The Sample Spotter

Summer Madness

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:26:00 +0000

In keeping with my previous Summer post I'm going to drop another summer related track.
This time it's Kool and the Gang with "Summer Madness":

This has been sampled a lot, from Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince to Gangstarr, Digable Planets and even Miles Davis
on his final album, Doo Bop:

From the world of dance & electronica, house legend Dimitri from Paris used it in "Encore Un Terlude", other samplers include Jaziac Sunflowers, Belladonna and on a
drum'n'bass tip, Rude Boy Monty with Summa Sumpting

Last, but hardly least, is Autchere's "Lowride" from the classic Mo Wax Headz compilation:

There's zillions more, so feel free to jump in.

Summer in the City

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:17:00 +0000

Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck gettin' burned and gritty...

Yeah, odds are if you've been anywhere near a radio for the past month you've heard
this song about a hundred times, Three Dog Night with "Summer in the City"

Have you heard this one though? The Quincy Jones version?

You've heard that a few times yourself too, right?
Sure you have!

You've probably heard it sampled by LL Cool J, Black Moon, Peanut Butter Wolfand Mystikal

I can't take credit for all of those above, because the last two in that list I didn't actually know about so thanks to Obscuritee for that.

Of course I can't forget these guys:

"Passin' Me By" - Pharcyde.

And finally there's Nightmares on Wax who used the track several times for:
"Night's Introlude" - Nightmares on Wax

from the album Smokers Delight. NOW used it again, for the track "Nights Interlude", basically a remix of the previous track, on their album A Word of Science, and AGAIN for "Les Nuits" on the album Carboot Soul. I guess they really like that sample huh?

It also appears on the track "Exchange" on Massive Attack's Mezzanine album. The track actually appears twice on the album, with one version an instrumental, and then and the other with lyrics from reggae legend Horace Andy)

Cassette Deck Scratch Mixing - you heard me!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:20:00 +0000

This is just incredible - he's scratch mixing from two twin cassette decks (!!!!) - and keeps it going for six-odd minutes before taking to the wheels of steel proper.

His turntable skills are also quite impressive and cool enough to watch on their own, but, in all fairness, they're something of an anti-climax after the cassette mixing.

Anyways, you might want to secure your jaw with duct tape before watching this.

"Funky Worm" - Ohio Players - a G-Funk classic.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:48:00 +0000

When he comes out of his hole he sounds a little like... well, like a lot of 90's hip hop that's for sure. This track has been sampled over and over again and has been the basis of some of hip hop's best moments (and, unfortunatly, also its worst) moments.

"Funky Worm" by Ohio Players.

That's the original from 1973, though it sounded just as crazy in 1983 and 1993,
or in 1987, when NWA dropped this:

"Dopeman" - NWA

And then again in '88...

"Gangsta Gansta" by NWA.

After NWA dispanded Dr Dre went solo and in so doing introduced the world to a whole new form of music, G-Funk, and a new rap superstar, Snoop Doggy Dog.
And when he introduced his album - The Chronic - he introduced it with the Funky Worm.

The Following year, Dre followed it up by producing "Doggystyle", for then-newcomer Snoop Doggy Dog.

Not to be outdone, Ice Cube dropped his 1992 solo album, The Predator.

"Wicked" - Ice Cube

This song also proved a hit with the emerging rap-metal scene and would later be covered by nu-metallers Korn
(with the famous synthesizer part now played by guitar) as well as covered by Limp Bizkit (complete with Slayer's Angel of Death Riff)

The Beastie Boys also sampled Funky Worm, as well as Barrington Levy's "Unda Mi Sensi" for their track "Funky Boss" (Special bonus, the YouTube video I selected has scenes from Fawlty Towers cut to it including John Cleese's hilarious Nazi walk)

Here's MC Breed mixing Funky Worm with Zapp and Roger.

"Ain't No Future In Yo' Frontin'" - MC Breed

And the
rest is
history...

