Friday, June 13, 2014

To Quote A Phase EP



I'm making a lot of beats again, probably because I've been listening to tons of rap and reading Sylvain Bertot's excellent book about Indie Rap (at Le Mot Et Le Reste Edition, 2014).


 The fact that two of my beats were used in a documentary about a fine street-artist named BMX also helped motivating me (I'll share the link to the video as soon as it's officially released)


Here are 3 beats made in the last week or so.


''Lonely Blue Returns'' is a traditional boom-bap track which samples Aretha Franklin's ''Nobody Like You'', which I had already used for one of my very first projects, Lonely Island, back in 2000 or something. I think it's the 1st time I go back to a sample like that, maybe you noticed I'm feeling a bit nostalgic music-wise.


''Orange Meow'' is completely different. I'm playing the guitar and the electric bass over the sampled drums. The only other sample is the cat's meow, which I simply took from the internet. This track is obviously inspired by some of the music Lou Barloh used to do with his Sentridoh project, as well as some Buck 65 although I'm just starting to get into his 2001 album Man Overboard on Anticon.


''Things We Used To Do'' samples Jimmy Scott's cover of ''Almost Blue'' by Elvis Costello, one of the best songs ever in my opinion. If you don't know Jimmy Scott and like vocal jazz you should give him a try because he is a very original singer. Scott has a disease which prevented his voice from breaking, which added to his chain-smoking gave him a very particular tone. Back when images of singers were scarce everybody thought it was a woman singing. He is also famous for his elongated wording and timing. I know Ray Charles produced his 1st album (of which I'm not particularly fond of by the way) and that he was Lou Reed's favorite singer ever since he had heard him sing at a common friend's burial.


I sampled the piano introduction, + a couple phrases from later in the song, to add some variety. Electric bass + a couple vinyl scratches and that's about it.

Listen / Download HERE

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