From Hrvatski Sent Wed, Jun 9th 1999, 06:50
From Hrvatski Sent Wed, Jun 9th 1999, 06:50
>Anyone looking for a testament to the effective and *strong* >usage of this oh so typical and oh so overused break, look >no further than the Reckan( ......you spell the rest ) release of >"Attention: Cats" of fellow idm lister Hrvatski....takes a *dump* on >the heads of all Amen break cliche whores who attempt to work >with it and fail. I stand behind the current usage of "amen" quite whole heartedly. You get sick of EVERYTHING after a few spins, few things remain strong at the end of the night: Amen, 303 (for good use together see C. De Babalon EP on Ghetto Safari/Shizuo/Panacea/EOSS/etc...), good melody, interesting sounds/forms. IMHO, Amen's THE beat. Of course, variety makes it sweeter... but, If you're going to spend a lot of time cutting up one break into endless variations, it best be the amen. Funny thing, some guy came up to me after a recent NYC show and asked why I didn't play a more interactive (i.e. live band) set. I told him I didn't know the guy that played drums on my tracks very well and that my bass player was too sick to travel... >What people need to do is fully exploit the range of James Brown breaks. >People probably would never need to develop thier own beats with those as a >starting point. I just have a $5 "Best of" James Brown Collection, and so >i haven't even heard any of these great breaks ever used. The best comp for JB breaks is the 'Soul Pride: Instrumentals' double CD (Polydor 314 517 845). Just with that alone you get 'Soul Pride' (just about every track on "Hard Normal Daddy", several No-U-Turn tracks), 'Tighten Up' (Panacea's "Storm Bringer" first track on new Dom & Roland CD/LP), 'Say it Loud I'm Black & I'm Proud' (a bunch), 'Jabo', not to mention 'Funky Drummer' which still sounds BOSS. James is clearly THE KING, the maestro. Breaks or no breaks... >Umm, not exactly. The "Amen" is a specific breakbeat taken from a Winston >Brothers song. It's been a mainstay in d-n-b since it was called "hardcore". >Ray Keith is/was a big user of it. Yeah, it was the B-Side to 'Color him Father' (charted 1969) Metromedia single# MM-197. Early uses were Eric B & Rakim, NWA (Straight out of Compton), etc... Here's a great blurb: "The Winstons were a Washington, D.C. vocal group that won artistic and commercial rewards for their lone hit in 1969. "Color Him Father" earned them a Top 10 R&B and pop hit, just missing number one on the R&B list, and also earned a Grammy for Best R&B song. It was both a great tribute number and outstanding lead vocal from Richard Spencer, along with Ray Maritano, Quincy Mattison, Phil Tolotta, Sonny Peckrol, and G.C. Coleman. Mattison and Coleman were veterans of Otis Redding's band. The Winstons eventually toured as the backup band for the Impressions, but never again made any noise on the charts." >I recently had a similar disucssion with someone on music. Something I >think a lot of us forget, is that music does not always have to break or >push barriers. There is no need to always reinvent the wheel. Sometimes >all you need to do is to put your spin on that wheel. I have heard clever >uses of the amen break (S,H&W come to mind). And other times music can >just be created to be fun. That is not to say pushing barriers is not >important. I think there has to be a balance. But, when someone is >always looking for the next messed sound they are going to miss out on a >world full of good music. Dummy Run, man, the way those guys use it is exactly how it should be, a marker to dozens of styles of music. Just one loop and you bring up all of these reference points (Northern Soul, Hip Hop, Hardcore, Ragga Jungle, Gabber/Breakcore), I can't think of any one sound that's etched itself into the collective conscience quite the way it has. You have to admit that dance music is made up of a finite amount of elements (yr drums, yr pads, yr melody, yr vox). the only way to really proceed is to reference existing elements (what else is there?) in new contexts. late 20th century disease, I 'spose... Either way, Amen's clearly not dead (frankly I'm getting more sick of hearing the fucking Sonic Decimator than certain breaks, and yes that's a direct Kid 606 stab). I think every beat-related track I made from 1995-1998 used it. Stopped around then due to outside pressure (such as this), found some other good ones (Rotary Connection's "Life Could" nee "Paris", Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio", Commodores' "Assembly Line" nee "Let the Rhythm Hit'em") but the tracks seemed to be missing that final 'kick' or 'breakdown' that drum n'bass is sort of built around. I realized that drum n'bass's only one of like the 10 or so genres of music I'm aligned with, solely through the use of such breaks (i.e. if I started using weird self-played basement drumset breaks or 808/909/DMX beats the music wouldn't really qualify as anything tangible), thought; 'Fuck it, if it sounds good, use it'. I think in the long run it'd be more pretentious to avoid using it... -Våt ____________________ Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge PO BOX 382864. Cambridge, MA 02238 http://www.tiac.net/users/sheket/index.html