Telemachus ft. Roc Marciano (YNR Recordings)
Telemachus is the alter ego of London based Hip Hop producer Chemo who has worked with a host of established artists from both sides of the Atlantic.
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Telemachus is the alter ego of London based Hip Hop producer Chemo who has worked with a host of established artists from both sides of the Atlantic.
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The time has come to get my Wax Poetics on and get deep behind the history of what was a massively important record in the development of my (and many other heads of my age) love affair with UK Hip Hop.
It was 1999, I was 18, at college, permanently plugged into my Walkman and trying to find out as much as I could about the UK Hip Hop scene. I would read HHC every month and scour the reviews section to figure out which UK releases I would buy the next time I had enough cash to catch the train to London and do the rounds at Deal Real and Mr Bongo.
Some Old School heads might dismiss this era as occurring after the magic had passed but for those of us that were only just starting to pay our dues I can assure you it felt pretty magical then. To say that Premonitions blew me and my mates away was an understatement. It became the record we all used as the example to non-believers that UK hip hop could be poetry. It was one of those records that felt special because it was so fucking good but so few people seemed to have heard of it – those who had it were part of a privileged club – and to say we rinsed it at our two-turntables-and-and-a-stack-of-wax music-discovery nights would be an understatement. For this reason it gave me great pleasure to be able to share this interview I recently conducted with Evil Ed who produced three tracks on Premonitions and was a major figure in many more of the early YNR releases.
Evil Ed: I started listening to Hip Hop back in 1984 when some kids at school had tapes like the Street Sounds ‘Electro’ albums and Tommy Boy’s Greatest Beats. I started buying the UK pressings from places like Woolworths and Virgin like ‘Roxanne Roxanne’ and ‘The Message’, ‘Planet Rock’, ‘Boogie Down Bronx’ them kinda tunes. I was into the whole scene, breaking, graf and all that, but I got into DJing mainly, I was the only kid in my town I knew who had decks (belt drives with no pitch control!) and was a Hip Hop addict from day one.
In 1985 I met up with Silver Bullet, he lived a few doors down with a kid I knew from youth club and we started hanging out and making trips over to Luton to buy import 12”s and albums. Being in that shop around all these older, knowledgeable heads really influenced me even though I could only buy one record every month or something. We went to UK Fresh ‘86 and saw legends like Steady B, Just-Ice, Mantronix and DJ Cheese when they were at their peak. We got round the back afterwards and were there with people like Bambaata, Dr Dre, all these legends, it was crazy. Having that experience and being around that aged 13, I wanted to be a part of the culture, it just appealed to me more than anything else in life!
I didn’t have a clue about production back then, it was more about mixing. I attempted to MC too and I was on Radio London on Dave Pearce’s show once, but it was probably cringe worthy even back then. I tried to MC until around 1993 then knocked it on the head because I wasn’t very good and I wanted to get into production and DJing more. I was listening to producers like Muggs, Beatnuts, Pete Rock, Beat Miners, those were my inspiration back then, and of course the UK, London Posse, Caveman, Demon Boyz, Mello etc. their beats, but I didn’t have any music gear so I just did loops and stuff.
I had a record out in 1993 as one half of Hidden Identity. It was mainly just loops off other records and me doing cuts with the MC on vocals. I kinda produced one track on it which I’d call my first real production. We got huge support from 279 on Choice and Max & Dave on Kiss and probably thought we were rap stars or something. We were going to do a follow up, but it never came together, ‘creative differences’ (yeah, right!) and all that! It wasn’t until 1997 that I got my s950 and started learning how to chop up samples and construct beats properly. This was when I moved to Huddersfield.
Ed: I met Jehst around 1998 although I’d seen him MC a couple of years before in Manchester. He came on stage and I thought he was some live-wire kid with skills, he really left an impression. I then bumped into him in ‘98 in 4th Wave Records in Huddersfield. I was playing a demo tape I’d done with some MC’s and we got chatting and he remembered me from the HID record. Jehst came round mine and we recorded some freestyles and stuff over some of the beats I’d been working on. He was in the process of making Premonitions and got me involved with some production and cuts for it. I met the rest of the YNR crew at the various recording sessions for the EP in Leeds, Tommy Evans, Nmonic, Asaviour, Taharka, Usmaan, Nexus 6.