David Byrne on the current state of the music business.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:52:00 +0000

An article by David Byrne in Wired on the current state of the music industry and the various different options now available to recording artists.

Quite an interesting breakdown, too, on the costs of CDs versus iTunes.
Seems they're not just ripping off the consumer, they're ripping off the artists too.
Why am I not surprised?

All in all, a fascinating read.

"Angel Of Death" - Slayer/"Chanell Zero" - Public Enemy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:53:00 +0000

This'll wake you all up! It's thrash metal gods Slayer with their anti-holocaust anthem "Angel of Death". What you thought this was all dance music did you? Hah!
It just goes to show how different things are these days. In the old days music had no colour and hip hop artists would sample anything, so long as it made you want to move. And there ain't nobody like Slayer to make you move.

“Angel of Death” – Slayer

Taking that brilliant mosh breakdown and slapping it over James Brown's Funky Drummer, Public Enemy's Channel Zero is a song about the crap that women watch on TV. Something which I can certainly testify to - but even the mighty Flava Flav can't stop my girlfriend watching trash.

“Channel Zero” – Public Enemy

Two badass motherfuckers, one badass motherfuckin guitar riff!

Public Enemy would also collaborate with another heavy metal group, Anthrax, for a cover of Bring The Noise on the album "Attack of the Killer B's" (Note the ubiquitous "Funky Drummer" beat in there too)

Terminator X wasn't the only one to sample Slayer either. British electropop duo the Utah Saints proved that yes you can sample Slayer and get into the top forty. Not only that but you can put a Slayer samples and Kate Bush and Annie Lennox samples on the same album and sell shitloads of copies. The song in question was called "I Want You" and the Slayer song sampled was called "War Ensemble".

Slayer themselves would also appear with the Original Gangster and Body Count frontman Ice T on the soundtrack to the movie Judgement Night and with Atari Teenage Riot on the (decent) soundtrack to the (absolute piece of shit) movie Spawn.

"Sunday Bloody Sunday" - U2/"Lost And Found" - DJ Shadow

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:18:00 +0000

A quick and simple one today. A classic rock song from fellow Irishmen U2 and their album War. U2 were the soundtrack to my formative years and even now when I hear this song it still gives me goosebumps.

It's very easy slag off U2 these days, especially St Bono, as he tries to save the world whilst sipping tea with Bill and Melinda. It's easy too, considering U2's output of late, to forget what a raw, fresh and edgy (I gotta stop these crap puns) and hugely influential band U2 were. Back then U2 were loud and in your face, with Bono delivering sharp, acerbic, politically-charged lyrics over the Edge's spaced-out, brilliantly textured guitar sound and the driving rhythm and bass of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen.

U2 were never afraid to experiment though, shedding their new wave skin and going back to the Blues in Rattle and Hum, collaborating with ambient maestro Brian Eno and super-DJ Paul Oakenfold during their Zoo phase and drafting abstract headnodder Howie B as producer for their (in my opinon last good) album Pop.

"Sunday Bloody Sunday" - U2

Larry Mullen's classic drum break was later to find itself sampled and chopped up by DJ Shadow as the basis for "Lost And Found". I first head this track on 1994's Mo Wax Headz compilation, which also featured DJ Krush, Nightmares on Wax and Autechre. This is the definitive trip hop album, before Mixmag even coined the phrase, and has had many a spin on my decks I can tell you. :)

"Lost And Found" - DJ Shadow.

Ennio Morricone - Harmonica Sample.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:05:00 +0000

Once Upon A Time In The West

Here's the first, of invariably many Ennio Morricone posts, with music from the spaghetti western classic, "Once Upon A Time In The West".

"Man With The Harmonica" - Ennio Morricone

Knocking back Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" after a month at Number One, Beats International - the brainchild of Norman "Fatboy Slim" Cook - was a clever bit of underground sampledelics with Cook crafting a brilliant pop song by mixing Morricone's harmonica sample with the bassline from
"The Guns of Brixton" from the Clash and overlaying it with a cover of the SOS Band's
"Just Be Good To Me".
(Could have done with out the "mmm-mmm-mmm" rap in the middle though.)

