Kanye West's "Diamonds" vs Biz Markie's "Turn Tha Party Out". 2 posts in 2 days - WOO! OK, so the Tipsy one wasn't great on account of me being kinda tipsy when I did it but you get the general idea.
This one I did originally when we were doing the (short-lived) Hi Karate Podcasts (there were 2!). I think "Diamonds" was out at the time and I guess it just came to me. the Biz track is another one of Neil's really. You _could_ do it live off vinyl but need to be quick or miss the start, don't think I ever played this out...
Turn Tha Diamonds Out Saturday, 24 October 2009
Tipsy Treason
HIYA!
This is J-Kwon's "Tipsy" vocal over Raw Deal's "High Treason". think it's fair to say i got a BIT bored of this whole blog thing so it's been a minute, BUT it's had the desired effect IN THAT I've started a whole bunch of original (well maybe "original") tracks.
The music on this one - Neil used to play it all the time, and I'd ask him what it was, then I'd forget, then he'd play it about a month later, then I'd ask him, and then I'd forget and so on and so forth. I only secured a copy when we were doing an interweb radio thing so i could ORDER A COPY RIGHT WHILE HE WAS TELLING ME WHAT IT WAS. revolutionary.
Now the J-Kwon thing - I don't know who he is. Who the fuck is J-Kwon??? His single was clearly rubbish but there was something about the drinking-advocacy lyrics that appealed and at some point in my head I put it together with the raw deal thing and this is the result.
God the production on the original J Kwon thing is So Bad. He's probably rockin a 40 right NOW. Gittin "tipsy"...
you can sort of do this live off vinyl if you're quick enough...
Finest Things That Dreams Are Made Of Thursday, 17 September 2009
Human League's "Things That Dreams Are Made Of" (off of the instrumental "League Unlimited Orchestra" album) with the vocal from "The Finest" by SOS Band.
I can't really claim this one as it wasn't my idea. Let me explain....
Back when bootlegs were All The Rage, a producer called Richard X became famous for doing them and applied the idea to a bunch of pop stuff, including "Finest Dreams" by Kelis.
Now, it doesn't take a genius to work out where the bits come from, but I'd never heard the two original tracks together before and besides it was pretty entertaining at the time since the Kelis thing was pretty big, so I used to play this out. You can just about do it on a pair of turntables, though I'd run the vocal at +8 and the track at -5 :)
I'm not sure if the Richard X thing actually uses the whole Human League track or is replayed - there's certainly other stuff been added but the changes and the way the vocal fits over the top is pretty much like playing the two oiriginals (though you do have to stop the vocal for a bit in the middle).
The SOS band thing doesn't have an acapella as such, it's a sparse bit at the end of the dub mix on the 12". It does have some synths and percussion but I mostly ducked them out here. I always tried to get another track on before the stuff about Norman Wisdom comes in at the end but never quite managed it so I've left it in here too!
Learn to be Crazy in Love Friday, 4 September 2009
Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" vocal over Cappo's "Learn to be Strong"... This was really a way to extend the life of "Crazy in Love", which I thought was massive as soon as I heard it. It was another Rich Harrison production but you knew that sooner or later it was going to be all over everywhere and when that finally happened I guess this was a way of still playing it out. Kind of.
The Cappo track has vocals in the samples so, though it was easy to play out off of vinyl, you had to duck those and there's actually not that much of "Crazy in Love" in it.
A maybe under-rated UK hip hop track on tru-thoughts too...
Deep Pin Up Girls Saturday, 29 August 2009
This is (as I know it) the vocal from Awesome 3's "Pin Up Girls" chopped up over Pepe Bradock's "Deep Burnt". Lots of confusion here...
I first heard Deep Burnt on the office jukebox, like some other tracks here, and it didn't take me long to realise that the hook, as well as sounding a bit like "Little Sun Flower", also phrased like "Take Me Away". Need some explanation here...
APPARENTLY the Pepe Bradock track is sampled out of Freddie Hubbard's "Little Sunflower" but I think this is mainly based on there being a moodyman edit of that track that has that hook in it. I've not been able to find the track that has that bit in it yet... anyone???
So, to this... I swear this is true that i heard the music and liked it, then the "take me away" association came to me because it's kind of a house music cliche. THEN I bought the aweomse 3 12 with an acapella in a charity shop. and then it just took me ages to get together. There seems to be versions of this vocal and I don't know which is the original one tbh...
