Tears

Tears comes from th Brain Freeze Breaks album, a collection of the tracks used on DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's Brainfreeze mix cd. Those of you familiar with the work of Josh Davis will instantly recognise the riff as Shadow sampled it on the track Organ Donor.

It wasn't until recently that I found out that the artist Giorgio whom this track is by is none other than Giorgio Moroder. Slow on the up take or what. The track can be found on Moroder's 1972 album Son Of My Father

This track has always slightly unsettled me as I find it kind of creepy.

Giorgio - Tears

The Outsider

I've had to reappraise this album recently.

When I first heard it, I thought that it was ok, not being what I was expecting from Josh Davies. I played it a couple of times and duly forgot about it.

However, recently I couldn't get This Time out of my head and so decided to stick the album on again and give it another listen. What I thought was an okay listen actually turns out to be a brilliant album which sounds incredibly fresh to these ears.

DJ Shadow - This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way)

DJ Shadow - Broken Levee Blues

Milkshake Donor

Haven't really posted that many mash up's here but this is one that I love.

I wanted to post Kelis' Caught Out There yesterday,  just for the 'I hate you so much right now' refrain, for obvious reasons but realised that I hadn't ripped the single to iTunes and then couldn't find it. But searching for it reminded me that I had a rather good mash up using Milkshake and my second  favourite DJ Shadow track.

Organ Donor can be found on Josh Davis' groundbreaking first album Endtroducing. The track is rather slight, clocking in at under 2 minutes but after Influx it is in my opinion the best thing he has done. I must have played it hundreds of times but that organ still gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I realise that this has been purlioned from elswhere but its  use is truly inspired and is just plain creepy.

The splicing together of Organ Donor and a rather suggestive, R&B track really shouldn't work but it does.

Dj Shadow vs Kelis - Milkshake Donor

*Can't find a scan of the record anywhere and can't be arsed to find the camera and do it myself, so you've got a picture of Kelis

From This Day On

I was first introduced to the song posted today when it was used in Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow's live mix of exclusively 7 inch singles, Brainfreeze.  Being a lover of all things Shadow I searched for the cd everywhere, eventually tracking down  a copy in Fopp on Cockburn Street of all places. After considerable research ie looking up Wikki,  I have ascertained that my copy is in fact one of 1000 repressed bootlegs which were sold to local record shops in California, so how a copy wound its way to Edinburgh is anyone's guess..

The cd is a mix of mainly old soul and R&B records, more than a few of which I had never heard of before and which I had great difficulty in identifying as there was no track listing.

A couple of months later I came across a cd called Brainfreeze Breaks in the same shop. Someone had the clever idea of compiling a cd with 26 of the tracks in the mix, in complete form and releasing it, illegally I think, which begs the question as to why it was on the shelves in Fopp.  This is when I learned that the outstanding song for me on the mix was called From This Day On by Eddie Bo.

Eddie Bo was a musician from New Orleans, whose career started in 1955. Over the years he recorded for over forty labels, knocks the Fall into the shade. He was so popular in his hometown, that the Mayor Of New Orleans decreed May 22nd 1997 "Eddie Bo day".

Bo died of a heart attack on March 18th this year.

Eddie Bo - From This Day On

GDMFSOB

I have avidly collected the works of Josh Davis since the first time I heard In Flux which was also my introduction to Mo Wax, James Lavelle and the whole headz culture which I eagerly embraced.

There is something about collages made from snatches of dialogue, samples, laid back beats and turntablism that floats my boat. I can got lost in these strung out, cinematic odysseys and long ago stopped trying to spot the samples.

The one thing about DJ Shadow is that every so often he does something that once you listen to it makes perfect sense but on first hearing of, you think, what is he up to? This was what went through my head when I first got my hands on Mashin' On The Motorway and noticed that the main track was a collaboration with Roots Manuva. However after listening to the track it was such an obvious pairing, the pre-eminent turntablist and the UK's best and most unorthodox rapper.

If you get the chance check out his mix cd with Cut Chemist, Brainfreeze, another venture which on hindsight is exactly what he should have done.

GDMFSOB would possibly have been the phrase I would have uttered when the alarm went off this morning, if I resided on the West Coast of the USA as opposed to west central Scotland where we just say, shit!

DJ Shadow - GDMFSOB (UNKLE uncensored)

Beat Mining With The Vinyl Hoover

I was listening to this programme on Radio 4 on Monday when I picked up M from school but due to having other things on my mind at the time I wasn't really listening.

I listened again last night and think that anybody interested in vinyl at all should listen to it. It is narrated by Toby Amies and is about crate diggers, vinyl junkies and beats and breaks. It has some good contributions from the likes of Coldcut, giving a sample by sample run through of their groundbreaking remix of Eric B & Rakim's Paid In Full. Keb Darge talking about his exploits when looking for rare soul and Mark The 45 King's prescription for making the perfect hip-hop record amongst others.

This type of programme is why I love the BBC and Radio 4 in particular, informative without being dull and not at all that you would expect from the station that brings you Gardeners Question Time. It is a programme that is totally incongruous to the Radio 4 demographic. I can't imagine that the average Archers listener is a vinyl junkie, although I'm getting quite into the Archers these days, a sure sign of the aging process.

"A song about life, death, love, hate, wealth, poverty, racism just a few things that've been running through my head"

It got me thinking of all the cut n paste tracks that I have and what is my favourite. As I've mentioned before when hip-hop and dance started using samples I started buying these records like a zealot. When I bought my first record on Mo' Wax, I knew that I had found something really special, it was the 14th release on the label and I loved it so much I went on to buy each release up to # 70.

Unfortunately in a moment of madness I sold most of these off at a record fair in March 2003 to finance my first ipod, a move that I have bitterly regretted ever since as I only got 220 quid for 50 0dd releases including Headz and both Headz 2 vinyl box sets. I really wanted an ipod but why the hell didn't I just put it on the plastic?

I did, however keep MW014 and another 10 which I couldn't bear to part with.

DJ Shadow and the Groove Robbers - In/Flux