The turntablist

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I was in the used record store on wednesday, and while I was there, I witnessed a vignette which I'm sure many of you have as well - the guy who fancies himself as a club music producer/who is a club music producer, standing at the turntables, scanning old rekkids for grooves to sample. This guy had an old live jazz record that sounded like it was made in the 1960's. It was American, going by the band leader's accent, but I don't know what it was. It was actually really good and atmospheric - between cuts, the bandleader did this whole goofy sounding spiel which was actually really funny, while the band kept time in a subdued way behind him. Then the band sort of biult it up a bit, then they sort of locked in, and then this hammond organist started to solo. It was really good, the way the band came in, and the whole thing picked up. The turntablist kept going back over sections, listening for bits that would make his rekkid sound more, I dunno "good" in some way. It doesn't usually bother me, this type of stuff, but in this instance, it made me feel a bit sad and a bit annoyed as well. It was like he was totally missing the fucking point. Like you could sit and listen to this bloke's funny spiel, then his band play, and they're really good, and it would make you feel kind of warm & happy to sit and listen to it, and it was well-recorded enough thay you cd imagine actually being there, but to the turntablist it was like, is there a 2.5s section of this I can import into fruity loops and manipulate to make my tune sound what? soulful? It seemed wrong on some kind of cosmic level, like the art present in the record, and the palpable atmosphere was worth shitloads more than the turntablist knew or cared about. I dunno, sometimes things get to you, but I had this impression of someone hewing a lump out of an aincent egyptian tomb to make a coffe table w/. Sorry if this = "rockism".

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 14:20 (twenty-one years ago)

hmmm, its a good story pash. these people tend get so locked into their way of thinking they can't actually appreciate anything outside of that. a lame response but it has got me thinking anyway.

― jed (jed_e_3), Saturday, 8 November 2003 14:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I disagree - I think the people grabbing records like this are mostly people with a passionate love for that music - that's how they got into listening to these records a lot in the first place. The fact that they can then listen to and reuse it in an entirely different way seems wholly a good thing: we still all have the original, but now we have something new that might be good too, and we have an extra connection, something I really like.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 8 November 2003 15:37 (twenty-one years ago)

hmmm not entirely convinced martin. I have worked w/some of these people in the past, and you'd perhaps be suprised at the indifference they can feel (not always, admittedly) towards their source material.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 15:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I agree with Martin. The cut-and-sample people generally want to bring the music to a new source. This record would probably fade into obscurity unless the turntablist's version got big. Also I like the idea of decontetualising something to make something new out of it, it's the way art works these days and has been for at least thrity years.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 8 November 2003 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

presumably cut-and-sample ppl are like any other group of art ppl (viz a continuum, from good eggs to bad rubbish)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 8 November 2003 15:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I can totally see how at close quarters, it might sometimes be a dispiriting experience, depending on the look on the face of the guy concerned. I don't get the impression that most (note: most) people mixing in this way have any great love for the source material. Which is fine, I suppose. Treat the past as a kitsch 'cool thing' if you want. I think if you do happen to have respect for and interest in the things you're sampling heavily then it makes better records, maybe.

― N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 8 November 2003 16:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, absolutely Mark, that's why I used the word 'mostly' - but I do think that most people into this stuff come from a background of great enthusiasm. Obviously that is unlikely to be for all music, and the samples they seek include amusing moments as well as great musical segments, so it may be that your man there Norman was an arsehole who heard nothing but fodder for his own music - but even so, that seems to do no harm to the original. It's not as if he is erasing or drawing over some master's drawing (Rauschenberg, Chapmans to thread).

