RSSEardrum Messaged By Satan
F.M.2.0. – “Maniacs Confusion”
F.M.2.0. – “Hypnotic Disciple (Dirt Style Version)“
from Promotional Demo Only (Ace Beat Records, 1991)
Over the weekend I picked up the strange and mostly awful four track demo from FM20. The San Fransisco crew is mostly notable for providing the debut of would-be Invisibl Skratch Piklz DJ Apollo, Q-Bert & Mixmaster Mike (then going by The Shadow), who provide cuts and production. They are insanely talented DJs, as you might have heard, but not so skilled behind the boards. So I am mostly posting this in the hope that the three readers who actually still care about these guys will find it interesting.
The MCs – FMD & H20 – both try really hard to sound like Chuck D and seem like the type of kids who were probably a little too excited by the prospect of a Public Enemy/Anthrax collaboration. They even cut a rap rock dud “The Skull”, which I will spare you the displeasure of downloading. But they were also weirdly prescient, rapping about decaying skulls and dialect spitting fetuses a few years before that sort of thing would be in vogue. In fact it’s pretty unbelievable how many terrible hip hop trends were predicted on this tape – horrorcore, rap rock, turntablism, cassette only super syllabic space rap. It’s frightening.
16 Comments, Comment or Ping
rkm
How is turntablism a horrible trend Noz? Maybe it’s not the thing anymore, but it worked for a certain time and style.
Apr 29th, 2008
noz
Yeah and then it was ran into the ground quite painfully.
Apr 29th, 2008
rkm
Ok, I see what you’re saying now. A few forty-five-minute solo sets at concerts come to mind.
Apr 29th, 2008
trevitron
Turntablism always seemed to rely too much on technique (and I don’t mean style). As far as DJs go, it’d be awesome to see, in their prime, Kool Herc or, if I could resurrect them, guys like Larry Levan and Walter Gibbons spin.
Apr 29th, 2008
brandonsoderberg
Turntablism was awful and yeah, ran itself into the ground because it just entailed jerk-offy turn-table moves and tons of samples from every movie or cartoon that ever mentioned records or vinyl. I also think that it had a little bit of the thing of cashing-in on rap while not being rap, so people who didn’t like rap could dig it because it was like, Kid Koala scratching a trumpet solo all weirdly; a vaguely rockist concession in terms of the old “there’s no talent involved” argument…
Apr 29th, 2008
Tray
turntablism is REAL HIP HOP. No, I agree, I guess (although isn’t Michael Watts essentially a turntablist?), I just worry that the anti-turntablist backlash has roots in a, uh, contrarian, anti-elitist impulse, and that’s not good because we all know that elitism and snobbery are good things.
Apr 29th, 2008
padraig
turntablism:hip hop::prog rock:guitar bands
Apr 30th, 2008
G.M.P.
lmfao
one of your greatest posts ever
Apr 30th, 2008
jump
“…isn’t Michael Watts essentially a turntablist?”
actually tray you’re right, he invented the 3 click delayed flare. little known fact.
Apr 30th, 2008
Turntable Listen
No matter how bad the sounds from turntablism ended, I still love the sound of scratching. To me this is essential to hip hop. Seriously, just listen to company flow’s end-to-end burners to enjoy scratching in hip hop.
Yes, the likes of Kid Koala, Rob Swift (aka “jazz hands”),and even the solo efforts from Qbert turned it into some weird introvert be-bop pling-plong stuff, but there was also great albums made by D-Styles, Mixmaster Mike, DJ Faust etc that 100% hall-of-fame.
Apr 30th, 2008
Tray
To be honest, I know nothing about turntablism, but I will say that scratched hooks have become very stale. Although maybe someone will come along and revitalize the scratched hook genre; I’d like to think so.
Apr 30th, 2008
brandonsoderberg
Actual scratching is awesome, but that’s not what I think of when I hear “turntablism” and Michael Watts sucks anywayzzzz
May 1st, 2008
Adisa Banjoko
Truth is, in their TIME, FM20 was no joke. I seen them rip the stone (most y’all youngstaz don’t even know about that thuuuuur) and hella other spots.
They did indeed pre-date a lot of upcominf Hip-Hop trends. However, thats because they were a bit tooooo far ahead of the times. They packed venues when they did jams. I think, in retrospect, too much of the world was not ready. At the same time, I think that they had their own sound, but had not perfected it….
FM20 for life y’all…
I actually have one of their posters from WAAAAAY back. Those were the days :(
Peace,
Adisa
May 2nd, 2008
Adisa Banjoko
In unrelated stuff, what technology do you use to transfer tapes to digital files? I have a ton of old stuff I wanna transfer….Any ideas of where to start?
If you do, please holla: bishop@lyricalswords.com
One Love,
Adisa
May 2nd, 2008
baz
Read this a couple of times and had to talk about the turntablism debate. A fan since way back I have been waiting for the inevitable come around in popularity for turntablism. Fer christ sakes, the art form has been dead and resurrected three times. However, it doesn’t look like its going to happen and in fact there seems to be a quiet backlash happening. I can only say however that the whole turntable scene seemed to fall into a black hole of its own egoism. at the end of the day nobody wants to hear practice tapes or routines. That being said, i learned a lot about hip hop, the culture and genres of music I would have never thought about. I know the adage of being a kid and keeping it extra real with liking turntablism more then hip hop is a cliche at its best, there is no denying its place in the culture.
May 10th, 2008
Salt Noody
Hey, just stumbled by. Years ago I duped this from a friend but I neglected to write down the song titles. So I got tracks 2 and 4, I gather track 3 is “The Skull” since that’s the nutty Slayer-sampling track but that still leaves track 1, can you help me out?
Yeah, I about 6 months late but…
Nov 14th, 2008
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