Breakbeat Tuesday – Eastern Bloc Funk

This week I’m going to talk a little about Janko Nilovic. Who is Janko Nilovic you ask? That is a good question, and so let me shed some light on this dude…

Mr. Nilovioc is a Montenegro born, French based jazz composer whose keys can be found on a ton of  (mostly library) records of the 60s and 70s. Think kind of like European jazz space fusion, with elements of psychedelic rock combined with classical Baroque music, and you’ve kind of got an idea of his sound, Janko is an absolute genius with his arrangements and the way he’s able to convey moods with his compositions.

According to his official Facebook page which is the only information that I’ve been able to find on him on the internet, “Janko Nilovic gets up every morning at 5. After breakfast, he works till 1 o’clock. Then he has lunch, an afternoon siesta and continues to work until late evening. He loves tennis, dance and horses.”

Now tons of people have touched his music for hip-hop from The Beatnuts to (most notably) No I.D. for Jay-Z’s “D.O.A. (Death Of Autotune).” But here’s a little piece that I unearthed that I think has been completely unscathed by those greedy thieving hip-hop producers and their dastardly sampling techniques. (No Albini!) They are kind of like the hardest smacking drums that I’ve heard in a while, and just perfect for this week’s edition of Breakbeat Tuesday. So I hope you enjoy, and respect the architects. I present to you, “Roses & Revolvers” from his 1973 album “Supra Pop Impressions.” As a bonus I have also included the very funky “In The Space” which you will see is the cut that No I.D. blessed for HOV’s call-to-arms anthem. The dude extracted some really good and powerful parts from the song but, as is often the case, when one listens to the original composition in its entirety it’s framed in a different and more powerful way in my opinion, proving that the song is greater than just being a sample-source. The song comes from the library record “Psyc Impressions” that came out in the late 60s and was repressed by Dare-Dare Records in 2003. Both the original pressing and the reissue are extremely hard to come by on vinyl. Shit, I don’t have either, but I’m always looking haha… Well, these MP3s will do for now – thank you modern technology. Enjoy!

Janko Nilovic “Roses & Revolvers” (Editions Montparnasse 2000, 1973)

Janko Nilovic “In The Space” (Dare-Dare, 2003)

Breakbeat Tuesday – If You’ve Got The Time…

Today I’m reaching back and going to lace with one of my all-time favorite breaks which just happens to be included in the almighty UBB series: Kid Dynamite’s “Uphill Peace Of Mind.” The first time that I heard the song, I swore it was some crazy Thin Lizzy B-Side that was never released or something. It rocks HARD, but has that certain special funk and swing that attracts a dude like me. I don’t really know much about Kid Dynamite but they were a group of Los Angeles based session players that were all over albums in the 70s, including playing with The Steve Miller Band. This is their one album though as a unit. Kind of interesting thinking about what made people discover this song though. It doesn’t really reveal anything about the break when you first listen to it, but then once the song hits the 2:55 mark, ooh lawd. Talk about a neck-snapping beat. I know you’ve heard it in the past, “You’ve got the time, I’ve got the time.” The way that John King hits the trap is a monster, and then the little piano vamp comes it, it’s nothing but butter. Poor Righteous Teachers, Super Cat and Just-Ice & KRS-One sure thought so.

Kid Dynamite “Uphill Peace Of Mind” (Cream Records, 1976)

As good as the Kid Dynamite version of “Uphill Piece Of Mind” is I really don’t think it comes anywhere close to how good the Lloyd Price version is. Of course everyone knows who Lloyd Price is, and although he’s universally acclaimed and acknowledged I think in certain “real headz” circles he often gets overlooked. His early work was incredible where he put his own spin on the beat of his native New Orleans. In the late 60s and early 70s he was one of the first American R&B singers to start messing with Jamaican rhythms, and in 1976 he put out the completely slept-on “Music-Music” album. Now I don’t know who’s version came first but both this one and the Kid Dynamite version came out in 1976. But where that version is a slow stomping hard-edged rock song, Lloyd’s version is an uptempo hard rocking SOUL song. But in true Lloyd Price fashion it touches on R&B, rock, funk and gospel. Really a banging song in any sense…

Lloyd Price “Uphill Peace Of Mind” (LPG Records, 1976)

Breakbeat Tuesday – Funky Italy

Okay I’ll admit that I used to be a full fledged member of the “cool guys club.” Yeah, I owned the Major Force Box Set, and I had a subscription to Grand Royal Magazine. Now I was definitely not one of “The Bitches” you heard? But in the late nineties when everyone had their finger on the pulse of everything “INDIE” I also had my finger on the pulse of everything “ALT.” One of the bands at the time I really checked for was Unkle which consisted of James Lavelle (the founder of Mo’ Wax Recordss,) Tim Goldsworthy (who went on to help create DFA Records) and DJ Shadow (who went on to yell at kids to stay off his lawn.)

