experimental early hip hop / electro / turntablism

edgy opinion: 80s juan atkins is extremely overrated. he has some good tracks from this era obviously, like the one you posted drome, but I can't understood why cybotron, early model 500, etc. is held up as somehow being amazingly innovative, prescient music when it just sounds like a lot of other electro from the same time. I mean granted, he started using the word "techno" and all, but still...

oh also:

  On 11/1/2018 at 12:38 AM, tneuvm said:

but I can't understood why cybotron, early model 500, etc. is held up as somehow being amazingly innovative, prescient music when it just sounds like a lot of other electro from the same time. I mean granted, he started using the word "techno" and all, but still...

It's because music journalists need phrases like "unlike anything else heard before", "groundbreaking", etc. to appear smart and to sell magazines. Everything that exists is at least partially based on something that existed before it, and that applies to everything, not just music. In the music context, anyone who thinks that something is "completely new" simply didn't listen to enough music that preceded it.

Here's Throbbing Gristle's Juan Atkins-style track from 1980:

:

Of course his stuff had its influences - everything does. Juan Atkins still had an undeniably unique and influential sound.

More interesting tracks from the early 80s:

^ Cool stuff

Ae had this in one of their 12 hr radio sets... wild to think that one of the best djs of alltiem just happened to be partners with the Fresh Prince of Dickbutt

I really hope this thread stays alive for a while, we're building up a pretty great little "archive" of adventurous tracks.

nsfw

fully in favor of more industrial stuff when its as insane as the tracks above

as for ol' robert atkins, having thought about it more in the past few minutes, maybe he's innovative for combining the sci-fi vibes of electro with the more plodding rhythmic feel of house? can definitely appreciate 'no ufos' better looking at it that way. but surely the same could easily be said about jesse saunders' 'on and on' years earlier, not to mention, you know, 'acid tracks' from the same time. (and yes, I'm aware that influences are a thing, thanks guys.)

guys it's very important that you listen to this

Wow ... that sounds like an explosion in a clichéd samples warehouse.

But seriously ... great thread. Keep 'em coming!

not hip hop but in the same spirit as stuff itt. 8:00-8:20.

edit: guess there are some hip hop / electro staples played after all, it's all over the place!

knew something 'damn'-worthy was about to happen when the count started at 4:21 and was not disappointed!!! this stuff is awesome

  Quote

the young 30 somethings have to thumbs down it..They are the,"I'll kill you Mom!"generation,they think they created everything,and will kill their parents if they dare prove them wrong. All kids born after 1972,are extremely gay.

This is Schooly D from Philadelphia. Apparently the day after he recorded this, he woke up and thought about removing all the reverb from the drums, but everyone in his neighborhood was bumping the track on ghetto blasters. I learned about this from the Netflix doc series Evolution of Hip Hop, which is pretty good. The narrator does a great job of presenting a cohesive narrative of early Hip Hop.

The first 30 seconds of the song "Gameplan" by Lord Finesse is also weird and great, more or less musique concrete over a nice boom bap beat.

The OP mentioned Autechre's nostalgia for early Hip Hop, but those guys have great taste in current Hip Hop too. In their RA interview, they mention Roc Marciano and Westside Gunn, two of the best living MCs IMO. Roc Marciano put out three albums last year, two of which are really really good. Westside Gunn recently put most of his stuff back on streaming, so much ill Hip Hop. His song "City, Sos, & Me" is top dollar. 

I'm curious of what y'all think are the most Hip Hop influenced Autechre tracks? They said in an interview that Draft was their Hip Hop album, but I always feel like the Japan earthquake relief song, 6852, and the first two minutes of "pendulu hv moda" are where its at in terms of Ae Hip Hop.

Nice one m8. I see what you mean about the Lord Finesse track, that intro feels like kind of a crossroads  between the stuff in this thread and the smoother, jazzier mid 90s east coast feel.

This has some pretty musique concrete-like manipulation of sound in the second half (using an explosion, some sort of dripping sound, etc.)

And yeah Autechre definitely follow modern hip hop, but the interesting thing about their love of this particular era is that I think it goes beyond basic nostalgia. The last pitchfork review actually summed this up particularly well. (And they've said really similar things in interviews.)

  Quote

Autechre fully inherited the values of that era and they might be the only artists of our time to still live in them today. So much on NTS Sessions seems to offer a hypothetical alternate timeline to ’80s electronic music: What if it all just kept growing? What if each and every Latin Rascals razor blade micro edit was to re-edit itself violently? What if the stuttering vocals of Miami bass dubs were to develop sub-stutters? If all the acid house squelches grew into roars? If the extended DJ mixes lasted for entire days? And what if all the oh-shit moments that first came with these innovations were still central to the enjoyment of contemporary dance music?

IMO a ton of their music is basically hip hop, but I guess recks on is another recent one with breaks. Also think Pen Expers is a clear example.

Sweet track. Those drips sound like a self-oscillating filter. I see what you mean about seeing Hip Hop in most Ae tracks. I remember reading a reddit forum where someone said that Fol3 on Quaristice sounding like old school Hip Hop to them. Guess it just depends on how an individual listens and what they hear. I usually don't go in for Pitchfork, but that review of NTS was really solid. I also appreciated their review of Roc Marciano's Reloaded, the reviewer was witty and appreciated the music. A funny excerpt: Quite simply, nothing happens on Reloaded. At all. That's something of an overstatement, obviously: Most of the time, Roc and his associates will plot on your demise and execute it with ease, at which point they will have their way with your woman and celebrate over top-shelf liquor. Then they'll probably buy more guns. That's the plot of nearly every single track on Reloaded. Yet none of this seems to be happening in the present tense and it's easy to imagine Roc rapping the entirety of Reloaded from a podium, like it's simply a 55-minute lecture on wordplay.

  On 1/16/2019 at 2:12 PM, Drum Up said:

I remember reading a reddit forum where someone said that Fol3 on Quaristice sounding like old school Hip Hop to them. Guess it just depends on how an individual listens and what they hear.

Lol interesting, I always thought of that as one their more overtly academic-sounding tracks, more like Curtis Roads than Kurtis Mantronik (even though I agree w/ the NTS review that they're not opposites). But yeah, still always surprises me how differently people hear Autechre.

Btw is there any particular Roc Marciano that you think is the best starting point or just his best? Haven't listened to 'lyrical' hip hop in a while. 

Since ppl seem to prefer individual tracks to the mixes...

^^^ Thanks for the suggestions. Maybe I'll give Reloaded a listen. I've just heard a few songs so far but I think I'm starting to get where he's coming from: very steeped in the evocative, hyper-lyrical NYC / east coast tradition a lot of the time--but with original twists in terms of production; he's not just remaking 90s Kool G Rap albums or something. I mean it's telling that he can appreciate stuff like Lil B too lol, even though their approaches are so different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVkrPCLh9c

so, uh, ppl who posted in this thread earlier... thoughts? tracks? i'm literally just going through youtube recommendations...

  On 1/17/2019 at 3:28 AM, tneuvm said:

Btw is there any particular Roc Marciano that you think is the best starting point or just his best? Haven't listened to 'lyrical' hip hop in a while.

you can't go wrong with Marcberg

Noted, thanks.