Monday, October 31, 2011

" The Bomb Squad Speaks "



While scoping out the Ego Trip blog (Chairman Mao) I spotted an interview with one of my main production influences, Hank & Keith Shocklee (Bomb Squad)....

When they came out with their "Wall of Sound" approach they instantly rearranged what I thought a Hip Hop producer was....They were so unpredictable with their beats that you never knew what types of sounds you would hear....

CM- " That style was reflected in the hectic nature of your production as well—the interludes, the dense, multi-layered walls of sound.

Keith: I think that came about because we was excited about what we were doing and we wanted to keep everybody’s attention. Being DJs and understanding the dance floor, we knew that when your record’s not full, it becomes stagnant. We liked to put stuff in a record so later on, after you heard the record like 12 times, you’d be like, “Yo, I didn’t know they put that in there!”

But the thing was, we put in stuff that made sense. I seen a lot of people copy the stuff that we were doing, but it just didn’t fit their records. We never put anything in a record that didn’t fit the record. We went through a lot of samples. A lot of samples! We liked confusion, but we still kept it at a point where it was danceable, it didn’t crowd anything and you always understood the song ".

READ THE REST HERE...

1 comment:

Donaleski said...

Yo the Bomb Squad were probably the only ones who could produce in such a way. Like some P Brothers from way back. Today I still like to listen to P.E but I have to say the instrumentation is sometimes too heavy… at the same time they forever changed my life.

All good ma G