U.N.K.L.E. was cool, like really cool. Perhaps maybe too cool, because I would play it to people and they would look at me sideways. But I thought it was groovy, and smart, and the beats were crazy knocking. The first song on the Psyence Fiction basically has the right ingredients for a winning song: Hard drums, Star Wars samples and Kool G Rap… and Cosmo is happy.

Fast forward to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina basically became the most terrible thing that many of us ever saw. The dudes over on Soulstrut started up the Heatrocks Campaign (see below for more information about that, or click for the current Heatrock For Haiti campaign) and one of the records that was put up was Tullio De Piscopo’s “Suonando La Batteria Moderna (Modern Drums – A Practical Guide).” I don’t remember if it was my homie Matthew Africa who put it up for charity of if he bought it, but I’ve always wanted that record since I saw it out there. It’s tough because it’s like a $400 Italian record of drum instructions, and that’s kind of a hard purchase to justify. But then again, cuts like these might make the case for dropping that loot. Here’s 2 cuts from the “Suonando la Batteria Moderna” album.

Tullio De Piscopo “Medium Rock” (Vedette, 1974)

Tullio De Piscopo “Samba Carnival” (Vedette, 1974)

Pretty nasty, if I do say so myself. Just goes to show you that you never know who’s got it and who doesn’t But to be honest. how are you gonna tell me this dude don’t got drums?

Breakbeat Tuesday – I Want Action

So for the past several weeks I’ve been raiding the rock crates for some breaks, but for this week’s installment I figured I would go back to the essence of this whole breaks thing and hit you with a true classic Ultimate Break & Beat.

First about the Ultimate Breaks & Beats – For those of you who don’t know, The Ultimate Breaks & Beats series was a bootleg compilation of records that was put together by “Breakbeat Lenny” Roberts and the one and only Breakbeat Lou… So I posted this entry and then my good friend and old roommate Konrad hit me up to set some of the record straight. About Breakbeat Lenny, directly from Konrad:

“As much as Lenny was a motivator behind UBB, Stanley Platzer was the breakbeat guru. He was the guy behind the counter of the Music Factory record store on 43rd and Broadway, back when Russell Simmons was still hustling incense in Times Square. he was this old kind of crotchety guy, typical old school New Yorker for the time. I used to go there as a kid in the early 80’s and you could find Grand Wizard Theodore on any given day grilling Stanley about records. He was a machine… you could describe just about any obscure part of any obscure record from the late 50’s into the late 70’s and he knew what it was and exactly where in that sandcrawler of a shop you could find it. As the story goes, Lenny had the idea to take these records that the bronx record boys were buying and make a compilation. Stanley reluctantly agreed to Lenny’s proposal and street beat records/UBB was born. That was maybe 1984ish. Then the hunt was on, Stanley became THE breakbeat authority after that until he died. His daughter was poised to become the breakbeat queen but the shop (and the block) was closed in the very late 80’s and the rest is Distory. Now it’s where ABC’s morning show is shot (or was it on the opposite side of the street where Planet Hollywood is? my memory is failing me!) This is the legacy of Guliani no one talks about…but don’t get me started!”

Thanks, dude! So these these were the songs that all these “Bronx record boys” – Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, Hollywood, Flowers, Pete DJ Jones – were buying and were playing. This collection of songs – all with pretty notable breaks – ended up becoming the Ultimate Breaks & Beats, and they were as diverse as possible, with funk records, disco, rare latin records, calypso cuts, new wave, even songs from The Rolling Stones and Tom Jones. But they all were accepted under the blanket classification as a UBB. Lenny and Lou put out many volumes of UBBs, and eventually directly from the StreetBeat series, producers in the 80s dug for beats and samples and ended up using the series to sculpt the sound of hip-hop. Pretty dope if you ask me. Lenny Roberts died not too long ago (and I believe Biz Markie ended up with Lenny’s incredible collection) but his legacy lives on. And as a DJ, I’ve always thought that it was an integral stepping stone in the development in your craft – to learn these breakbeats inside and out. Like if you call yourself a DJ and you don’t know your UBBs, I don’t what to say to you, son…

Orange Krush was a group that was founded in the early 80s and was one of the very first records that Russel “Rush” Simmons ever had his hands on. The group consisted of bassist Larry Smith, drummer Trevor Gale and guitarist David Reeves. Larry was the former bass player from the sweet soul group from the South Side of Chicago, Brighter Side of Darkness. Trevor was the drummer for the Leroy Burgess group Convertion. Together they put out what I consider to be one of the finest early 80s proto-hip-hop songs ever, 1982’s “Action.” From the opening 8 quarter notes, which seem custom made for a DJ to cut, the song is propelled into a very unique funky groove that is very different from the funk and R&B of the time, but isn’t quite a rap record.

The group disbanded after this, but all went on to secure their legacy. David Reeves renamed himself Davy DMX and became the DJ and guitarist for Kurtis Blow. Most notably, Larry Smith went on to produce records by Whodini, Jimmy Spicer, and most importantly, the early Run-DMC records. Arguably one could call Larry Smith one of the most important hip-hop producers of all time, specifically because of his innovations with drum machines and programming.

Orange Krush “Action” (Mercury, 1982)