At that time I had the chance to do a tune with some of my heroes of UK rap, Gunshot, for Disorda’s UK Hustlas mixtape. It was a last minute thing, but I persuaded Jehst to come with me, I told him they’d let him on the track once they heard him. He nearly never came, he came to Leeds bus station and nearly never got on the National Express with me, but by some fluke there was a spare seat and he came with me. Gunshot let him spit on the track and I remember we were sitting in White Child Rix’s lounge playing them ‘Premonitions’ on tape. These were legends to us – proper rap heroes!
Jehst came round mine and we recorded some freestyles and stuff over some of the beats I’d been working on. He was in the process of making Premonitions and got me involved with some production and cuts for it.
The beat for the Gunshot track, ‘Firepower’ never got mixed properly due to White Child Rix’s girl and her parents coming home and we to cut the session short, which was shame, I always was gutted about that, but they said to us they had these MC’s called Task Force who they wanted to get on the track too. I’d heard of them and Jehst had too I think, but that hook up lead to me and Jehst recording with them, me for ‘The Tournament’ and Jehst for whatever he recorded with them (even though we weren’t there when they recorded the vocals for ‘Firepower’).
Ed: The creative process? Probably the same as I’ve always done, hook up some drums, find a dope loop, and then fill it around that. I would do a few variations on the drum pattern, put in some extra sounds and stuff – all very simplistic. I have used the Akai s950 for every beat I have made from Premonitions onwards. I put all the samples through a Makie mixing desk with some compression on the drums and bass, a little reverb and EQ the hell out of stuff on the desk. I don’t know where the ‘Liquid Diction’ sample was from. ‘Deadly Combination’ came from Star Wars soundtrack (the Jawa theme music) and ‘India’ came from some Bollywood soundtrack I found for £1 in a charity shop.
Ed: It was a professional studio and cost Jehst quite a bit of cash I think. This pressure of paying for time resulted in some stress, especially if MC’s were taking forever to record their verses. The thing is, we didn’t mix the tracks properly, maybe I didn’t even have the Mackie desk then, I don’t remember, maybe not because we just came out of the main output of the 950 and of Jehst’s sampler and did it like that.
It could have been mixed a lot better, a 100 times better, but we were still learning then! I was there for most of the sessions.
Joey GZus ‘Cartoon Hip hop Vol. 3
UK MC Joey GZus has been grinding on the underground circuit forging himself a name up north so Black Budget Entertainment took the time to review his latest release ‘Cartoon Hip Hop Vol. 3’
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Bone and Delbwoy took time out of their busy schedule knitting together the fabric of society to catch up with the man behind the new UKHH.com mix CD, Mr Lingo. Mr Lingo is the founding father of the Funk from the Trunk crew who have been shredding dancefloors across the UK.
Five years on from setting up the infamous brand, Lingo & FFTT have not looked back, finally arriving here at UKHH towers to produce the wonderful “Cache Well Spent” CD. The FFTT collective has since showcased some of the world’s finest funk acts such as The Bamboos & The Haggis Horns, and Lingo has supported artists including Fat Freddys Drop, Breakestra, Ugly Duckling, Questlove and The Nextmen
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Set up in 1999 and still reppin’ the best in homegrown music we are back on the scene with a fresh look, new content and all the reviews and interviews you need to understand what’s what in British hip hop.
To promote the launch we’ve linked up the good people at Funk From The Trunk to refresh some real hiphop gems for our third mix cd titled “Cache Well Spent”. Read More
Gunshot are stalwarts and soon-to-be legends of the UK scene. With their 3rd LP ‘International Rescue’ about to be released (if you don’t count the unreleased 2nd one and the singles compilation). ukhh.com’s 2-Hip caught up with Mercury to find out what’s been happening.
