unkle. c/d

i'm a disgusting richard ashcroft stan, however.

did anybody listen to that multi-disc "the four track years" set of pre-endtroducing stuff?

jeez there's this thing too:

https://www.discogs.com/DJ-Shadow-Total-Breakdown-Hidden-Transmissions-From-The-MPC-Era-1992-1996/master/463345

(maybe those guys did DJ a lot in the 2000s, i have no idea...)

Shadow continued to tour a lot, alternating live-ish shows playing his own stuff with high concept four-deck DJ sets in collaboration with Cut Chemist. 2014-15 they were touring with [selections from] Afrika Bambaata's own record collection, so you could hear the same skips and pops that a 1981 audience did, but mixed and scratched elaborately.

Lavelle's DJ sets used to be him smoking while between 1 and 3 of the Psychonauts mixed records; he started mixing himself in the '00s to universally terrible reviews. And formed a semi-consistent lineup of UNKLE for the first time, that played doomy rock music, and toured with that. Presumably smoking while someone else played keyboards.

I actually really liked the last (?) "doomy rock" album they put out.

I bought the first Unkle album because of the hype, but it turned out to be indie rock instead of the sort of instrumental rap/blunted beats Mo' Wax had put out before. (The only good track was the first one with actual rapping.) Didn't fall for that trap again.

That doc sounds like it could be genuinely interesting. Saw Lavelle DJ about 2005 under protest, it was crap, but he managed to pack out a normally quiet venue.

i will never be able to thank that guy enough for the major force vinyl box that he put out. it's one of my prized possessions and i will be buried with it in my tomb. such an inspiration to me to this day. also, i had no idea he was 18 when he started the label! that impressed me.

Yeah, that Major Force box is one of the top 10 compilations of all time.

the 'Superstar DJs' book reminded me what a kicking the first Unkle album got in some places. from the book; ".. he was crestfallen. those reviews hurt. worse, deep down he knew they were right.. then everything started to go wrong.." good book all told. cautionary tales left right and centre.

Ah, I'd forgotten about Psychonauts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJXcO9h5zH4

i think for a lot of those guys the answer would have been to reinvent themselves as celebrity DJs and play obscure library funk tracks and garage rock or something.

i would suggest that shadow, along with cut chemist, actually kickstarted the lost library/funk/garage mixtape groove thing off with the (still brilliant) brainfreeze releases.

oh, and for the record, i really like the doom goth grooves of war stories/where did the night fall/another night out.
if its a guilty pleasure for nick cave, then it is good for me.
the mix of electronics, guitars, bad moods, ian astbury, and bowie samples is always going to tickle my sweet spot.
in fact, i listen to the instrumental versions of the albums more than the guest stuffed versions - they sound amazing.
i care not that james supposedly does sweet fa in the studio/live.
he is the person putting it all together and using his address book to get to the end result.

all that said, as someone who has followed the story for a long time, its clear that he has struggled,
and the current state of the kickstarter campaign, comes as no shock.
i was very tempted to join in, but was worried it would end up like this.

tl:dr = i would like to see this film.

wonder if i still have dj shadow-era unkle live sets somewhere. lots of interpolation of album tracks, the samples, scratching, some of his own material

i mean, with a couple exceptions, that first unkle album was basically endtroducing 2 plus vocals with james lavelle sitting around telling shadow which samples to use. after he bailed, it was lavelle standing around behind different dudes, like sic said

I really liked this mix at the time, no idea how it holds up: https://www.discogs.com/Psychonauts-The-Time-Machine-A-MoWax-Restrospective-Mix/master/33010

even after all this time i have never seen a cd copy of that mix in a shop.

Musically, I always considered Psyence Fiction to be right there with Endtroducing.

oh, and while everyone thinks that others did all the work,
other than that mix, the psychonauts didn't exactly score big with their own material.
the same could be said for richard file.
so, yes, james was the wired or fugged to max studio layabout,
but it seems he knew how to get the good stuff out of his collaborators.

I think that cd is pretty rare? my friend was one of those mo'wax beardo types who owns nearly every one of the releases

its very rare.

the mo'wax aftermarket must be in a slump, on discogs:
13 For Sale from $11.31

oh wait, that's on vinyl (?!)
£15.00 for cd

£15 is a lot for those of us that live in the world of zoverstocks.

oh, and just for the record, the UNKLE vs QOTSA stuff is ace.

but it seems he knew how to get the good stuff out of his collaborators.

motivating others was always his skill, from selling records in a shop to signing acts to his not-yet-existent label to hustling Mo'Wax releases to the press.

also see Alex Paterson, very nearly as musically and technically incompetent as Lavelle, yet no matter who he's working with, the end result sounds distinctively like The Orb and not that person's other work.

did George Clinton do anything practical in terms of music-making once the Parliaments stopped being a harmony group? either way, his array of insanely talented players rarely wrote a stunning or memorable song outside of his orbit

Yeah, there are many of people in electronic music like this, especially among those who started as DJs. For example, Westbam is a great live DJ, but most AFAIK of the actual production on his own tunes is done by his silent partner Klaus Jankuhn. And one of my favourite "sampladelic" albums is Hal Willner's Whoops, I'm an Indian, but based on the liner notes it seems Willner's main job was to provide the samples on it from his vast record collection, and most of the production was done by Mocean Worker. And it's still different and better than any Mocean Worker record I've heard.

(xpost)

I think Goldie, at least early in his career, also didn't much know about music production, and most of the technical work on his classic records was done by Rob Playford and Mark Rutherford. But he had a vision of what he wanted jungle to sound, and those records became more groundbreaking than anything his partners had done on their own.

http://www.electronicbeats.net/mentors-how-4hero-programmed-goldies-software/

Goldie is definitely a good example

is this supposed to sound like old library music? 2015! who knew?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1lwvxyveJQ

That talk talk sample on rabbit is dope

even i found the latest album somewhat lacking ...

did unkle come up on the record collection music thread? because...

b**** n**** with the audacity to blaspheme me
got yourself caught in a motherfucking tragedy

I was maybe too persistently mean about James Lavelle in here

so that documentary that apparently came out(?), did anyone here see it?

i dunno, lavelle is pretty lame, as good as his label was ...

apparently there's also the issue of a kickstarter campaign from 2013 that has yet to deliver:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mowax21/urban-archaeology-21-years-of-mowax/comments

new Ronin album/mixtape starts off with the usual UNKLE widescreen/downtempo/moody excess, and then takes a swerve.
best thing james has released in ages.

Admittedly I just skimmed through it — from what I heard the production is fine for the most part if still mining around that good ol prog house vein. Some of the vocals are less than appealing.

tis all about the 'if we dont make it' edit that uses a sample from an old soul classic for me.
of course, its UNKLE, and so, its never going to break boundaries.
but i am a sucker for the UNKLE thing.