Archive for February 2010
Wu-Tang vs The Beatles?
Posted: Friday - Feb 12th, 2010
I got a tip from Soundcloud a couple of days ago that The Smoking Section had upped a new bit of material to the site. I skipped the last few files that they’d shared, but the name of this one intrigued me right from the get-go: “Wu-Tang vs The Beatles – Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers”
Too weird. One of the best hip hop crews of all time against one of the best bands of all time? I was half-intrigued, half-filled with that “urg, this is going to be a trainwreck, some unknown dude’s clamoring for attention, big time” feeling. So I clicked on the thumbnail for the LP cover, saw what you see above, and laughed. I figured that this Tom Caruana dude went all tongue-in-cheek when he put this project together, so I hit play on the file and gave it a listen.
I got four tracks in and I was hooked. Wu-Tang acapellas with beats made with Beatles instrumentals. I went about finding the full release right away.
Now, despite me getting hooked in and whatnot, I wasn’t entirely wrong with my initial “uh oh” feeling. In one sense, this LP definitely isn’t 100% as advertised. It turns out that only 6 of the 27 tunes use genuine Beatles instrumentals; the rest of the tracks use instrumentals from Beatles covers by other bands.
George, you so gangsta.
Knowing this only dampened my initial yes-ness for “Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers” a little bit, and all the bonuses (Beatles outtakes, clips from interviews with crazed Beatles fans, Ol’ Dirty singing “Love Me Do” with John and Paul) made up for it.
LP highlights? Give a listen below:
Killah Priest – Cross My Heart vs Marty Gold’s “Yesterday”
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Method Man’s bit on “Uzi (Pinky Ring)” (@ 2:18), on top of the original “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
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Rae, Ghostface & Cappadonna – Daytona 500 vs “Good Day Sunshine” by Roy Redmond
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Inspectah Deck – Forget Me Not vs “You Won’t See Me” by Ernest Ranglin
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Want to snag the whole project? Download a copy of it here. For all you trainspotting types, I include the names of each Beatles tune sampled in the Comments section of each track.
Let me know what you think.
Konkrete Jungle 15: A Review
Posted: Tuesday - Feb 9th, 2010
Karl and I played Konkrete Jungle 15 last Friday.
Considering I hadn’t played out in a long while, I jumped at the chance when Saxon asked us to play. I enjoy playing out, and gigs where I can tag with Karl are opportunities I never say no to, given how similar our tastes and ideas about drum & bass are.
So we hit the spot with Mish and Threesixty in tow around 11 or so, Ramza and Ashes are on set. The kids were jumping around to what they were playing (what it was exactly I find kind of hard to explain), but I wasn’t really feeling it. There was a cartoonish quality to the tunes they were mashing together that really doesn’t do it for me. I put it like this: their set made me think about how Pendulum and Hazard tunes “feel” (not sound), kinda in-your-face and hyper. I can understand a set of that kind of music at 1am, but 11pm? If you’ve read my post about the Scruff gig, you know that for me 11pm’s a bit early for that sort of thing.
Karl and I get on deck at 11.30. As usual for sets at this hour, we decided to play twos: one of us plays two records, then the other plays two records. Twos are good because we both keep our energy up and neither of us can deviate too far from the overall direction of our set.
So Karl gets on and plays two tracks. I get on and play two tracks. Karl gets on, plays two, I get back on, play two. Most often, once we’re 20 minutes deep I’m usually starting to settle into the set and get comfortable. On this night that wasn’t the case. I don’t know if it was the system (I take a while to get used to DJ booths I’ve never played on before) or the venue or the crowd, but I had a hard time getting into our set, and into my mixes in particular. For some reason, it felt like all of my mixes were very slightly off… just enough to annoy me but not enough for most other people to notice. Thankfully, Karl pulled out “Warlock” by Phobia and that started to get me going.
Phobia – Warlock (2005) [Renegade Hardware]
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After that, things smoothed out. Our dancefloor never really thickened up, but I was having fun and that was all I’d been hoping for. I played the Nu:Tone remix of Shy FX’s “Feelings” and that went over pretty well, and then in my last two of the night I threw together some old favorites, mixing High Contrast’s remix of “Renegade Snares” into “Up All Night” by John B.
Shy FX – Feelings (Nu:Tone remix) (2008) [Digital Soundboy]
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John B – Up All Night (2000) [Metalheadz]
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Omni Trio – Renegade Snares (High Contrast remix) (2003) [Moving Shadow]
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After Karl and I got out of the booth, Shaun Doe and Dylan D went on. I hadn’t heard either of them play in ages, so I was pretty curious to see what they were going to come up with. It turned out that they played a bunch of old jump-up (from when jump-up was good) and some classics from the Urban Pressure days here in Ottawa. Most memorable parts of their set were Shaun playing “Can’t Punish Me” by Dom + Roland and Dylan playing “Trick of Technology” by Prisoners of Technology. The crowd seemed to dig their set quite a bit, which made me smile; seeing kids go off to real jump-up was refreshing.
Dom + Roland – Can’t Punish Me (2001) [Moving Shadow]
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Prisoners of Technology – Trick of Technology (1996) [Fresh Kutt]
Overall, I found the whole night interesting. Given the crowd’s overall lukewarm approach to most of the tunes I played, they kind of reinforced what I’ve known for a long time: my taste and popular taste when it comes to drum & bass are very very different. I bet if I’d played something like “No Future” (one of my favorite tunes from 2009) three quarters of the dancefloor would have hit the bar. You really have to hit kids on the head with over-the-top tunes to get their attention nowadays (”Up All Night” vs “Renegade Snares remix” is about as big a sledgehammer I can come up with), and tunes with subtlety don’t seem to have much place on dancefloors anymore. Unfortunate.
Instra:mental – No Future (2009) [NonPlus+]
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Still, I had a good time, despite these realizations. Thanks to Saxon and crew for inviting us to come play.