So what has Gunshot been up to in these years that you’ve been away from recording?
[Mercury] Well, with this LP we took on board much more responsibility then with our previous excursions. Thus we took care of the artwork ourselves, produced and wrote (as we always did!), and mixed our own songs, tried a bit of self management and basically just wondering what the hell we were doing on a shit label such as Words of Warning! LP took about 2 years to complete, partly because of our work tempo (meticulous, but painstakingly slow at times!), partly because of our frustrations with aforesaid record label.
What was the main delay about for ‘international rescue’ and are you pleased with the end result?
[Mercury] As said earlier, because we did absolutely everything from the bottom up, took a lot longer than expected. Are we pleased with the result? Definitely. With this LP, we made a conscious effort to try and construct songs, which stirred the heart. Rix is a big fan of Philip Glass, Ennio Morricone and such like. In fact me and him share quite similar musical tastes so it wasn’t hard for us to lay down the foundations for what we wanted to do with this LP.
What can we expect from the new album, more of the same or Gunshot coming from a different angle?
[Mercury] Gunshot will always be characterised for our hard-edged form of Hip-Hop, but what a lot of people don’t know is that perhaps the secret of our sound, more than anything else, rests on the track sequencing. When I say track sequencing, I mean what order the finished tracks will appear on a LP. Patriot Games was more than the sum of its parts. It was a master class in how to keep the listener glued to their speakers for 45 minutes. With this LP we attempted to do the same thing, but this time around you can definitely hear a level of maturity in our songs which was perhaps lacking in our earlier work.
[quote]The future of UK hip-hop is orange![/quote]
Where you surprised at how well your other albums did, like in France?
[Mercury] Yes and no! Although we had a certain level of success in France, it was no way near the level of sales that IAM or NTM would make. Nevertheless, Gunshot has always had a strong link with France. Our first label, Vinyl Solution, was owned and run by 2 French guys and our very first TV appearance and video was done by a French TV station. Its just a shame that we never exploited our success in France earlier on in our career. I know that with “Battlecreek Brawl”, we inspired the likes of NTM and created a bit of a following off the back of that one 12″. Who knows what might have happened if we had toured extensively out there. Never mind!
You were on the recent ‘Pioneers’ video, do you see that sort of exposure good for the UK scene as a whole?
[Mercury] Yep for sure! Only problem is, if it weren’t for Disorda, and people like him, nobody would even bother to make a video let alone make it available to the wider world. Right now, there’s orders for that video in Japan and that’s all down to Disorda. You gots to love the guy.
How do they see the future of UK Hiphop?
[Mercury] The future of UK Hip-Hop is orange!! Only joking, seriously though things seems to be looking promising, but then it always does around this time of year!! Whether UK Hip-Hop is any success depends on a raft of quality acts penetrating the pop charts. I think we all know that is what we need and there is no point pretending otherwise. I’m fed up with people saying that people should make UK Hip-Hop for themselves and not for the money, I was guilty of being that same person some 6 years ago, but what sense is there in doing something for the love and being constantly broke? When you need to get yourself a proper job (which we all must do at some point), how you going to tell any prospective employer that for the last 5 years you were making music you loved but got no money for it. They’d surely laugh in your face! The point then, is that unless the UK Hip-Hop scene becomes capable of producing some financial income, then the UK Hip-Hop scene will always remain in it’s present state of being but not doing!
Back to ‘Pioneers’, you said that you start rapping after seeing some bloke called Darren rap at your local footy club, was it this simple and how did you progress from there?
[Mercury] Yep, it was that simple for me! Imagine finding out that somebody you’d seen day in day out and not once gave a second thought about suddenly turns out to have this talent which just leaves your jaw dropping. My thought was, if Darren can do it, then so can I. For the first year, I must have wrote a rhyme a day I was that excited!
How do you feel personally your rhyme style has changed over the years?