Also, this all started before the prodigy's use of the vocal in "Warriors Dance", which is pretty lazy. I also recently heard another tune using it.
Obviously i think mine is better. it all hinges on the fact that the musical hook is phrased the same as "take me away" but hopefully it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up like a good house vocal should...
We Come Strange Thursday, 20 August 2009
This is the vocal from Faithless's "We Come One" chopped up over Zomby's "Strange Fruit"... I can only apologise for the gap due to hols and broken software, but I'm back!
I first heard Zomby off of the Modeselektor mix I mentioned before. It was this track, but I soon found some other stuff and love the old school rave tribute "Where Were You In 92" - like 2 minute pop song versions of rave classics. sortof.
Anyway, "Strange Fruit" really got me but I wondered if it was because of the title at least partly. The first and only time I ever cried at a film was the scene in Mississippi Burning where they played this song and showed people who'd been hung. Weirdly I now can't find any evidence it was actually in the film, but it's kind of a heavy song in any case...
As ever, i don't really know why the Faithless song suggested itself, maybe because the little half vocal bits in the Zomby track sound a bit like parts of it. Like some of the others, I spent a while thinking there was no such acapella but eventually found it - maybe on acapellas4u.co.uk. Which is awesome.
Sminky Pinky (Disco Lesson) Saturday, 18 July 2009
This is the big one! I'm a huge fan of cut-ups, Double Dee and Steinski and the whole (unofficial) lessons series being the best examples. Like the others, there's a story to tell...
I read an article, I guess in 1999 or so, in ID or The Face or somewhere like that, with The Psychonauts. They listed some of their favourite tracks and were saying that The Mix Max Style by Mr K was an awesome party-starting disco cut-up, or words to that effect. I hadn't heard the track so was immediately on the look out for it, and got hold of a copy before too long. It's OK, but it doesn't involve too many tracks and isn't really a cut-up in the true sense. Also, at that point, I wasn't too aware of the whole disco medley thing and hadn't really heard anything I'd have qualified as a disco cut-up.
I think the medlies are a different thing, and cut-ups didn't really exist til some point in the early 80s around the latin rascals/double dee and steinski era, so it kind of still holds, but anyway I was motivated to do something that would've lived up to the description I'd read of The Mix Max Style... A Proper Disco Cut Up.
I didn't really have the technology initially, and there was a false start where I tried to put it together on the mac I had at the time. But it didn't really have the space or power for audio editing and my sampler at the time was an Akai S950, which wasn't going to cut it.
It finally became possible when I had perhaps the greatest hardware sampler ever made (because they became irrelevant shortly afterwards), the Akai S6000. Knowing cut-ups, you either set a beat and fit everything around it, or eschew a constant tempo and just butt stuff up together. Being a DJ, I went for a constant tempo, but didn't put a constant beat through the track. 120bpm seemed right.
I remember after listening to an initial mix, realising that it was missing vocals. My friend Neil interviewed Steinski and he was really proud of his spoken voice collection - I think that's what really makes their stuff and it occurred to me that I had to do a pass adding a bunch of vocal snippets.
It took me fucking ages to get it all together and it was 2001 towards the end, thus the big 2001 theme intro. I don't have a tracklist to hand but remember counting 44 tracks at the time. I think part of the reason I love cut-ups is that they're such a contradiction. They can't exist legally - it's just impossible to do all the clearances - but I spent countless hours putting this together and (I hope) you can't deny the resulting entertainment value.
My friend gave me an acetate of this for my 30th and I've played it out quite a bit, always to good response.
I recently realised I lost the master because I wanted to enter it in the megamix competition over at acapellas4u but luckily, my friend Chris still had a CD I'd made of it at the time, so I could enter it AND post it up here.
Oh - the name. It was so long ago that it's a reference to a UK comedy sketch show The Fast Show. They used to have this foreign TV channel thing, and Sminky Pinky was one of their phrases, and the 70s throwback Mickey Disco one of their guests... I originally put that artist name against it, but it wasn't released or anything.
I think that's it - I've gotten a bit lazy about links, but I can't really be doing with this being any more of a chore...
