Part 3 of Season of the Vogue Witches. From the Weird Limited Cassette Mixtape (50 copies) INVASION OF THE BODY WITCHES – to be released in august 2010 on CDX. Join Mater Suspiria Vision on facebook for newest updates:
Florida didn’t innovate the techniques that Houston, Texas’ DJ Screw brought to the style that we know as Chopped and Screwed, but Florida was the first to slow the records down, making the bass drop even lower for the speakers and giving an eerie feel to the music. I’m not really interested in saying who’s first in the sense of who’s better or whatever, I just find it interesting how something that first had an affect on me over 20 years ago still resonates and has found a place once again in my life with newer music. It’s interesting to me personally to see how these ideas are being appropriated in a new music style that is only a few years old and seems to be international already. Bands such as Mater Suspiria Vision, S4LEM, Fostercare, White Ring, oOoOO, Madden, and others are all using elements of dragged, screwed, and slowed styles in their music for effect.
You may know all about that Chopped N Screwed style of rap made famous in Houston, Texas by DJ Screw, but you may not know about the original slowed style from Miami that DJs such as Jam Pony Express, Disco Dave, and DJ Fury popularized in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I’m originally from Ft. Myers, Florida which is on the gulf, just south of Tampa. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on those Miami Bass mixtapes and radio shows I used to listen to in the late 80’s and it jogged my first remembrances of slowed-down rap. I had a friend in 9th grade (which for me was in 1988) who used to go to the flea markets and pick up mixtapes by Jam Pony Express. He’d dub me the copies of ones he thought were the best. I remember walking around in headphones listening to these tapes feeling like there was something mysterious and strange in their sound. These guys were yelling into the mic all kinds of crazy things, making up lyrics, whatever else the fuck they wanted; they were all over the mic and the mixer. It was messy and crazy, but I loved it. That was also around the time that a new station playing Miami Bass and Booty Bass in Naples, Florida called 91.5 “The Spark” started. I was addicted to that stuff. MC ADE, Gucci Crew, MC Shy D, DJ Magic Mike, 2 Live Crew. As early as 1990, I remember some of the guys driving to school were playing bass music out of their speakers that was reversed, slowed-down, or just fucked up in some way. I didn’t really think about it then as anything other than just something we did as kids growing up in Florida. I didn’t realize then that it wasn’t going on all over the states; I didn’t even realize that it was the start of what could be called a movement in music. Around 1994, a friend of mine got an apartment on the strip of Ybor City in Tampa. On the weekends we would sit on his terrace listening to the cars driving up and down the strip that were playing super-slowed down bass music tapes… tapes dragged to a crawl. It was strange sounding, kinda spooky and interesting. It wasn’t until the late 2000’s that I learned about DJ Screw even though he had been around since the early 90’s. My ideas of slowed/dragged tracks came strictly from Florida influences. It got me thinking recently that I should do some research and really get a sense of how and when all of this began in Florida and it lead to some interesting discoveries.
Jam Pony Express are pioneering DJs from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida who have been pushing their unique style of regulating mixes since 1981. They were slowing-down mixes and making them available to the public in the late 80’s.
DJ Fury coined the term “Drag/Dragged” back in the late 80’s for his own tracks that he slowed-down for effect. The first international release of a song that was slowed this way was in 1991 from a track entitled “Twenty 15’s” on Kings of Bass from DJ Fury’s group Bass Patrol. The term is recently being used by DJs as a substitute of the word “screwed” (as in “Dragged n Chopped”).
Finally, here are some interviews I came across from TampaHipHop.com after googling for a history of slowed-down Florida Bass. They are illuminating and still need to be fact-checked, but this could lead to an interesting chapter on the history of slowed rap music.
“Rock-It-Rod: A True Tampa Legend” from TampaHipHop.com
ROD: Yeah… You’re quite correct. That slowed down stuff started right here in the south. There used to be a guy, Money B., who used to put out slowed down tapes in Tampa. He was putting them out before me, and we started in ‘89 or ‘90. And for a while there, Money B. was the only person you could get those slow tapes from. But then, when we started makin’ them, that’s when it really took off. See, now, when you come to Tampa, you see a CD stand here and you see a CD stand there. But when I was doin’ it, there was none of that. There was only one place to come and get it, ya know? Everything was regulated, and the thing that put us above the rest was that we put out quality. We used to put all good songs on the tapes. Some guys would put two good songs, and then a bullshit track. And then, our quality was better than everybody else’s. Our quality of recordings was beyond what everybody else was puttin’ out. But yeah, it didn’t start in Texas. It started here and in Miami.
“The Truth about Doc D.” from TampaHipHop.com
Doc D: That was when I was away for college at C.G. Happ’s on Orange Ave. in Daytona. I got a strong-ass following because the Kappas on B.C.C. had me doin’ all their parties. The Masons had me DJing all their parties. Anytime they had a party off the yard, they made sure I was the one DJing. I mean, they had DJs that were doin’ their thing on the yard, but people looked at me as the person that would get the party going and keep the party going. It was an egotistical thing though. There used to be DJs up there that would try and shun me. When I came back from college, DJs in Tampa started shunning me. Some of the other members of Bass Style was shunning me away and didn’t really want me to mix tapes with them. Rated “R” and them didn’t really want me to make tapes with them. It was like my style was more complex than theirs was. They was more or less used to regulating on the mic like Jam Pony tapes. Opposed to me, I was a mixologist. Anything that could be mixed, I did it. I didn’t care what it was. Even if it was mixing slow jams with some Miami Bass. You know what I’m sayin’? I was doin it. That was my style… And if it was slowed down!!! That was another thing. Before Rock-it-Rod really came into having his little business going, I used to open up my tape decks, go into them, and slow ‘em down.
KRAM: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. When we talked to Rod a few weeks ago, we talked about slowed down tapes. He brought up a name Sandman and I had never heard before. He said that Money B. was the originator of the slowed down mixtapes.
Doc D: Not really. Money B. started doing slowed tapes in about ’89. The first person to have those was Disco Mike in ‘86. Everyone else started making them after Disco Mike… Bass Style, Rock-it-Rod, Money B., etc. I really don’t know the history on it, but I think Disco Dave down in Miami did those tapes first, but they wasn’t feelin’ that shit down there. But as far as being from Tampa and getting them known, it was Disco Mike. And there was actually a time for about a 2 year stretch that people was calling me “The King of Slowed Down Tapes.” I just just put out so many tapes back-to-back. And then, I jumped on the CDs before anyone else in Tampa. I was recording my shit on CDs before anyone else was even thinking about it.
White Ring are the duo of Kendra Malia and Bryan Kurkimilis. They are quickly circulating around the internet with some heavy buzz over the last few months. They create dark electronic music in the vein of S4LEM and Mater Suspiria Vision influenced by Southern Hip-Hop, Trance, Gothic Shoegaze, and Industrial music. Deep groaning and buzzing basslines swell in a black pool of heavily layered oppressive atmospheres and depressive melodic synth lines. Visions and Occult images float within the pineal eye in a surrealist haze of black magick. This is danceable doom; haunting and visceral (and one of our favorite bands right now).
WHITE RING
Filmed live at Cake Shop 02/20/10 by Todd Pendu
They have me at a loss for words, seriously one of my favorite bands right now… dark occult sounds and visions, a perfect marriage of heaven and hell… Enjoy
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