Re: instruments + tables

From: Marcus Portilius (pma@xfader.com)
Date: Mon Nov 13 2000 - 20:59:25 MET

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    Hi stephanie and group..

    as a bass player and a tablist i am
    a little frustrated seeing all these bands with DJ's.
    honestlty they add nothing to the musical experience.
    i can say that with confidence as i have played bass and reeds in jazz, funk
    and ska bands
    throughout my career as a musician and have been DJing just as long.
    for a long time i have been trying to mesh the two together to try and
    figure out
    what the best path is and can say that what i want to do is along the lines
    of what some
    of the DJ's i listen to are doing.

    probably the best example...(recorded and live)
     is Kid Koala on Ninja tune.

    this kat is phenomenal.

    what he's doing is years ahead of whatever the DJ's in Korn or Dakah are
    doing...
    by the way i think Dakah is NOT a hip hop orchestra. the musicians are great
    but they should not be calling themselves a hip hop
    orchestra...at a performance at the EL Rey they didn't live up to the hype.
    but that's a different thread.

    back to koala...
    try to listen to this album or his EP skratchhappyland and you'll hear what
    i'm talking about.
    and if you can watch him live...you'll walk away perplexed.

    he doesn't do tricks or do routines like most of the tablists around today.
    instead he performs compositions that he has created using 3 or 4 tables.
    he creates beautiful soundscapes and his skratching isn't noise it's music.

    he flips an ill muted trumpet into his own solo over a drummed jazz beat (in
    tablism drumming
    is the act of taking individual drum sounds i.e snares, kicks, hi hats and
    creating new beats instead of actually
    playing out a break...this is pretty standard and is really the basics...the
    next step is taking tones of various pitches
    and attempting to use them as a solo instrument.) so in essence he is doing
    percussion and soloing at the same time or
    almost at the same time.

    another tablist to watch out for is P-Love a trumpet player from New Jersey
    who studied in Montreal and hung out
    with A Trak and Koala and was recently on tour with Koala.

    P Love has a unique style blending syncopated non standard time signatures
    using hamster style on the mixer...very unconventional style but extremely
    musical and funky. He also plays alongside a upright bass player from time
    to time which is very musical as well.

    There are a few others that are experimenting.
    there's a guy that has a Theremin hooked up to his tables and he drums while
    playing a thermin. I forget his name though.

    If anyone is interested in learning more about some of these artists please
    email me...as i used to produce a TV show focusing on this art form
    and have developed a love for finding next level shit.

    i'm also putting together a website meshign classic foundation Djing (Kool
    Herc) and new school tablism on http://xfader.com
    it's a little slow to develpment but i hope to have it done at years end.

    i'm currently gathering sounds to do a version of Take 5 using only tables.
    also i will be doing something where i'll be drumming and soloing using
    bass, guitar, sax.
    some tunes will be strictly jazz (hard bop ala Horace Silver, Monk)
    and some funk and ska tracks (Fishbone)
    someone is trying to get me do to some bad brains style
    stuff but i'm stuck on jazz and funk at the moment.

    Ed Portillo aka King Selector PMA
    xfader.com - home of the Turntablists show
    pma@xfader.com



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