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Cover Art DJ Food & DK
Solid Steel Presents: Now, Listen!
[Ninja Tune; 2001]
Rating: 8.4

In 1939, avant-garde composer John Cage took a pair of records containing test tones, and a pair of phonographs specially designed to play at different speeds and used them to create music. The result, a piece entitled Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is commonly regarded as the first piece of turntable music. Though a few other avant-garde composers of the time would follow Cage's lead, it would be decades before the turntable's capacity as a musical instrument would truly be explored again.

The 80s and 90s saw the simultaneous rise of the CD as the premiere form of recorded music and of the turntable as a musical instrument, as the discoveries of a few kids in the Bronx gave birth to a musical movement the likes of which they could never have imagined. The last few years have seen the turntablist break free of his connections with the realm of hip-hop, with DJs turning up in bands of every shape style and form. Meanwhile, artists like Christian Marclay and Kid Koala continue to push the limits of what can be done with a few record players.

Still, despite the turntable's newfound commonplace status, one can't help but get the feeling at times that turntablists are the Rodney Dangerfields of the music world. No respect and all that. In the minds of many, the turntablist is not a musician, but a presenter of music. Of course, this assumption is ridiculous. As anyone who's tried their hand at manipulating vinyl will tell you, there's far more to it than just dropping a needle and pressing play. Still, it often seems that no number of amazing feats performed upon the wheels of steel will ever change the minds of the doubtful masses.

Certainly, the turntables have attracted their fair share of drugged-out ravers and lazy would-be musicians. We've all been to parties where wannabe-DJs did little more than play one record after another, and we've all been bored to death by some guy at some lame club whose experimentation never developed past a simple beatmatch. But these half-assed DJs are nothing more than the turntable equivalent of your girlfriend's brother, sitting in the garage with his out-of-tune thrift store guitar, playing along to Weezer tabs he downloaded online.

Real DJs-- those who take their art with all the seriousness of the most skilled classical pianist-- often show more ingenuity and creativity in the use of their instrument than most so-called "real musicians." And logically so. The turntable isn't like a guitar or a piano; there is no preconceived "proper way" to play it, no set of rules, no charts or theory to learn. It's a skill wide open to interpretation, and as such, the best turntablists are constantly redefining their craft, finding new approaches to making sound.

Take Now, Listen, the newest release from DJ Food (a rotating team of musicians whose lineup currently consists of PC and Strictly Kev) and co-conspirator DK, for example. Technically speaking, this is a compilation of other people's music-- a mix CD. But the credit for the album lies, without a doubt, in the hands of the three who assembled it. It's important to note that I'm not just praising the musical tastes of the trio at the helm here. Any DJ worth their salt can compile two-dozen worthwhile tracks with his or her eyes closed. What makes or breaks an album like Now, Listen is flow. And DJ Food have it in spades.

Indeed, it's the long-practiced, well-polished ability of all the artists involved here to paste together bits of sound into a cohesive whole that makes Now, Listen far more than just the sum of its parts. Equal parts hip-hop, jazz, dance, experimental, rock and IDM, all pasted together with an assortment of vocal samples (a trademark of the Solid Steel show), the record serves as a fine introduction to the sort of freeform radio these guys have been putting together for years.

Since 1988, when Matt Black and Jonathan More (today you know them as Coldcut) took on a weekly late-night, freeform radio program on a London pirate radio station, Coldcut's weekly "Solid Steel" program has served as an outlet for turntablists more interested in making music than playing it. The thirteen years since have seen a lot of changes to the program. Today, "Solid Steel" is broadcast on one of London's best-known radio stations, streamed over the Internet and syndicated the world over. The show frequently plays host to guest DJs (Squarepusher, Tortoise, most of the Ninja Tune clan, etc.) and Coldcut's hosting duties have been split with DJ Food's Strictly Kev, while producer DK's role has expanded to encompass realms both creative and technical.

Now, Listen is the first in a proposed series of discs intended to recreate the spirit of these broadcasts. Starting off with a crackly old big band recording before quickly jumping ship into a torrential ocean of scratches and samples, the work of the DJs is immediately apparent. After the introduction, we're off with Jeru the Damaja-- rapping and scratches-- mixed seamlessly with a downtempo instrumental by the Cinematic Orchestra. From this point on, it becomes more and more difficult to tell one ingredient from the other.

There's an old saying in the DJ world that you can give 80 DJs copies of the same record and you'll never hear it played the same way twice. If only that were actually the case. Recent mix albums by DJ Spooky and Fila Brazilia have disappointed, despite excellent ingredients, due to less-than-thrilling mixes. In each of these cases, the DJs did little but build short bridges between the songs, their contributions limited to the first and last few seconds of each track. DJ Food and DK, on the other hand, use turntables, effects pedals, samplers, and sound clips from film and television and vinyl to cause their chosen songs to bleed together like cheap colored paper left out in the rain.

Take the seamless layering of a Ray Bradbury monologue over David Shire's horn-heavy suspense-thriller-style "The Taking of Pelham 123." Or the Herbie Hancock-discussing-his-love-for-electronics sample from "Nobu" that flawlessly links tracks by Four Tet, the Art of Noise and Boards of Canada. Or the amalgamation of Mr. Scruff's minimal electro-funk groove "Ug," with the relentless verbal flow of Motion Man's "The Terrorist" and Peshay's drum-n-bass opus "Miles from Home." Sure, there are missteps, like the failed attempt to turn the Beat's "Mirror in the Bathroom" into an IDM track by setting it to Mask's Aphex-ian "Square Off." And while rare awkward moments like this may disrupt the album's flow from time to time, there are more than enough treats here to make up for it.

Suffice it to say that Now, Listen is one hell of a ride from start to stop, that DJ Food is doing things with turntables that no one else is, that more often than not it's impossible to tell where the original songs end and the mixing begins, and that this is an album that deserves to be heard, by lovers of DJ culture and skeptics alike.

-David M. Pecoraro, December 10th, 2001

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RATING KEY
10.0: Indispensable, classic
9.5-9.9: Spectacular
9.0-9.4: Amazing
8.5-8.9: Exceptional; will likely rank among writer's top ten albums of the year
8.0-8.4: Very good
7.5-7.9: Above average; enjoyable
7.0-7.4: Not brilliant, but nice enough
6.0-6.9: Has its moments, but isn't strong
5.0-5.9: Mediocre; not good, but not awful
4.0-4.9: Just below average; bad outweighs good by just a little bit
3.0-3.9: Definitely below average, but a few redeeming qualities
2.0-2.9: Heard worse, but still pretty bad
1.0-1.9: Awful; not a single pleasant track
0.0-0.9: Breaks new ground for terrible
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