RDJ sample sources / crate-digging

I joined this forum 10 years ago almost entirely based off the fact that I had become obsessed with RDJ's output and wanted to know more. Ironically 2008 was the year he was the most quiet, save for live gigs, so the past decade has been a whirlwhind of scraping every single thing he did in the past to this exciting barrage of new / unreleased music that came out. Caustic Window. Soundcloud Dumps. Syro. I saw him live at Day For Night.

Nonetheless he remains a bit of an enigma and mystery in the best way possible and once facet of this is speculating over his influences via sampling and crate-digging. The soundcloud dump and the Chappel Library Music reveal brought a lot of insight into this. 

Sampling was something I associated a lot more with peers of his like Luke Vibert and to a lesser degree early AE, Squarepusher, and Boards of Canada. But his early stuff is fairly riddled with it. I can't help but notice his palette of recognized samples is quite a scattering of unusual stuff - that of tv adverts, library music, movie sound bites. Very much a thift store finds, field recordings in arcades, or passive pop culture dabbling. Really reinforces his ability to create so much from limited resources.

Or so it seems. Is or was RDJ a record collecting nut? IIRC he mentioned listening to Juno downloads a lot to find interesting music. He seems to be a voracious listener of other people's music, his DJ sets are quite indicative of that, but that could be very much digital and streaming only. Anyone have any other insight via old interviews or stories?

I seem to remember him saying in an interview he is an absolute vinyl freak! 

Also that he always based his own releases on how they would fit on vinyl...  

yeah i mean just take a look at his vinyl shelves cba to rotate it

also i think another facet of the difficulty of finding his influences is the fact that when he was asked (in the early days) of his influences and what artists hes currently listening to, he would always give a vague answer and prevaricate like "ah just some stuff my mates have shown me, lots of stuff really". hes definitely started to open up a bit more in recent years, my speculation is that any limelight he gives to other artists in interviews would take the light off him...kinda like a marketing technique. 

wheres that photo from

i took it when i went round, that was basically the only bit of the house he'd let me photo lmao, too much secret gear he doesnt want showing off. i had dinnr with him via a friend of mine who lives in cornwall 

RDJ: The Dinnr Sessions EP

which image best represents the dining setup Bodhidharma?

A.

B.

C.

  On 5/2/2018 at 12:31 AM, Bodhidharma said:

yeah i mean just take a look at his vinyl shelves cba to rotate it

 

also i think another facet of the difficulty of finding his influences is the fact that when he was asked (in the early days) of his influences and what artists hes currently listening to, he would always give a vague answer and prevaricate like "ah just some stuff my mates have shown me, lots of stuff really". hes definitely started to open up a bit more in recent years, my speculation is that any limelight he gives to other artists in interviews would take the light off him...kinda like a marketing technique. 

quite a photo

totally right about he's reluctance in the past to shed light on influences, def opened up a bit about that

it's ironic that the artists whose taste I'd care most about are often the least willing to talk about, whereas plenty of people, good and bad, cite RDJ as a big influence

  On 5/2/2018 at 3:14 PM, Bodhidharma said:

i took it when i went round, that was basically the only bit of the house he'd let me photo lmao, too much secret gear he doesnt want showing off. i had dinnr with him via a friend of mine who lives in cornwall 

Did he finish his peas?

fLOL u guys, feel like ive already gone too deep. i was only joshin about,    the pic just from his bleepstore page lol, on the "my links" bit

just wanted to hav a bit of fun, dont castigate me   ily all

oh internets...

#Delete internet

As for influences, it's pretty well documented that the first part of his career was influenced by the techno, acid house, drum & bass and the burgeoning underground dance music/rave scene. There are literally thousands of incredible tunes to be mined from those genres. Besides those influences he listened to early electronic composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Bernard Parmegiani among many others and probably composers like La Monte Young and Erik Satie.

As far as sampling goes, sampling in electronic music...dance music,industrial etc. is often far more than the basic sample playback style of hip hop. Many hardware samplers of old have pretty extensive synthesis capabilities that allow you to mangle/mutilate the sounds that you put into them to something unrecognizable from the original or at least give you something quite different from what was put in and each sampler has it's own qualities. So sampling your own sounds, drum machines etc. can be changed pretty drastically once manipulated through the sampler. Take the kick in a track like isopropanol which was overdriven on I believe a Casio FZ-10M for instance.

Although I'm not a fan of this guys music, this video demonstrates nicely another way in which, what you put in is not what you get out in old school hardware samplers. I have 3 of the samplers demonstrated here. Wish I had that Emulator II or those Rolands.

Junkie XL is alright, put out some underrated 'big beat' stuff back in the late 90s / early 00s

Good point about him using samplers so extensively to create his early sound. I recall an interview where he mentioned manipulating 808 bass a lot and other WATMMers have pointed out some amazing finds/realizations. The direct samples are really just the tip of the iceberg.

  On 5/6/2018 at 8:40 PM, killabyte11 said:

As for influences, it's pretty well documented that the first part of his career was influenced by the techno, acid house, drum & bass and the burgeoning underground dance music/rave scene. There are literally thousands of incredible tunes to be mined from those genres. Besides those influences he listened to early electronic composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Bernard Parmegiani among many others and probably composers like La Monte Young and Erik Satie.

 

 

As far as sampling goes, sampling in electronic music...dance music,industrial etc. is often far more than the basic sample playback style of hip hop. Many hardware samplers of old have pretty extensive synthesis capabilities that allow you to mangle/mutilate the sounds that you put into them to something unrecognizable from the original or at least give you something quite different from what was put in and each sampler has it's own qualities. So sampling your own sounds, drum machines etc. can be changed pretty drastically once manipulated through the sampler. Take the kick in a track like isopropanol which was overdriven on I believe a Casio FZ-10M for instance.

Although I'm not a fan of this guys music, this video demonstrates nicely another way in which, what you put in is not what you get out in old school hardware samplers. I have 3 of the samplers demonstrated here. Wish I had that Emulator II or those Rolands.

I'm not a huge fan of his music (he has some decent soundtrack pieces) but I love those videos. That sampling one is one of the best.

Put simply, a lot of sampling in electronic music with the exception of hiphop is more about sampling yourself, manipulating, then perhaps resampling. RDj also had a Sequential Circuits Studio 440 which is a 12bit sampler, sequencer which I think has some unique features for editing sound. I always attributed it to the sound of ICBYD era percussion, maybe because of the crunchy sound of the percussion on a lot of those tracks. It can be seen on stage with him in that live in Paris 1993 video.

Speaking of 808 sampling/manipulation...here's a good video that demonstrates what you can do with just an 808 kick and an E-MU E4 series samplers, which for those into drum & bass was the ultimate tool in the sound of that genre from around the mid 90' on.

......Yeah some of those Junkie XL videos are good,like the rare synths one. He has a hell of a studio.