There's obviously a lot of lazy records around that do rely on sampling an entire hook. And there's also some really inspired sampling that isn't obvious at all. A couple of days ago I was playing Carl Bean's "I Was Born This Way" to a guy at work, and saying just check this tiny little snippet that Pal Joey sampled and created a whole, completely unobvious, hook out of for "Dance" (it's towards the end, just at the beginning of a break). Theo Parrish does it and stamps his whole personality all over it. KDJ takes two samples that just *shouldn't* work together and they do. Or Shake does it and you'd never know it. So sampling can be just as technically impressive as building from scratch, to my ears. It's definitely "made it" as an instrument :)
These days, though, the number of times I put the needle on the record in a shop and just heard a great break from a record looped ad infinitum is ridiculous. There's nothing there. I'd much rather listen to "Groovin' You" than "Disco's Revenge" - not only does it have those bits folk like in "Disco's Revenge" but it's got a whole load more good bits. But there's as much misuse of other gear as there is of samplers. Over compressed drums strike me as cheap trick. As do nonsense vocal samples that say "Yeah!". Or pointless filtering, delaying, vocoders... The list is clearly quite long :) With samplers it's just a bit easier to pin down, maybe, as people are trying to say something in someone else's voice, and so end up saying nothing at all - though, saying that, there's plenty of records I once liked that now I know the original sound very tired (a lot of old Glenn Underground stuff, for example). Maybe that's means I'm just a fickle fellow whose opinions should be disregarded. Good music, done well, shines through, whatever it's made with, I hope. And if I get bored of some of it, well, who cares... Jonny --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
