'Emulatory whoredom' by DJ Wally, 'Bodega' by DJ Olive & 'Extinguished: Outtakes' by Prefuse 73
by Ian Simmons
[ cdreviews ]
Ah, yes - instrumental hip hop. It first gained mainstream attention with DJ Shadow's seminal Endtroducing in the late 90s and has generated a diverse and interesting array of practitioners, a surprising number of whom are at least as innovative and imaginative as Shadow was then. Shadow himself seems to have proved himself pretty much a one-hit wonder, with his subsequent work ranging from the humdrum to the risible, but Messrs Prefuse, Wally and Olive have risen to the task admirably.
Emulatory Whoredom is perhaps the most straightforward of these discs, generating a conspiratorial X-Files aura using vocal samples of UFO abductees, paranoids and sci-fi movies, notably Blade Runner. Rather disorientingly, the whole thing kicks off with an almost straight lift from Jeff Lynn's horrifically self-indulgent concept album bloatarama War of the Worlds before integrating it with an insidious and subversive funk undercurrent. DJ Wally tends to use his vocal samples in a fairly straightforward and traditional way, looping them over his beats and allowing them to take on the role of a standard vocal track, in a manner some might view as clumsy, particularly given their relatively transparent origins, but for me it works well and contributes to a harmonious and entertaining whole.
DJ Olive, however, has a far more aggressive approach to his source material, much of which he hacks, mutilates and distorts beyond recognition. Bodega is full of hallucinatory jump cuts, surprising interjections and in-your-face eruptions of noise. This is his first full-length solo release and is long overdue. He has put in sterling work as a collaborator with people such as Sonic Youth-s Kim Gordon, Ikue Mori, Bill Laswell and John Zorn, never failing to lift the music whenever he is present; but until now, comparatively little of his own material has made it to disc. All sorts of references get cited as precursors of hip-hop of this kind (funk, dub, Latin, breakbeat etc), but to me, this seems to hark back to another form of defiantly disruptive music. Just as house music cited Kraftwerk as key precursors, elements of CDs such as these bring to mind Kraftwerk's fellow Krautrockers, Faust, particularly The Faust Tapes. There is the same ruthless chopping between radically different tonal palettes, pure noise, bursts of found sound and general disregard for traditional musical language. In both cases a vivid, fresh new sound emerges. While it is not something I've ever seen acknowledged, I do wonder if a few Faust albums are lurking at the back of these guy's record collections, and indeed they did collaborate with New Jersey hip hop merchants Dalek on a track from their 1999 album Ravvivando. I would not be at all surprised in the case of Prefuse 73, whose name I find exceedingly difficult not to read a PrePUCE 73, but that's by the by... Like The Faust Tapes, Extinguished is a selection of outtakes and alternative versions, in this case from the album One Word Extinguisher. In fact, the end result is lot better than One Word Extinguisher - there are far more wild flashes of imagination, startling juxtapositions and even the occasional goofy joke, none of which hangs around long enough to overstay their welcome. This makes for a rich and diverting stew of sound that is a constant delight throughout.
These three CDs have been exceedingly frequent visitors to my CD player over the last few weeks and look set to keep their position for a good few more. Hip hop is most definitely a creative hot spot at the moment (but then, when isn't it?) and I shall be looking out enthusiastically for more goodies like these.
