This one takes us back to how this whole idea started. I’m working on a 12-song album titled “Affair Use”, that I will release as soon as I can in 2022. It’s been written (and all the main samples picked out) since the Fall, and I recorded a full demo version of it a few months ago.
All I need to do now is do a final version of the beats, by adding some additional drums and (maybe) other small elements, as the idea is for it to be raw and stripped down.
This short instrumental piece started with me working on trying to add drums to one of those songs from that upcoming album. After I programmed the simple pattern as a test, I was cycling through all the drum kits, and also swapping sounds in the kits, to see what I wanted to use. In that process, I accidentally swapped a snare for a “brass” sound. At first it sounded mangled, and I reached to quickly change it to what I was trying to hit, but right before I made the switch, it lined up and sounded…interesting. I decided to export that short 2-bar piece and revisit it later.
Later came. I was thinking I’d just make this a straight loop, maybe adding one small element, or just effects, and keep it about 30-45 seconds long. However, as I was finalizing that, the idea of the second part just hit me, so I tried it, and I dug the results.
The whole pattern has this stutter-step feel. It reminds me of warped vinyl. I have these flashbacks of searching for samples in the 80s/90s, and that horror when you find a great sample but the record is warped, or scratched! It usually meant moving on, and hoping maybe you find a better copy of the record one day in life.
However, at some point in the 90s, I learned to just experiment with those defective records. If it skips, sample the skipped part, see what happens. Are there a lot of clicks and noise because it’s so beat up? Fine, put the needle in the run-out groove and grab that noise, and see if you can do anything with it. I was just experimenting, letting no record go to waste. It usually didn’t yield results, but when it did, it was satisfying. And more importantly, all the attempts to make it sound decent, helped me learn new things with my equipment.
I suppose this is the digital version of that. Stumbling on odd sound pairings, or finding some charm in your less than perfect drumming timing, or forgetting to adjust the quantize properly before recording, etc… Of all of that can be found on this EP.
As for the song title, trust me, I don’t know anything about art history. But, when I finished this, I was thinking about what spaces that I would want to hear it played in, and for some reason, a museum is what I thought of. I actually would love a DJ residency at a museum or similar space…at least in theory. Anyway, at museums I often gravitate to paintings, so I was picturing myself looking at vintage paintings with this beat playing over the speakers. And, all the beats on this EP have a darker or edgier feel to them, so I simply googled “haunting images from famous painters”…and then quickly read through the first handful of results to find one that seemed to fit this beat. And, Caravaggio was quite the character, if my approximate 10-minute exploration into their life is to be believed as an accurate account.
3Wisemen Entertainment is the brainchild of Kevin Beacham, and is the over-arching brand for his various ventures of the
past and present; Stories About Songs Podcast (Coming Soon!), Time Travel Radio, RedefineHipHop, Redefinition Radio, Caught In The Middle Magazine, etc......more
An ode to the duo’s love of hip-hop; lively lyrical performances, in-your-face record scratching, and booming beats. Bandcamp New & Notable May 15, 2018