Amerie Wars Friday, 26 June 2009
The vocal from 1 Thing by Amerie over (mainly) Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) from The Empire Strikes Back. Surely the crappest Star Wars film, but best piece of music. Anyhoo, this unlikely pairing came about simply because The Phantom Menace came out round about the same time that the Amerie record was blowing up.
1 Thing vid on YouTube.
It was a huge record for a few of my friends and I - a deceptively simple sounding sample-based groove with that awesome soul vocal. It was then I became aware of the producer Rich Harrison who'd done the similarly awesome Crazy in Love a while before. The use of samples (The Meters' version of Oh! Calcutta and The Chi lites' Are You My Woman respectively I think is what really attracts me, but the records were always big crowd pleasers too. I ended up with 2 American promo 12s of this off of eBay, and had tried doing a DIY acapella with not much success. Then the UK 12 had one on it so I ended up with my 3rd copy.
It's a bit of a concept bootleg and needed a beat, so I looked to one of the many Sci-fi themed cover compilation albums that came out in the 70s to capitalise on the whole space movie thing. Spaced Out Disco by The Galactic Force Band contains the huge synth intro to It Takes 2 by Rob base and DJ EZ Rock, in the token original composition (to raise royalties for whoever got their name on it!) Space Dust, but also has a cover of the pop-space-disco Star Wars track by Meco with a big drum break in the middle. Bingo! The break has a nice suspenseful synth tone all the way though, but also lots of R2-D2 noises in it, I can only apologise.
I also added a light sabre sound effect, and when she sings about bells I stuck in a bit of the Bob James Mardi Gras break because I always think of that as being the bells.
PS: I swear this is true and I didn't dream it, but before Amerie was famous I saw her in this TV documentary about Hip Hop and Porn (blame Snoop Dogg). She was presented as an up-and-coming (sorry) porn star who also happened to sing a bit.
Triple Trouble: Old School Remix Saturday, 13 June 2009
Have to be upfront here - I fucking love this one. It's not just a bootleg like the others, it's a Proper Remix... I used to play it out off a CD but it's now published here for the first time!
I loved the little resurgence the Beasties seemed to have around the time of this and Ch-Check It Out (possibly more on that later!). However, hearing the original of this, I just thought they hadn't taken it far enough. They clearly went to some lengths on sample clearance and the like - there's the obvious percussion from the intro to Rapper's Delight, but they could've probably gotten away without crediting Chic's Good Times or the referenced-but-not-really-ripped-off Double Trouble At The Amphitheatre from the Wildstyle soundtrack, both of which they do indeed credit on the label (of the promo I'm looking at).
Now, I love sampling. All this legal shit around it is exactly why I think it's never really flourished as an artform in the way it could or should've. I'd argue no legally cleared track has more than a few samples, but I love cut-ups and some of my favourite tracks have scores of samples!
It doesn't seem to be legally/commercially possible to release tracks that have tons of samples in them, but luckily I'm unencumbered by such issues here. SO, when I heard this, it kind of got my mind racing.
For no apparent reason, Rapper's Delight has always brought the Scorpio beat by Dennis Coffey to my mind. They're not really related but have sort of a similar rhythm and, if retrospective history is to be believed, I'd guess Scorpio was a big B-Boy beat by the time Rapper's Delight came out (1979). So I wanted that in, then had the genius/stoopid idea of also using Son of Scorpio - it's got the same rhythm but sounds a bit different so gave me 2 beats to switch between. My friend calls this technique big beat, wee beat.
I then did a bit of research to see if Rapper's Delight was sampled from anything - the re-played Good Times bits were obvious but I suddenly wondered about the percussion and everything else.
I kept seeing this Alan Hawkshaw disco-era record Here Comes That Sound (credited to Love De-Luxe) mentioned as being sampled, so got myself a copy. It's not sampled but you can kind of hear an influence in the stabs. It's tenuous but, in any case, I put them in :).
I also re-visited the Wildstyle soundtrack, which has lots of dialogue. The track was influenced by the Double Trouble... track as credited but I wanted to lift some more and was gifted with the lines I used in the intro:
“If you... Wanna know... the real deal...
We only came here to settle the score, so let's give everybody... what they all came for!”
It's kind of cheesy but summed up what I was trying to do in terms of putting more old school bits in, and I found another bit of dialogue to stick in the end.
