steinski - burning out of control (the sugarhill mix)
going back .. wayyy back.
for a young kid living out in the middle of nowhere in the yorkshire dales my only avenue for information for new music was the glorious nme. so in 1985 when they started mounting some 7" singles on the cover they were rather important for the impressionable like myself. then came that fateful day when they put steinski's unreleasable 'the motorcade sped on' track onto heavy black vinyl (not a flexi). a track made out of newsreels of the day that jfk met his unfortunate destiny backed with solid beats. the track spun my head. i had heard tracks which used vocal cutup samples before (hello cabaret voltaire) but this was different. this was the first time that the samples/words etc actually flowed in line with a funky hip-hop beat. and so the cut-n-paste genre had entered my world. i realise that coldcut should now be credited for progressing the genre which is true enough, but for me the next main entry was kisspower, a remix of age of chances kiss cover version. this 10 minute epic completely mashed up so many high profile tracks that it was impossible for virgin to release it. but, due to good fortune i managed to get a casstette copy of it and literally played the tape to death.
fast forward many years .. cut-n-paste is now a well established genre. several dj's are now spreading the word via major profile releases, dj shadow, cut chemist (who appears on this mix), and of course coldcut, who formed ninjatune label and released many variants of the form with their own name on the releases as well as other followers of the cause, dj yoda became the master of the comedy stage, and the whole bootleg phenom os 2003 is a direct continuation of the scene. but what of the originator steinski ?
well very little has been heard from him, other than the homages in the form of 'the lesson' series of releases. steinski started it all off and then dj shadow/cut chemist released their own lessons
so when i heard about this pairing of steinski and sugarhill i was keen as mustard .. so here we have steinski being let loose over the ultimate old school hip-hop label releases and adding his own trademark extras to the ultimate lesson in hip-hop history ... does life get better than this ?
no.
so we have the easily recognisable sugarhill sound put through the mixtape machine. the beats and vibes are still so funky its almost painful to have to sit and listen to this album. this stuff needs a club. needs a disco ball. these tracks were the soundtrack to block party days. pre-mtv. pre-video. pre-gangsta. pre-samples. hip-hop was Fun, uplifting. hip-hop was party music. not guns-n-pimps music. not a soundtrack to violence and hatred. and, damn, 20 years on, it still cuts it up. the music itself was played by a live band, doug wimbush - bass, skip mcdonald - guitar, and main man keith leblanc - drums, who later became the leaders of the industrial hip-hop monster tackhead - see how the whole thing connects together. this live music sound therefore has not aged one iota. over the 70 minutes we get the stars of the show - kool moe dee (my first hip-hop star), spoonie g (has anyone ever topped spoonie's 'the godfather'), grandmaster flash, treacherous 3 etc etc .. but as opposed to being a straight ahead collection of fine trax this has been spliced and diced together adding scratches, newsreel type additions telling the sugarhill story and the like. but, as opposed to a yoda mix where the fun parts outweigh the tunes, steinski has not spoilt the originals, he has treated the tunes with utmost respect and kept the flow tight. tight. tight. damn right.
and so the future ? well according to the steinski website the circle is now complete .. he has completed a show for coldcuts solid steel radio show after 2 years of sonic manipulation. we can only pray that the lawyers and respective folks get this onto the streets legitimately as opposed to via the bootleggers on ebay .. or do we have another 20 years wait ..
in the meantime just travel back in time and see why there are still many of us who think that the new over produced sounds of dr dre/neptunes pale into the distance when compared to these funky grooves ..
wave those hands like you just dont care. glorious.