Battle of the Beats: Typewriter vs. Printer

The Lyricist - Richy Pitch f/ J-Live
from the Live At Home EP on Sevenheads (2002)
Removed at the request of the artist. I definitely recommend purchasing, and you can find the vinyl here among other places, the cd here, or download here.

The Many and The Few - The Matthew Herbert Big Band
The Three W's - The Matthew Herbert Big Band
both from the album Goodbye Swingtime on Accidental (2003).

Recently I have been on a real kick for music from the indy rap boom years of the late 90s/early 00s. This Richy Pitch produced track came a little late in that run, but it features indy standard bearer J-Live on the mic, so some slack can be cut. RP lays down a nice, soulful bit of boom bap with snare and an organ lick that provides a great bed-rock for in turn J-Live's dexterous lyrics, DJ Go's scratches, and live flute by Lorna Reah. Even a full fledged sample by Sean "You're the man now, dog" Connery brings home the other sample element here, old fashioned typewriter clicks and dings. I'm old enough to actually remember using a typewriter to fill out my high school application, but I cannot say have any nostalgia for that old beast.

One of the great things about music is the connections that are possible and in hearing RP's typewriter beats I was reminded of Herbert's big band jazz album Goodbye Swingtime. In that album, Herbert's taste for conceptual projects meant using sample sources related to political writing add to his heavily chopped and edited versions of big band arrangements he made (with Pete Wraight). In "The Many and The Few," Jamie Lidell's stacatto jazz singing is augmented by a typewriter sample again (although it is actually audio from phone books from around the world being dropped at various heights - yep that's right).

The Goodbye Swingtime album is so good start to finish I had to put another track up. "The Three W's" features Herbert's dot matrix printer churning out pages from the website www.soaw.org. (NOTE: for the politically motivated soaw.org can be a very informative read.) Herbert wrote a personal contract on how we will make music - sort of the Dogme 95 of sample-based music - called PCCOM. But despite all the subtext and constraints on his music his arranging skill creates fantastic opportunities for his musicians and especially vocalists. Mara Carlyle shines with her haunting vocals on "The Three W's," but really Herbert finds a voice and use for each of member of his band (bass, drums, piano, a full set of brass and woodwinds including some of the UK's more famous swing musicians). Herbert and Wraight remind me of Stan Kenton in terms of the arrangements that appear to be the backbone of these compositions. Wonderful! Another connection to dive into.