Blockhead – The Music Scene (2009) [Ninja Tune] // Grade: A
Ok, let’s get straight to it. Music comes from a lot of places, and some music comes from other music—and that’s called sampling. Sampling started, in its most elemental states, when humans realized that they could change the character of sounds. It slowly changed from a novelty to a compositional means. To do a very broad, sweeping analysis one might highlight these moments in a genealogy of sampling; when Cage composed Imaginary Landscape no. 4; when Pierre Schaeffer recorded Étude aux chemin de fer; when Holger Czukay cut up Canaxis; when Eno and Byrne collaged My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. But, for all that the Avant Garde did with sampling, it amounts to little more than a footnote once you get to hip hop. Kool Herc, Bambaata, Flash, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl, and other pioneers captured the essence of the praxis of their progenitors, and instilled it with a distinct vitality—hip hop gave sampling its legs. It was by way of hip hop that sampling spread to the masses and became one of the marks of contemporary culture.
Hip hop’s flourishing occurred in sync with a flourishing in the instrument business, and savvy manufacturers began creating products that moved sampling from professional studios equipped with exorbitantly expensive CMIs and such, to bedrooms equipped with SP1200s and MPC60s. So, the same movements that brought hip hop to the masses also carried it back into more cultish circles—as the equipment became more affordable one need not worry on recouping costs in excess of $100,000. As samplers became incredibly affordable musicians began working in markets that didn’t privilege hits, but instead looked back towards hip hop’s roots.
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