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"Scott Down and DJ Cutler - Ultimate Breaks and Beatles (LD007)
Release Date: 09.09.09
Like the scores of musical sounds and ideas it is meticulously crafted from, Ultimate Breaks and Beatles belongs to nobody yet everybody. Composed of crates upon crates of Beatles records, obscure covers of Beatles songs, the entire 25 volume Ultimate Breaks and Beats series and plenty more, it is a celebration of record collecting, DJing, hip hop music, and above all, the unparalleled resonance and influence of both the almighty Beatles and the almighty Ultimate Breaks and Beats series. In the tradition of its two titanic subjects, the mix defies genre; at once spanning, re-contextualizing, and transcending everything from classical to blues to jazz to rock to rap in just over and hour. Unlike your neighborhood hipster laptop DJ's latest trendy "mash ups", there was absolutely no software, sequencers, or techno used here--just a ton of vinyl, two turntables, a mixer, and an 8 track...
We here at LO DO Industries certainly hope that you enjoy it. If so, please copy and share with as many people as possible, for free of course. If not, keep it to yourself flavor hater. To Ultimate Breaks and Beatles, I raise a hoppy brew. Scott and Mike did a fine job once again. To paraphrase Pablo Picasso: good DJs copy, great DJs steal....
Cheers,
Irv Funkenstein
Media Assassin/Minister of Sample Clearance/Second Clarinet, Lo Do Industries" (Lo Do Industries Press Release)
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REVIEW
"The mash-up. It’s a fairly recent phenomenon, one that didn’t really hit full stride until the early months of this decade. The form — the product of a blending, or “mashing,” of two or more songs together to create a “new” song — forced split reactions among listeners and critics from the moment it arrived.
Those who responded favorably pointed to its ability to suggest a new form out of the recombinations of existing forms as the ultimate expression of post-modernism. Which is a slightly inflated way of saying they thought it sounded really cool.
On the other side of the fence, naysayers gathered, pointing out the obvious — “This is simply stealing other people’s art and putting a new nametag on it” — and offering various permutations of the age-old saw, “That’s not really music!”
These folks had, and still have, a point. The mash-up grew out of sampling, which became a rather violent feeding frenzy in the 1980s, as every marginally talented clown with an eye toward a rap career began ripping hooks and signature riffs from classic rock, funk and soul hits, then mumbling some self-aggrandizing nonsense atop them by way of proving authorship. (Who can forget Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” and its sample of Queen’s “Under Pressure”?)
Unquestionably, however, valid and exciting art has come from this movement.
When Danger Mouse, an American producer, DJ and musician working in England, released “The Grey Album” — a mash-up that grabbed a cappella tracks from Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” and sat them atop instrumental tracks from the Beatles’ “The White Album” — well, it was most definitely on. Soon, Danger Mouse had formed Gnarls Barkley with Cee-Lo Green, and was working with artists like Gorillaz, the Black Keys and Beck. His influence, coupled with the already indelible fondness DJs and MCs had for sampling and mixing, spread like wildfire.
Here in Buffalo, the mashup was already a part of hip-hop culture by 2000. DJs would mix vinyl records at clubs in service of their own cross-cultural vision, and the explosion of easily accessed digital files and the readily available technology to manipulate them only made new hybrids easier to create.
Though any reasonably creative person with a laptop can now create a mash-up, throw it up on YouTube, and bask in the glow of a (possibly false) sense of pride, one Buffalo duo is attempting to return the concept of musical cut-and-paste to its more organic state. What if you applied the notion of the mashup to old-school, DJ-performed, vinyl record mixing? Scott Down and DJ Cutler — working as Lo Do Industries — thought the question was worth answering.
The two have explored the notion in the recent past, employing obscure Buffalo-created 1960s and ’70s soul music in service of a new hip-hop pastiche known as “Blue Collar Funk.” But it’s with their latest project that Down and Cutler have set a new standard for the mashup. “Ultimate Breaks and Beatles” blends crate-loads of vinyl Beatles music with a handful of strange and mostly unknown Beatles covers. Beneath all of this, Down and Cutler assimilate elements from the hip-hop bible — the 25-volume “Ultimate Breaks and Beats,” which is a treasure- trove of raw rhythmic materials culled from R&B, soul and rock songs released from 1966 to 1984.
Beats and Beatles. Brilliant! Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?
Well, actually, they did. Danger Mouse had “The Grey Album” in 2004, and little-known cut-up kings the Beachles came with its Beatles/ Beach Boys mash “Sgt. Petsounds Lonely Hearts Club Band” back in 2006. When Giles Martin and his father, Sir George, revisited the Beatles’ catalog to create the soundtrack to the Cirque de Soleil celebration “Love,” they employed a mash-up, cut-and-paste methodology of their own, cross-fading songs together, placing beats from one tune beneath the lyric and melody of another, sticking a guitar solo from a 1966 recording atop a vamp from 1969, and so forth.
No one, however, has done quite what Down and Cutler managed to do here. “Ultimate Breaks and Beatles” celebrates the enduring magic of the original music. But more importantly, it rescues the mash-up from the very real threat facing it — the danger of it becoming too trendy, too easy to execute, too much a product of the computer technology and not of the imagination.
“Breaks and Beatles” recontextualizes the art and the artifacts themselves, and if the Beatles’ music doesn’t actually need any assistance in retaining its relevance, Down and Cutler have managed to find new possibilities in that music. Kudos are due..>" (Jeff Miers: Sound Check)