"Dub Be Good To Me" - Beats International.

Beats International were, themselves, knocked off the top position by another dance act, Snap, with "I Got The Power". Norman Cook kept going, of course, but Beats International themselves were a one-hit-wonder but their contribution was noteworthy.

In those days, sampling was still a pretty new phenomenon, as was the legal wrangling which ensued (if you excuse the pun) with everyone from Coldcut to Public Enemy, KLF to Shut Up And Dance just grabbing samples willy nilly and often getting in trouble because of them.
Beats International, too, got landed in the shit, not just because of the SOS song, but because of the bassline from the Clash, and, well, I for one wouldn't want to be on the Clash's shitlist.

But y'know, these were the nineties and these guys were the trendsetters. It's not like the majors didn't catch on either. And whilst Public Enemy and James Brown were playing tug-of-war with the beat from Funky Drummer, Vanilla Ice was ripping of Queen and MC Hammer was tellin' Rick James "You Can't Touch This".

1990 was the year that the Industry finally realised the potential of sampling and dance music in general. Remember this was in the dark days when dance music was still in its infancy and Stock Aiken and Waterman were pumping out one horrendous manufactured pop stars like Kylie, Sonia and Rick Ashley at a rate of 5 a minute.
Took them a while, obviously, and they made a whole lot of noise about how sampling was going to the destroy music industry. (sound familiar) but then the Industry finally realised that they didn't even need to bother making songs, or even covering them, they could just sample them. This was the year that fat record execs finally got their greasy fingers on defenseless Akai S1000s
and started unleashing a whole new audio plague far more sinister than even Stock Aiken and Waterman, when the remix finally entered the mainstream.

Thankfully, the good Doctor Patterson had the remedy.

"Little Fluffy Clouds" - The Orb.

Mixing ambient beats with the ramblings of Rickie Lee Jones, Little fluffy clouds was not your standard new age ambient gibberish, it was something much, much more. It was, on the one side, meaningless, but in the context of psychedeilia it was a rather profound statement prompting the music press to likening it to the chemical generation's Dark Side of the Moon.

"The Man With The Harmonica" - Apollo 440

Finally, here's a brilliant tech-dub cover by Apollo 440.

A game of chess is like a swordfight...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:17:00 +0000

You must think first, before you move.
From the Wu Tang Clan's "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'"

This sample was also used in "Dope Style" - DJ Hype and those of you with a keen ear will recognise the swishing sword sample which was also used in The Prodigy's Breath

Here's a great article from Wired with the RZA where he cites some of the samples used, the movies they come from, what they mean to him. With viewable Kung Fu goodness!

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/15-11/pl_music

How I got started...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:25:00 +0000

It all started for me really with

"Nineteen" - Paul Hardcastle

I was only a kid at the time and I thought that song was just the coolest tune ever.
Neh-neh-neh-neh-nineteen!
Of course I didn't even know what a sampler was, at the time and thought the guy was actually saying "neh-neh-neh-neh-nineteen" rather than it just being a stutter effect on the sampler.

In fact, although I was familiar with computers and keyboards I didn't really come across a sampler until the following year. You're going to laugh when I tell you where. It was on The Cosby Show - yeah I told you you'd laugh - the episode with Stevie Wonder. If memory serves correctly he brought the Cosby kids in and sampled Theo on his synclavier - "jammin' on the one, jammin' on the one!" "bay-bee! bay-bee!" And I remember thinking - hey, that sounds just like what the neh-neh-neh-neh-nineteen guy done!

The following year came one of the all-time greatest techno tracks of all fucking time. I'm listening to it here now and I still think it's brilliant - hard to believe it's twenty years old!!!

