Showing posts with label Illicit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Illicit. Show all posts

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

Deadly Avenger - 'Charlie Don't Surf EP'

I love Deadly Avenger. I've never heard anything by him that didn't demonstrate his understanding of music, technology, and the prevailing zeitgeist. Put those three things together and you get a really cool bit of music. FACT!

Four tracks, two slow and sprawling, one very fast, and one mid-paced hip hop mash up. It's that last one I'll have bought it for, no doubt, and carried to every DJ gig I ever played, but probably never actually played.

It's a great sounding record, but other than it having a ticket on it telling me that I bought it from Music & Video Exchange for the princely sum of £6.50, I couldn't tell you anything more about its life with me. I also notice from the catalogue number etched into the run-off area that it's Illicit's first release. They must have been very proud.

Cat No: ILL-001

Tracks: not listed

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Deadly Avenger - 'King Tito's Gloves EP'

Sprawling, groovy breakbeat of various tempos. Nicely produced, and although I was going to dismiss this as the sort of thing everyone with a sampler and a keyboard was doing in 1999, it's a notch above the usual cut-and-paste dross.

'Live at the Capri' starts with the theme from Superman, and then a couple of really great vocal rap loops over a fat-ass beat. I've used it to kick start a DJ set before now, but you've only got about 45 seconds of good stuff before it all gets a bit cheesy nu-disco funk. By the time the meandering piano breakdown kicks in halfway through, people will be leaving the dancefloor, so use the first 45 seconds to good effect, then get the hell out. Rob Overseer did something similar with this very record for a Mary Anne Hobbes DJ set that was studio-recorded in Leeds. I remember it took hours to get the set right - I went to the pub, watched a football match, had a couple of pints, came back, and he and engineer Dave were still arseing about, adding snippets to it. The DJ set sounded great on Radio 1 (this was probably in 2000), but I'm not sure it was worth all the hours of recording toilets flushing (in stereo!), multitracking and overdubs.

I'd be amazed if Damon Baxter (for it is he) isn't now writing movie soundtracks. Anyone know?

Tracks: King Tito's Gloves. In Pursuit of the Pimpmobile vII. Live at the Capri (Supermix). Lopez Part 2.

Catalogue Number: ILL-002