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 8 November 2003 16:04 (twenty-one years ago)

haha well the chapman bros thing was over a later reprint as it turned our iirc.
I think it was probably my memories of working w/sampler/loopers (which I haven't done in abt 18months now) which were stirred by seeing this, b/c it was not a happy experience generally. I helped this guy out b/c I know how to work "cubase", and wound up doing same for some other people. When I started doing it, it was the arse end of trance, so I'd fart around w/roland jp-800 synthesier which was fun, and i like epic cheesy trance a lot, but almost as one they all got into filter loop music which i really hate the sound of. I do remember the main dj i worked w/bringing a load of brit-jazz 7" (ie loose tubes and stuff like that) in to scan for grooves to loop, and he actually said to me (quote) "I don't give a fuck about this music." tho' w/brit jazz I don't blame him I suppose. Shortly after that I bailed. It was neither profitable or particularly enjoyable @ the end of the day and I'm sure I'm just projecting that onto the guy in the record shop, who was probably ok and stuff. But, the way he went through the record, man it was like a butcher trimming cuts off a carcass - run the record forward a bit, skim it back, skim it back again, run it forward some more (etc). It just seemed awfully soulless and heartless to me.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 16:20 (twenty-one years ago)

"this guy" as referred to in last post = a local dj, not the man in the record store btw.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

but what if the record is a hit and then it leads to the source being reissued? surely that's a positive.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 8 November 2003 16:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, I don't fucking know Julio.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:00 (twenty-one years ago)

the fact that the record maker didn't listen to the material in the loop doesn't mean that future listeners won't

also the record maker may hear a power or a charm in the original that the original makers missed

some old-skool rapper - i forget who (might have been epmd) - referred to this practice as "ancestor worship" which i think is nice

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:01 (twenty-one years ago)

transmission is interesting (this is why i hate the i-word, cz it confuses this precise issue)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:02 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm all for sampling but i've found that after spending years in that mindstate, i got to the point where i was constantly picking apart music instead of taking it all in, just as you say. that, and buying lots of shitty records just because they had one or two nice sounding bits on them.

― ron (ron), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:07 (twenty-one years ago)

(nb "i don't fucking know julio" = "it's after five o'clock and i'm so tired i'm seeing spots in front of my eyes and can't think straight anymore)

;A ;C_0UP'L.E OF QU/E/S/T/I/ON_S TH-AT 0CC/R T0 M_E (nb the spirit of spam message header has overtaken my BRANE)

1/the saying goes that when a record that samples an obscure loop is a hit, that leads to a resurgence of interest in the original record. does it?

2/ they tried to sample rod mckuen and the san sebastian strings = they are completely fucked in the head

3/er

4/ ;X_P0'ST!@# ;|T W_ASN/T A ;SH-ITT_Y REC_ORD THOU/g/h!!!_!!;!!1

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:13 (twenty-one years ago)

To be kind of contrary here (though it's more of a flipside of Pash's scenario than a refutation of it): there are plenty of examples where I can only hope that the turntablist/sample-glommer didn't give a fuck about the source material at all. Have you heard Jeremy Storch's "I Feel A New Shadow"? DJ Shadow probably picked that one up sound unheard so he could use a vocal snippet of some lyric to have one of his cut-up introduction things that stutter out his alias. Instead he wound up using the piano loop for "Building Steam With A Grain of Salt". But the rest of that song aside from the piano loop is on some super-cornball pompous Jesus Christ Superstar shit Jack Black would sing if he was making fun of hippies. (Or maybe it's like Bowie ca. Laughing Gnome if I'm feeling charitable. Which I'm not.) So sometimes one of the best things sampling can do sort of redeem crap.

As for Pashmina's #1: Incredible Bongo Band! Baby Huey and the Babysitters! David Axelrod!

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:19 (twenty-one years ago)

(I sounded like a cratedigger K-Tel commercial there)

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

(yeah but the jazz record was really good!!)

(+ good post nate!! thx!!)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:23 (twenty-one years ago)

are they on the money too?

― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:24 (twenty-one years ago)

+ if it had been a shit record i probably wouldn't even have noticed i suppose.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Actcherly most of the stuff Shadow* samples is really good ("Sexy Coffee Pot"!); I get 'I listen to and really like all this stuff' vibes from his superhuge megamixes (Brainfreeze, Product Placement) (too bad he doesn't bother with tracklistings).

