We asked Marcus from Hyperdub for his favourite mixes, but he came back with a better idea:
I was asked to name my 5 favorite mixes, but as mixes and podcasts are standard internet currency and a little boring, I thought I’d share a few of my favourite pre-internet clashes, DJ sets and radio rips and explain why they’re so great.
Saxon vs Ghetto-tone October 21st Lewisham: Papa Levi vs Leslie Lyrics 1983
Download here from Megaupload.
This is a really famous soundclash between two systems and their MC’s in Lewisham Boys Club and is reputed to be the first one on one clash between two MC’s in the UK. This shows off the fire, rewinds and the double speed mcing - which was a particularly UK invention, and still a prevalent style of MCing is shown off to fierce effect. These guys are basically the godfathers of the UK mc style and the pioneers of Fast-Chat.
Soul All Dayer of the Century –Hammersmith and Acton 1987
Side One here.
Side Two here.
This came out as an LP and it’s a series of scratch attacks from hip hop sound systems TNT, Beat Freak and Main Attraction recorded in Hammersmith and Acton. The album manages to be really prescient, the mc’s are a young Congo Natty (aka Rebel MC) and DJ Ron (who both went on to be Jungle mainstays) are present, but it’s the music; cutting Planet Rock into Pablo Gad’s Hard Times, must have inspired the Prodigy’s ‘fire’, which uses the same sample, plus chipmunked LL Cool J vocals over Sleezy D’s Chicago house classic ‘No Way Back’ precede hardcore and Jungle by about 5 years. This sounds like the dna of Black British dance music from then onwards, reggae, US dance music, hip hop and R and B blended into new shapes.
The Latin Rascals - KISS Mastermix Dance Party 1985
Any of the Latin Rascals mixes are amazing. The Latin Rascals cut all their mixes on reel to reel tape, re-editing songs as they went. The mixes straddle early hip hop, latin freestyle and pop music but manage to transform them into something much greater than the sum of its parts with lots of weird, punchy machine gun edits made using tape and scalpels. They had regular radio shows in NYC in the 80’s and also went on to remix acts such as Rick Astley and Duran Duran, oddly enough.
Wild Bunch Vs Soul II Soul Soundclash – New Years Eve London 1987
Download here from old man’s dance music blog Test Pressing.
Another clash between two sound systems who would later go ahead and become really big musical acts, Wild Bunch were basically Massive Attack and Soul II Soul went on to combine deep bass, house and soul in the tradition of their work as a system. This is a lot of fun, not the fierce competition of the Saxon Ghetto-tone clash, a lot of soul and funk here, later the music moves into early house, a lot of whistles in the place too, which is something you no longer hear in clubs.
Derrick May Mayday mix on New Years Eve WJLB Detroit 1988
Download from Dj Assault’s site here.
This is another mix that mixes vinyl with Reel to reel – a brilliant furious mix made right at the height of dance music’s first wave of success. This was taken from DJ Assault’s website –where you can listen to it back – his words are below:
‘I happened to press record back in 1988 on New Years Eve to catch this “MayDay Mix” by Derrick May as 98 WJLB (Detroit Radio) counted down to the new year 1989. I really loved recording these MayDay mixes because there were always traxx that were not in stores or If I happened to have the record I would hear a different version of the song than the one on the record. But the craziest thing about the MayDay mixes is the reel to reel that you can hear sometimes spinning backward through the mix.’
DJ Screw 3 n’ The Morning DJ Screw’s house, Texas 1995
Git it here from Southern hip hop blog Bottom Of The Map.
I first heard DJ Screw’s ‘grey tapes’ at the beginning of the 00’s through a friend. They sounded mental, so avant guard and gloopy, like a primordial liquid oozing through the speakers. He did tons of these before he died, cutting phasing and mixing slowed down hip hop and r and b, and of course he’s legendary now, but back then this was the weirdest sounding shit on the planet, I like this one a lot.