and slightly thicker shirts.  Enjoy this one!

Most of you know we’re based in the CA but we’ve sent gear all around the world. Check out Paul’s new set of stickers he received with his Dbmlabs shirt package from France!! He plastered his room with our stickies!! He took the effort to take some pictures and we felt the need to share them.