*most hip-hop/turntablist samplehunters, really

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:30 (twenty-one years ago)

classic turntablists trick from times past - we wd get this dj in back when simple minds "theme for great cities" was teh l337 rekkid to play BUT NOBODY KNEW WHO IT ACTUALLY WAS (it was a b-side to one of the 12" singles from "sons and fascination"). We'd get cxopies in and put them to one side for this dj, who would pay us 20 quid a copy, discard the sleeves, run a hot knife (or suchlike) over the "a" side, and scrape the labels off. Then he'd sell them on to other djs for, acutally iirc he wouldn't tell us how much for! (this was many years ago, obv)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:34 (twenty-one years ago)

that's some South Bronx block party ca. Carter administration hijinx! I laugh and laugh.

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 8 November 2003 17:39 (twenty-one years ago)

i know this record you're talking about was not shitty. i'm just saying (and nate is too) that lots of these records that diggers are searching for are not anything you'd actually like to listen to!

― ron (ron), Saturday, 8 November 2003 18:17 (twenty-one years ago)

or at least that i'd like to listen to.

also i think 'turntablist' doesn't really fit the person you're describing (necessarily)

― ron (ron), Saturday, 8 November 2003 18:18 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, i know, but i like the word "turntablist"

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 8 November 2003 18:22 (twenty-one years ago)

what about "turntablister"? Or is that what you get from too many crab scratches?

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 8 November 2003 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

for my tastes, most of these players were onto something cool, but were also onto a lot of stuff that was not that cool. thus so very many songs which have amazing intros, or drum breaks, or whatever, but degenerate into cheesy wank-fests. so one thing i think is great about sampling is that it can help to distill the great elements from songs.

making me think of ronnie laws 'tidal wave' which i guess isn't horrible but the main body of it is best kept in the elevator or dentist's reception area, and in no way compares to the beauty which is the intro section.

i know lots of you guys hate jazzanova but i think 'fade out' is a nice little track, because it strings together a bunch of those super-pretty mega jazzy chord outros. the only one i recognize is george duke 'capricorn'

― ron (ron), Saturday, 8 November 2003 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I agree with many people here. On the one hand you do have people who have a cold disregard for what they sample - but nowadays a lot of the people who think like that would go for source material from sample CDs rather than old vinyl (if you just want something that's going to do a job a sample CD is a much faster, less hit-and-miss way of obtaining it than old vinyl). Then you have people who both love the original context of whatever it is but also (in a separate compartment of their brain) see it as a resource for something new...it's quite possible to do both (the guy in the shop might just have had his producer's hat on at that time). I think what starts as a cold-hearted search for sounds often leads to a genuine love for the music. Then at the other extreme you have the people who sample something because of what it is and don't like to sample bad stuff. I think I dislike them more actually.

What I do find quite funny is that when people sample things they automatically think that what they're going to do with it is going to be far more important than the original 'cheesy' charity shop record whereas in fact their end product will probably finish up at the same level or worse.

― David (David), Saturday, 8 November 2003 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

thus so very many songs which have amazing intros, or drum breaks, or whatever, but degenerate into cheesy wank-fests.

"TAKE ME TO THE MARDI GRAS"!

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 8 November 2003 19:40 (twenty-one years ago)

oh god Nate is so OTM

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 8 November 2003 20:31 (twenty-one years ago)

haha, one bit in DJ Q-bert's Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Muzik plays the "Mardi Gras" break for a bit and then just lets it keep going into the cornball electric piano/Burl Ives strings section! Hearing that for the first time was like learning that Sly Stone eventually wound up driving a bus for a living.

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 8 November 2003 23:25 (twenty-one years ago)

i wonder if any beat heads end up getting into rock after going for records like kid dynamite, thin lizzy, billy squier (sp?) etc. the answer's got to be yes, but doesn't it feel different thinking about "discovering" 70's rock as opposed to 70's jazz?

― ron (ron), Sunday, 9 November 2003 02:03 (twenty-one years ago)

and yeah, mardi gras is about the best example of the dope/wack divide!

― ron (ron), Sunday, 9 November 2003 02:44 (twenty-one years ago)

let's please make "the dope/wack divide" into a nu-meme okay thanks bye

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Sunday, 9 November 2003 02:48 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.