"A mind with no ceiling" (RIP Roy Ayers) (It's "Daylight" Raving Time!)

I love Roy Ayers...

But when I say that I mainly mean I love RAMP, a Roy Ayers Music Project composed of other musicians and singers, with Roy producing and co-writing the songs, mostly with Edwin Birdsong.

And when I say I love RAMP, I mainly mean "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" and the title track of their single solitary album Come Into Knowledge. 

And mainly, even more so, I love "Daylight". Love it to the bone, to the marrow.

In the main body of his work I've not found anything I like as much as this tune - which I must have played hundreds of times at this point. 

Nate White's bass alone is miraculous... those keyb chords.... the whole track glows, it's like glistening honeyed strands of sound cross-hatching and wrapping round your head.  

My gateway drug for "this kind of thing" - the less-Milesy, smoother end of fusion, where it turns into  jazz-funk - was of course jungle.  

Jungle paradoxically enabled me to build up a tolerance for this kind of mellow mystical-tinged sort of warm-glowing softness 'n' slickness - rather than the other way around.

And with "Daylight", it was this specific track that was the gateway. 

Roni Size and DJ Die and the Bristol lot did this rather often - take a slice out of a rare groove / jazz-funk tune and build up a whole track around it. 

Here's a non-Roy example: 

Which became

It's like a combination of zoom lens and time dilation - the Good Bit is so good, but also so almost thrown away in the original track, or at least rapidly left behind - the track just goes off somewhere completely different, never to return to the Good Bit... instead it develops and builds and is, you know, good-bitty all through in its own right (stellar cast of players, arranged and conducted by Bob James, in this case)  BUT, if you've heard "Music Box" first, then you can't help wondering why does it never go back to the Good Bit? You can't help pining for its return.  Sampling and looping the Good Bit speaks to our desire to arrest time, to make a golden moment last longer.

This mode of sampling and the listening mode that developed out of it - it's a sort of anti-jazz appreciation of jazz. It subverts all the propositions and principles of the original music, the very process that generates the Good Bits in the first place. The sampler chucks away the improvisation and variations around the theme: all the lyrical unfolding and "going somewhere" that happens with the melody and the chords. Instead, the sampler fixates on a isolated section that's cut out of developmental sequence: a cutting (stem is the word, they use, right, remixers -  appropriately horticultural perhaps but is that even the right term, given that there's something axiomatically inorganic about digital logic?). The isolated bit is fetishized for its textures and warm tone, a chord shift maybe, and just the exquisite lightness of touch - but it's removed from where those original human hands took it next. It becomes mechanistic - a loop. Uncanny as a GIF.  It works through flow / anti-flow.

The souljazz sample is like a plush bit of a carpet fabric, a little patch of luxury, that is excised from a larger patterned rug.  

I wonder if Roni + crew heard "Daylight" first as an element in "Bonita Applebum" by A Tribe Called Quest? (A group I've never really got into). 

Here's something I don't recall hearing before - A Guy Called Gerald versus A Guy Called Roy. 

It appears to be  the title track of The Sunshine EP from 1991 - was this ever properly released? 

3/12 update - answer provided by Ciaran in comments: 

Here's a track sampling Roy's own version of "Everybody Loves the Sunshine"  with that thin reedy ecstatic synth-line that 4 Hero and their aliases spent a lifetime chasing... 

Another external project that Roy had a hand-in as co-producer and co-writer is Sylvia Striplin, whose "You Can't Turn Me Away" is another "Daylight"-level favorite of mine. 

This has also been sampled - I think by 4 Hero (a tiny snippet of the blippety groove) and more famously by Junior M.A.F.F.I.A.

Oh and by Smokey Joe here

Great name, Striplin

She was once a member of the group Aquarian Dream....  which is very Roy Ayers-ish.

Did not know about Roy's team-up with Fela Kuti

Ah, well that's where 4 Hero got the name for their broken beat label 2000 Black, then...

Oh and then there was this team-up with the Man himself

This is where it breaks down for me, as something that holds the ear...  the sampling procedure produces the new.... but just trying to do fusion, to play like the 70s bods they revere, or play with them.... it's redundant.  It (re)covers historical ground already covered. And after peak junglizm, it can only sound like a depletion in intensity. 

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It's funny that the transmitter of such positive vibes played as his principal instrument the vibraphone. 

Is This Techno?

 

Or is the question "Is this Techno's Off Spring"

It's weird to me that 4 Hero - under an alter-ego, Is This - would do something so passively inspired.

It's not so much offspring (as that would suggest the idea of another genetic input shaping the outcome, if we're going with sexual reproduction as the metaphor here) as it is a clone of Detroit. 

(Then we get into all that kind of quasi-biologistic stuff about bastardy and "illegitimate offspring tend to lead more interesting lives"  - True People, hereditary proprietorship, pedigree versus mongrels, the dangers of inbreeding, recessive genes...)

