email: pantiki@rogers.com

www: www.pantiki.ca

"Improvising is like an extension of my personality," he laughs. "I tend to improvise a lot of things in everyday life, so why not do it in music? It's a little bit more raw, and gives a rush."

Born in Montreal, Newhook moved to Toronto at age 10, and started drumming at 11. Percussion was to become his life as the preteen was taught to do "20 different things with my body" by a Panamanian drum teacher. Newhook soaked up the Latin jazz, rumba and samba rhythms before also falling for funk-rock la Primus and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

A few years later, he attended a rave and got hooked on the bass and beats of techy jungle. "It sounded almost like sped-up samba or reggae beats," he gushes. "It was amazing."

A serious love of both playing and making music followed. From age 16, Newhook would practice DJing for hours each day, eventually sharing his collection of jazz and raw, underground warehouse music at downtown venues. He went on to form hybrid DJ/live player projects, including the now-defunct House Call and still ongoing hip-hop, soul and house combo Improvise, featuring Nicky Lawrence on vocals. Add to this stints in steel-pan bands, and it's little wonder Newhook has been angling to "take it all to the next level." Pan-Tiki and Pantiki Sound System were born.

The young Pan-Tiki project is Newhook DJing or performing a near-solo live PA, building and blending sounds he compares to Jeff Mills, Todd Terry's House of Gypsies alias and Gary Martin of Technotica. "It's that raw, nitty-gritty sound -- kind of like a fast, hard calypso techno-house with a strong Afro-Cuban presence."

Pantiki Sound System travels a different path, one conductor/percussionist Newhook describes as "world-fusion jazz on a Latin tip." Featuring some of Toronto's top, young internationally minded jazz players -- including Nick "The Brownman" Ali on trumpet; Mark Mosca on steel-pan drum and vibes; Luis Guerra on keys; and Chendy Leon, Pedro Ojeda and Ruben Esguerra playing timbales, drums, congos and bongos -- the Sound System has already graced stages at the Downtown Jazz and Montreal Jazz festivals with their non-stop, improvised hour-long sets.

"Pantiki Sound System just kept building, growing, changing and evolving," Newhook says. "You never know what you're going to get. It's kind of like a Parliament/Funkadelic thing, but this is more of a world fusion. The sound really comes from the rhythms, and the love of drums. The steel pan is my newfound love -- that metallic sound combined with polyrhythms. I've always been into triplets, and this band is basically it. Pantiki Sound System brings together the exact sounds I've been hearing in the back of my head for so long."

An album containing both traditional and fusion tracks is in the works, with Newhook and crew being booked for gigs galore. Pantiki Sound System add their world-fusion jazz to the inaugural Distillery Jazz Festival this weekend, perform at a Small World party June 20 at the Lula Lounge, and can be found frequently at Improv, a new weekly of live, improvised and DJed sounds at the club/restaurant Habitat. As Pan-Tiki solo, Newhook will tour a number of European countries this summer.

He is also developing national networks, collaborating with similarly minded folks like Ottawa's Trevor Walker and Rise Ashen, Montreal's Miguel Graa and Vancouver's Sean Dimitrie and Nav Bhinder.

"We try to have an extended family of musicians so we can travel and always have local people and concepts we work with," Newhook says. "Pantiki is everywhere. There are no restrictions in who is coming out to shows either; club people, world- fusion people, old jazz cats -- everybody is open for Pantiki."