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...