Below, an unreleased Is This bit that is less shackled-to-the-Source-of-All-Things. Indeed it sounds more or less like a 4 Hero tune, with the breakbeaty shuffle. 

Ah, they put out a whole EP on Reflective in '93, the techno-phile sub-label of Reinforced

this one is nice

4 Hero's true Detroit-homaging alter-ego was Nu-Era  - whose '94 album was reissued last year... 

A latter effort that is mutating into broken beat

 

Now I got that first The Deepest Shade of Techno compilation on Reflective back in the day

Don't remember much about it, though

Both the first comp and Deepest II are playable here. 

There's a Gerald track on it (he could do some very Mayday-ish tunes)

"LISTEN & LEARN"

The not unwarranted superiority complex of the Reinforced cru!

What was it Rob Playford said? That Reinforced were the scene's research lab 

Operating just that little ahead of everybody else.... 

The vanguard

Ever so slightly forbidding and coldblooded as a result

At times, anyway - for sure they had their manic nutty moments and sent-E-mental anthems, later on  lush 'n 'sexy souljazzual

Recently been listening to this beaut a lot...

(Listening to the original Scarface version as I did for the first time recently was weird - just sounded wrong because the 4 Hero reframing is so sensitively done, it feels like he rapped over it in the studio, as opposed to having the rhythm scaffolding built around his lines - so snugly does his flow fit the groove) 

Here's a different 4 Hero remix of "Seen A Man" -  starker and ruffer - not quite as wondrous as the above.

But there's also an overly mellow Talkin Loud-vibed version of the tune by 4 Hero, a warning sign - perhaps where the "LISTEN & LEARN" attitude can ultimately lead ("proper music")

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[Some earlier thoughts on Reinforced's eminence]

Surely the greatest label of the first half of the Nineties.

Not just in jungle, but on all fronts.

The militant commitment to a vision-quest.... the sheer sustained strike rate combined with the relentless forward drive....

But what about Reinforced during the second half of the '90s?

I carried on loyally buying a lot of their stuff - not loyally, really, just genuinely excited by things heard in the store (by that point usually Breakbeat Science the NYC hub for the city's junglists)

However very little of it has stuck with me - in the sense that I literally can't remember it.

Part of it is that tracks by Arcon 2 or Sonar Circle or whoever, the tracks get so convoluted and dense with editing and processing, they actually defy memory.

Also they weren't things you'd hear played out, like, ever - so no memories got attached to them.

So the last thing from that camp that really stuck with me is actually not technically on Reinforced - it's the Jacob's Optical Stairway album, which came out on Crammed or something like that.

Reinforced proper, would probably be the Cold Mission stuff.

 

superhero / superantihero

Looking at the 4 Hero early EP The Head Hunter, with its back cover cartoon of the group as malformed beings grotesquely mutated owing to their experimentation with speeding up the bpm... 

It struck me they had one thing in common with The Groundhogs 

But there must be many other examples of musicians becoming comic-strip characters or animations. 

Well, there's the animated sequences in The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle - a ruse around the non-participation of Johnny Rotten in the movie, the virtual nonparticipation of Vicious, and lack of documentary footage of certain key episodes 

                                                            original cel for Rotten

And here's that whole cartoon sequence from tGRnRS 

another sequence involving Vicious and his mum (plus smack and incest) (not actually in the finished movie) seeded these images on the left of the Great Rock'n'Swindle gatefold

which in turn reappeared on the front cover of this single and its music press adverts

sampling spotting saddo 3 (putting a rush on)

4 Hero "Time To Get Ill" 

the easy spottable = beastie boys "Time To Get Ill" 

the less easy spottable = Stephanie Mills "(You're Puttin') A Rush on Me"

spottage courtesy somebloke on the Facebook Old Skool Hardcore group

always heard that as "hu-mi-li-a-tion"!!  (puttin a rush on / oo - mill - ush- awn) (think it's been sampled elsewhere too, more mangled)

Oh wow, unexpected xtra bonus spottable accidentally spotted just now

 the song is also the source of  Tek 9 "you've got to slow down"!!!

also as in this wunnerful wunnerful remix by the Nookster

all-time top50 jungle tune that

2-Tone / Rough Tone

been thinking about connections between 2-Tone and rave / nuum

there are samples

                                            

Those from The Specials ("Friday Night, Saturday Morning" and "Monkey Man" respectively)

Another Specials sampling tune - this time "Gangsters" - by MC Duke under an alias.

I'm sure there's one on Formation that samples the "heavy heavy monster sound" bit from Madness's "One Step Beyond"

Ah it came to me belatedly - Mastersafe, "Monster Sound"

                                        

The Madness tune is itself based on sampling - or rather it interpolates from Dave and Ansell Collins's "Monkey Spanner"

Nuumtastic. 

