I was hesitating to post this track as I feel some of the track transitions aren't quite up to snuff with the quality of tracks that I've been producing recently. It's been a few weeks since I finished the track and I still haven't fixed any of the issues I've found with it. Instead of holding on to it for eternity I decided to release it as it is for better or worse.
Enough about what's wrong with the track though, I'm still damn proud of it. Why? For starters, the track samples some awesome Korean funk collected by DJ Soulscape from the DJ collective "360 Sounds" from Seoul. Soulscape has dug through mountains of vinyl to find some of the gems of the Korean 1970's music explosion.
That may be partly because of South Korea's history of cultural repression of youth countercultures. During the 1970s, young Koreans in Seoul were being exposed to "Soul Train" and funk music via the U.S. Armed Forces Korea Network. A club scene arose in Itaewon to service American G.I.s. But as early as the summer of 1971, U.S.-backed dictator Park Chung-hee ordered his police to round up longhaired Korean men and cut their hair.
As the decade wore on, he escalated his "social purification" campaign, detaining artists, intellectuals and church leaders. In the first six months of 1976 alone, police reported checking over 600,000 men on hair length and possession of "obscene" T-shirts. Park's censorship committee blocked hundreds of American songs, from "We Shall Overcome" to "Me and Mrs. Jones."
"Black music was considered illegal because it was not good for the youth. The only music allowed was folk music," said Lee "MC Meta" Jae-hyun of the influential Korean rap group Garion, through a translator. "The music scene itself died. Influential music makers left the country." When he and his peers became enthralled with images of b-boys at the 1984 Olympics, they had no outlet for their creativity.
Soulscape's impressive mixtapes "The Sound of Seoul" and "More Sound of Seoul" are essential to any collection of international funk. Needless to say I'm working on mixing some more of the tracks off these CDs.
The track starts off layering some simple drum loops. If you listen closely you can hear a teaser of the sample behind the drums before the lyrics and full volume funk kick in. The sample itself is heavy on the bass guitar with disco keyboards and violin highlights. I speckled the track with further highlights from a bright saxophone section in the track and some female "La la lala" vocals. Not much to say about the rap lyrics other than it fit with the track.
I've got a handful of other stuff I'm working on at the moment including Os Mutantes, Django Reinhardt, surf track Comanche made popular in Pulp Fiction's bring out the gimp scene, and much more. I also hope to get some help mixing and recording drum tracks from my pal Sam.
Enjoy listening and feel free to play at your next party.
Method Man & Tical's "What's Happening? (feat. Busta Rhymes) + Unknown 1970's Korean Funk
http://www.mediafire.com/?yugiqf2yykm
No comments:
Post a Comment