who do you think is good at scratching

tomfun

Well-known member

Craze is the dj i think has a nice balance of funkiness, swing and skill. I think Hype sounds okay for the time, i don't think he really progressed past the pre-flare techniques, which would have probably benefited him for d&b.

There's a sort of skill that Premier, Shadow, Cut Chemist and others employ where they keep it quite rhythmical, repeat patterns, copy an element of the track they are scratching that makes it more what you'd call "Rhythm Scratching" Obviously Primo is doing it a lot slower than the other two i mentioned, but it has the same effect.

The modern era of ultrapitch scratching opens up the medium for a lot more of this, but scratching itself has moved more into a weird hobbyist pastime that is done exclusively over minimalist trap 808s. Which is a shame, or maybe it isn't cos 99% of scratching done anywhere is absolute dogshit tbh.

Ruftone makes a lot of ultrapitch scratch records and does wee demos of what can be done with them that show the potential.

 

tomfun

Well-known member

Dynamix II - Feel The Bass (1988 and has nice scratching for the time)


Hijack - Doomsday Of Rap (1988 this group's scratching was leagues ahead of anyone at the time, technique-wise)
 

tomfun

Well-known member

Q-Bert on DR Octagon's "Bear Witness" was incredible for the time, shame he is a conspiracy theorist nut/maga chud now. I hung out with him in the 00s and he was really nice.
 

tomfun

Well-known member
For juggling, Mista Sinista and the Xmen in general were incredible. Again, always inventive but still musically coherent. Not just about speed or dexterity for dexterity's sake.


Is anyone as funky as the funky president though? J-Rocc is hands down my favourite person to hear rock doubles of anything.
 

hint

party record with a siren
There was a brief window where this was the pinnacle of battle DJing. Noize juggling 2 different vocals like this
"I'm number one" / "And you wanna step up?" / "Sucker DJs" / "Suck my nuts".
This routine even got pressed on vinyl. Strange time.

 

william_kent

Well-known member

If we're going down that road, DJ Aladdin drunkenly rambling on the mic for 3 minutes before doing the sloppiest,
worst dj set ever at a convention dedicated to scratching and turntablism is almost heroic.

When he trips up and falls flat on his face at the end is just the icing on the cake...
 

tomfun

Well-known member
There was a brief window where this was the pinnacle of battle DJing. Noize juggling 2 different vocals like this
"I'm number one" / "And you wanna step up?" / "Sucker DJs" / "Suck my nuts".
This routine even got pressed on vinyl. Strange time.


Noize came into the record shop i worked at when i was a teenager, quite a charming fellow.

He pulled a record out for me to check and was like "You should check this out, it is dope and has some breaks on it"

It was a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band album... I thanked him, it actually did have an open drum break on there as well.


There's a clip of Danny Breaks doing some early 90s sounding scratching on here, who were the main proponents of scratching over hardcore apart from him and Hype? Was that it?
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Weird how you never hear anyone talk about these guys anymore. I guess 'cos they're not from NY? They seemed to be massive bitd. Admittedly my perspective came almost entirely from Mike Allan on Capitol so may be wonky. I used to have some live DJ Cheese sessions on tape.

 

william_kent

Well-known member
Weird how you never hear anyone talk about these guys anymore. I guess 'cos they're not from NY? They seemed to be massive bitd. Admittedly my perspective came almost entirely from Mike Allan on Capitol so may be wonky. I used to have some live DJ Cheese sessions on tape.



Tackhead featuring DJ Cheese - Is There a A Way Out ( King of The Beat )

On-u Sound classic
 

william_kent

Well-known member

R.L. Burnside - Hard Time Killing Floor ( 2000 )

How about scratching when you least expect it? An update of the Skip James classic featuring out of context scratching to piss off the blues purists
 

phil.

Well-known member
I've always been impressed with Jeff Mills' scratching on "La Di Da Di" starting about 1:10 into the mix here. Esp considering this is from Detroit in '86. (Upload is slightly mislabeled, this is circa June 1986 and from Mojo's show which was airing at WHYT at the time)
 
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