And then wheeling a lot further along the timeline - didn't Kode9 do a version of "Ghost Town"?

Yes indeed - him and Spaceape (RIP)

I'm sure there are others...

But this here is an unusually direct connection, if we count UB40 as on the edge of the ska / 2-Tone moment, which I think they were:

Rough Tone Recordings - UK Hardcore/Jungle/Drum & Bass Label set up in 1992 as a side project by UB40 member Earl Falconer together with Reggae trumpet player Patrick Tenyue and sound technician Gerry Parchment. They also formed the main act E.Q.P. and promoted the Earthquake raves in Birmingham.

Sublabels

EQP Music, Rough Tone Records

and 

And lo and behold a sample from the Specials - "Why" - the same EP that produced the "No Sleep Raver" / 4 Hero sample,  "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" being the other of the two B-sides to "Ghost Town". On TNT's "Till the Last Sucker Drops" on the EQP label. 

EQP's real claim to fame, this demented tune

More tuff tuneage from Rough Tone Recordings 

decent tuneage 

follow follow follow

 

sample trails

this



came out of this



(who knew seals & croft had some use?)


this



came out of this



but that (or a speck of it anyway) also reappears in this

the 4 Hero / Stranglers connection

great lost 4 Hero tune from Enforcers 2, for some reason refusing to let me post it here

heard it in this triff LTJ Bukem mix from back in the day

tracklist here at Hardscore as well as the first part of the mix

must have been made around the same time as this

their posture on that record sleeve makes me think of these glowering fellers

whom Phil Knight of The Phil Zone is blogging -- or "blooking" - about compellingly at the moment at Strangled

Goldie was a Stranglers fan of course

check for the squeaky hardcore voices on this (representing the Aliens)

looking forward to Phil's exegesis on the 'Glers' fifth studio album!

tom and jerry, and nothing but tom and jerry



an oldie but goodie by dj extreme of Hardcore you Know the Score bloggg

via Drum Trip


track list

01 The One Reason [SHELL001]
02 Physics [SHELL002]
03 The Second Reason [SHELL001]
04 Baby Don’t Shout [SHELL002]
05 Papillon Love Song [SHELL003]
06 We can be Free [SHELL002]
07 A patch of Blue [SHELL003]
08 For the Gold Teeth (F.N.T) [SHELL002]
09 B.O.S. Realting [SHELL003]
10 Let your spirit Rise [SHELL004]
11 Cat got your Tongue [SHELL003]
12 Programme 205 [SHELL004]
13 Scooby’s Dreaming [SHELL005]
14 Strings & Me [SHELL004]
15 Nine Lives (mind out tube mice) [SHELL005]
16 All alone with Dog Face [SHELL006]
17 Yamming snacks like Shaggy [SHELL005]
18 Sun on my Head [SHELL006]
19 Mousetrap (dangerous) [SHELL004]


a few things missing  - this first one is a bit of a major omission in my humble

so i guess Tom and Jerry was 4 Hero's crowdpleaser alter-ego...   the outlet for tunes that were rinsing and pretty, not experimental or out-there - low-pressure output, maybe, knocked out quicker, without that self-imposed self-daunting expectation of surpassing themselves, breaking new ground each time  (which would explain why T&J was shunted out, in great volume, via a different label, Shell, not through Reinforced itself) 

then again - this one is pretty weird and abstract - so maybe not - maybe the lines got blurred

  Lee Gamble 'Diversions 1994-1996' (PAN 33) from PAN on Vimeo.

"LEE GAMBLE 'Diversions 1994–1996' (PAN 33)

'Diversions 1994-1996' is made up entirely from samples from the collection of Lee Gamble's Jungle cassette mixtapes. The audio has been subjected to analog and digital deformations, whilst trying to extract, expand upon and convey particular qualities emblematic of the original music. The effect is that of a musical body scan, all that is solid melts into air. Sounds are unearthed, dissected on the operating table, melted and unlocked, evoking sonics not unlike the heavy dub processes of Jah Shaka and Scion in a INA GRM frame of mind or bearing  a similar  methodological approach with what explored Mark Leckey in his piece "Fiorucci Made me Hardcore". It can be heard as a ‘memory’ of a period of music and for some could work as a ‘cued recall', which is a form of memory retrieval.    

Lee Gamble started out as a teenager dj-ing on pirate radio and on the emerging Jungle scene, however his own approach to music has taken a more experimental direction. Exploring the outer realms of abstraction through digital synthesis/resynthesis, Lee has described his current compositional process as: “…The configuration of material (ex nihilo) via various digital synthesis methods, prompts further disfigurations and reconfigurations. What you then have left is often the detritus or debris of an idea. Phantasms of both previous and current musical, pseudo-scientific and sculptural influences are manifest as new material abstractions, created from the digital blank canvas. This abstraction allows several interests to appear in the works simultaneously…”.