[Mercury] More mellow! I’ve always been a deep person, but being a Leo I also have the worse of traits! Sometimes I think you can detect this in my rhyme style and the things I touch upon that Mercury, as you know him, is not necessarily one and the same person… I’m not schizophrenic though, or at least I hope not.
Do Gunshot plan on doing any touring in the future?
[Mercury] To be honest, probably not! I think we’ve probably got a little bit too old for that now, touring takes a lot out of you and despite the money being good, you have got to love what you’re doing in order to give your 100% best!
‘Scream 3’ why choose to do a song like this, is it anything to do with the film?
[Mercury] Chance would have been a fine thing! When constructing this LP we were thinking about different types of angles to try and raise the LP’s profile. Seemed like a good idea at the time to do this track since we knew that the film would be dropping soon. People might think we were on the soundtrack and make an association between the film and the LP.
Have you ever seen the scream films, what do you think?
[Mercury] Like the 1st and 2nd Scream movies (Prefer the 1st one). Haven’t seen the 3rd one as yet. Heard it’s not all that! Shame on you Wes Craven!!!
Did you find it hard putting ‘International rescue’ together, as you had a lot to live up to after you other releases?
[Mercury] Not really. We never make comparisons with any of our earlier works. Only criteria we stick by is to make sure that our new stuff is completely banging. Although if truth be told, Patriot Games will always have a special place in our hearts.
‘The English Patient’ how the hell did that come about, must have been a right task?
[Mercury] Quite easy really. A lot of the veterans on that track had grown up in the industry with us so there was a lot of mutual respect. Plus we probably all know how hard it has being for all of us so why not do a collaboration track? Should’ve been done a long time ago if you ask me.
How do you keep organised in a studio with that many heads all recording their bit for the track?
[Mercury] Well that track was recorded in various different locations. Since we use a VS880 portable digital recording studio, it makes things a lot easier. A lot of the verses on that track were recorded at different times and to be quite honest, that was probably the only way that the track could’ve been done what with Blade’s busy schedule and all.
Have you noticed the evolution in the Gunshot sound as much as everyone else had, and was this intentional to keep up with things a bit?
[Mercury] Well we’re not the same as we were in 1990 so the sound has matured as we’ve gotten older. I’d rather we kept on progressing since that it is the only way to keep people still interested in what you are doing. Although, I wouldn’t say that there was any intention on our part to keep up with the current Hip-Hop scene. We’ve always existed in our own bubble and I think a lot of our listeners appreciate that.
How much longer do you think you think you will stay together, what plans do you have as a collective and solo wise?
[Mercury] Good question! The truthful answer is, as far as I can see it anyway, is that this will probably be our last LP. I think we’ve probably said all that we can and to be quite frank, the time and effort it takes into making an LP is way too exhausting.
I think that 10 years, 4 LP’s and a banging website is a good enough legacy to leave behind.
Who knows though……nothing is ever truly written in stone as far as Gunshot are concerned!
As a member of one of the longest running UK groups, what knowledge have you learnt a long the way that you think newcomers could benefit from?
[Mercury] The main advice I would give to aspiring Emcees and groups is to enjoy what you are doing but don’t lose sight of real life!
I’ve yet to see anyone make a half decent living from UK Hip-Hop, including ourselves. And even if you are semi-successful, you’re going to have to play long con, meaning that you’re going to have generate a sustainable income to last you for a very, very long time. Remember, nobody will pay you a pension in the music industry so naturally everything rests with you.
The rewards can be duly satisfying if you are fortunate enough to reach the heady heights of real success, but the stakes are necessarily high and at the moment, with regards to UK Hip-Hop at least, the balance is not tipped in our favour. So always use your judgment and don’t keep trying to flog a dead horse if it’s obvious to you and everyone that shit will not work!!
Any last words, shout outs that sort of thing
[Mercury] Respect to all Gunshot sympathisers that have been down with us since long time. We’ve travelled a long and winding road and grown a lot wiser during the journey. Time to take a new direction but always with the same spirit of determination!
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