I also noticed a synth bass kind of sound they were occasionally dropping in and thought it sounded like the (quite distinctive) synth sound they'd sampled from the Car Wash soundtrack in their track 33⅓ God (or could be one of the others off of that Love American Style 12 which is amazing). It sounded like that and was used in a similar way, but wasn't actually it. So I put the Car Wash one in.
And Finally... Good Times. It's awesome. They'd used the bass line and string stabs (I re-sampled those) but I wanted to take it much further. So it goes from being fairly raw with not much music to basically being Good Times with the drums carrying on (a bit messily). And then kind of deconstructs towards the end in DJ-friendly fashion.
Jazzy Way: Live mix Monday, 8 June 2009
Another straightforward one (there are more interesting things coming honest). Scratchmaster Chuck T's Jazzy Way acapella over a couple of bits of the live version of Grover Washington Jnr’s Mr Magic.
The track with the vocal here isn’t particularly awesome - I came across it on the back of the whole DJ Kool, Sam the Beast etc Hip Hop/Go Go thing. Creative Funk put out the early DJ Kool stuff and I bought this just because of the label and it was 99c or something. I guess I really kept it for the acapella though and thought it would sound better with something a bit more live and suggestive of the Go Go sound.
It alternates between 2 sections of Mr Magic for verse/chorus but, to be honest, this could be a whole lot better - it could use some attention to the sound and some percussion would've helped it too i think. It's a bit flat.
Geeky bit - the Jazzy Way line is sampled from La Di Da Di by Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick. It might be more familiar recently as it was kind of interpolated and re-sung on Notorious BIG's Hypnotize (though it’s changed to “Flashy Ways”).
Mr Magic by Grover Washington Jnr
Jazzy Way by Scratchmaster Chuck T
I couldn’t find this for download, but the vinyl isn’t hard to get - there are some for sale on discogs.
Dub Be Good To Me In Da Club Wednesday, 27 May 2009
A super-simple one now... The acapella of Beats International's Dub Be Good To Me over the instrumental of 50 Cent's In Da Club. I'm not sure what's up with the version in the video here - maybe US? The one that was a hit in the UK was more reggae...
Though I liked Dub Be Good To Me about as much as the next man at the time, I wasn't really into dub/reggae much yet and just thought of it as pop really. All the same, I remember travelling to some crap "rave" to see them, cos that's the kind of thing I did at the time. Anyway, probably about 12 years after the event, looking through some records in my parents' attic, I found my sister's copy of the 12" and remembered liking it enough to steal it. And it had an acapella on it!
I used to play the 50 Cent track when it came out - there's kind of a darkness to the music I like, it almost has elements of old horror soundtrack music in the synth and strings. Or maybe that's just me.
I'm not sure where the idea to put these together came from, but I think it works a bit like the best "You Got The Love" bootlegs (more on that later!) - The originally-poppy vocal gets a bit of an edge from the music...
Dub Be Good To Me by Beats International
In Da Club by 50 Cent
Show Me Missed Calls Friday, 15 May 2009
First up is the acapella of Show Me Love by Robin S over Missed Calls by TRG. I loved the TRG track when I first heard it in a Modeselektor mix given to me by a colleague, who subsequently downloaded the track on its own and gave me a copy.
I'm not sure why or when, but at some point I started to think the Show Me Love vocal would be great over it, but all a lot of searching seemed to turn up was that the acapella didn't exist. Then, whilst randomly searching for acapellas in general - it turned up, as if by magic. This was fate, so I thought I'd better do that mix.
Like pretty much everything I do these days it was done in Ableton Live. I did it to the speed of the TRG track, and the vocal sped up without sounding too odd. I knew where I wanted the main vocal hook to be and, after cutting a bizarre scat section i hadn't remembered from the end, set about chopping up the rest of the vocal in some kind of sensible structure. It's not a verse/chorus kind of thing but it seems to work.
Generally I liked how it sounded with the vocal samples in the TRG track and just edited out one that seemed to clash.
That's it - the first one! enjoy...
PS: This became weirdly timely when a fairly pointless cover version of Show Me Love by Steve Angello and Laidback Luke was a hit in the UK. They seem to be "featuring Robin S" but tho very close, it's not the original vocal. Maybe she re-sang it.
Show Me Love by Robin S
Missed Calls by TRG
On vinyl at juno / download from beatport
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