"Pump Up The Volume" - MAARS

When the acid house was in its infancy I was playing with my brand new Commodore 64 and, having pretty much gone cover to cover in the manual, and all the Usbourne "write your own games" books in the local library I went to the bookshop in town and there I found a book that - and it sounds cheesy to say it - changed my life. No it wasn't the bible, it was the Usbourne guide to keyboards and electronic music and it cost me two weeks pocket money. Like the other books I got from the library, it was written for kids and had all those silly robots on the cover. It explained things like MIDI, talked about synthesis, sequencing and, of course, sampling, citing legendary units like the aforementioned Synclavier and the Fairlight. Now, at last, I knew how Yello went "Ooooh yeah!"

Meanwhile S Express were burning up the charts with their infectious theme causing the woman who minded me after school to say "shur that isn't music". But for me it wasn't just music, it was the coolest music ever and I became obsessed with one thing and one thing only, owning a keyboard, and made damn sure Santa Claus knew it.

What I got wasn't a Synclavier though, but a Yamaha PSR-6. Not quite in the same league in retrospect but I thought it was the shit. Now all I needed to do was to figure out how to get it to say "Jammin on the One." I knew I could theoretically get my C64 to play samples because of the old Ghostbusters game but soon realised that there was no way to connect the two together.

By this time dance music was beginning to come into its own and I was just entering puberty. I wasn't aware of the underground side of things, just the commercial stuff like Technotronic (/hangs head in shame), or the occasional crossover like Bomb the Bass or KLF.

Then came 1991; I was confused, angry, spotty and nothing made sense.
Least of all this:

"Charly" - The Prodigy.

But it was infectious as fuck. It was called rave, it meant I was no longer allowed to listen to Guns and Roses, for fear of a beating, and I had to wear big baggy jeans all the time so my teachers would think I was on drugs.

To be honest, when I started, I wasn't as big a Prodigy fan as I was into Altern 8. I guess in the early years the Prodigy were the Beatles and Altern 8 were the Rolling Stones - it was a big thing at the time and I reckon half my teenage years were devoted to arguments as to who was better. Most of the local headcases thought the Prodigy were better, but then the Prodigy didn't have those cool masks.

And then there were these crazy bastards:

They had crazy outfits too, and they sounded really fucking crazy. And even back then I'd started sample spotting "Hey! That's the same "Armageddon" as Altern 8!

My first rave tape I bought was a stupid compilation tape, of which there were many, with the word "rave" on it. Rave Generator, or Rave Generation, or Generation Rave or something retarded like that. It had really sad early 90's CG "trippy tunnel" graphics on the cover like just about everything techno-related back then, and it had all the big names of the time; The Prodigy, the Messiah, the Shamen, Altern 8, SL2, the lot. I played it over and over and over and over and soon I wanted more. Thing was tapes were expensive, so the next tape I got, I got because it looked like there were hundreds of songs on it. It was a mix tape, and, for a 13 year old, the greatest tape of all time...

The Year is 1992... Hardcore has become the most energetic form of dance music...

...Who controls the present controls the past, who controls the past controls the future...

And so began my obsession in earnest. The album? Hit The Decks Volume Two

Two Little Boys and Megabass - holy fucking shit - how cool were they? Hell the tape had only been on for a minute and already they'd gone through a dozen or more songs and samples - and all of them were amazing.
This is the ultimate I can't cope with it!
Your name's not down, not-not down, you're name's not down you're not comin' in!

Soon's I had the money I bought Hit the Decks Volume One, where once again Two Little Boys and Megabass dueled it out on either side. Then Hit the Decks 3 came out, which was perhaps the best of them all, whereas the previous installments had a lot of eurocheese, 3 was pure rave. This time around Two Little Boys and Megabass were joined by SL2, Krome & Time, Unity Mixers and the legendary Carl Cox.

I read the inlay cards from cover to cover over and over again, memorising all the names of all the groups and DJs and all various record labels. There were also pictures inside of the guys with their equipment. I learned they used Technics turntables and a Citronic mixer. Right, I thought, so all I need to get to make music like these guys is to get two turntables and a Citronic mixer - the one they use with built in sampler.

No wonder, then, that the first ever sampler I ever bought was, guess what? A Citronic. A shitty DJ thing, basically the sampler from the Citronic "hit the decks" mixer in rackmount form. It wasn't exactly capable of producing brilliant polished megamixes like Megabase and the 'Boys, you only got a few seconds and you couldn't edit with it, you just hit start when you wanted it to start and stop when you wanted it to stop and hoped that it wouldn't sound shite when you looped it. So it was no Akai and it was no Synclavier either, but it did have the stutter feature, and so, it's no surprise then, that the first thing I ever sampled, was me saying "Nineteen" into a microphone and stutter-starting the result.

Neh-neh-neh-neh-nineteen!

\o/

"The Message" - Grandmaster Flash /"Check Yo Self" - Ice Cube

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:50:00 +0000

Going to kick off this new blog today with a very obvious one.
Two legends of Hip Hop; seminal hiphop superstar Grandmaster Flash (and the Furious Five) with "The Message" and NWA gangsta turned Hollywood hero Ice Cube with "Check Yo Self".

"The Message" - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Ah the 80s! When you couldn't say piss on TV, but you could call people fags and threaten to hijack planes. Younger kids probably remember if from the Grand Theft Auto Vice City.

- Grandmaster Flash Lyrics

Getting the lyrics for the song is a quick Google away, getting the spoken part towards the end, however, has proven impossibly difficult, so I decided fuck it, played the thing over and over (I'll never get sick of that song, when me and a friend worked in an internet cafe we used to play it daily, it was the cafe anthem)
and wrote it out.

Grandmaster Flash - The Message transcript

"Yo Mel you see that girl there?"
"ooh ooh!"
"Yo that sound like Cowboy man!"
"Yo W’sup fool!"
"Yo w’sup munney?"
"Yo!"
"Where’s (?) and Rahim at man?"
"Dey upstairs coolin’ out."
"So what’s up for t’nite y’awl?"
"Yo we can go down to the fever man."
"Let’s go check out dunebug man."
"Hey you you know that girl betty?"
"Yeah man."
"Her moms got robbed man."
"What?"
"She got hurt."
"When did diss happen? When diss happen?"
(screech!)
"Freeze – don’t nobody move nuthin’ – y’awl know whut this is - geddem up!"
"What?"
"Get ‘em up man!"
"We down with grandmaster flash and the furious five man!"
"What is that a gang?"
"Naaaw!"
"Shuddup! I don’t wanna hear your mouth!"
"Officer officer, what’s the problem?"
"You the problem! …Get in the car, get in the car, get in the gawd-damn car!
I said get in the car!"

Elements of the above spoken word section were also homaged by Newcleus' Jam On Revenge (a.k.a. the Wikki Wikki song) which also uses elements from "Rappers Delight" from Flash's contemporaries the Sugarhill Gang.
On their Journeys By DJ mix album "Sixty Minutes of Madness" Coldcut took what sounds like an acapella of Jam on Revenge, timestretched it, and mashed it over drum and bass beats.
The infectious melody from Jam on Revenge was also nicked by Nightmares on Wax, for their song from the 1995 Album Smokers Delight

So yeah, anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. In 1994 (if memory serves) Ice Cube came out with his "Bootlegs and B-Sides" LP. A mish-mash of EP b-sides, unreleased tracks, remixes and a megamix. With anyone else such an album would generally be bad enough were it not for the sacrilegious sampling of Grandmaster Flash on top of it. But then we're not talking about "anyone else", we're talking about Ice Cube.
In its review for the album Mixmag voiced the same concerns before adding "but Ice Cube is the man." Now that's a fucking understatement and a half!

"Check Yo Self (Remix)" - Ice Cube.

Here are the lyrics with a less-sanitized version of Cube's own public health announcements.

Check Yo Self (Remix) Lyrics

Finally here's the original with Das FX which came from 93's Predator album. Actually now that I write this I realise that both Ice Cube and the Predator movies have massive potential for future posts.

"Check Yo Self" - Ice Cube feat Das FX.