heads up seven up

Controller 7 interview + South Paw Symphony (Controller 7 mix!) by Buddy Peace!

The Bay Area’s own Controller 7 let us pick his brain a bit, allowing us to cover some hometown history and future plans. Humble and to the point, he breaks down his early path in music, his beatmaking process, and the making of his enjoyable ’02 release, Left Handed Straw. Here are seven questions and answers with the low-key beatsmith.

1.) How did you get involved in making beats?
I started with cassettes from The Colombia House music club. I then started buying cds [when they were still in the long boxes]. I bought a few hip-hop 12-inches when I was about 15 or 16, but I didn't have a turntable. I would sneak into my brother’s room and record them onto tape when he was gone. He had one of those crappy all in one stereos that had a turntable on top. I eventually got more and decided to get my own turntable. I had a crappy 8-track cassette receiver that I used for my stereo. It had an aux input and a phono input and I was able to push a button halfway down, allowing both a cd player and a turntable to play at the same time. It was like a mixer without separate channels or faders. I was hooked and shortly after bought some 1200s. I bought them from the classifieds in the newspaper when I was 16 or 17 and I still use the same 1200s today. Eventually I decided I wanted to make my own beats. I bought a Roland MS-1 sampler, which is a terrible sampler. I remember telling my parents that "all I need now is a drum machine and I'll be able to make beats." I bought a Roland DR-5 or something like that. Also terrible. It was a bad combo and wasn't what I wanted.

I used to shop at Tower Records a lot and I met Dave Dub, who had been on an early Peanut Butter Wolf EP. He worked there and we used to talk whenever I’d go in there. He was in a group with this guy named Tape Master Steph. They knew I had a Tascam 4-track and asked if they could come over and record a song. Steph brought over his Ensoniq EPS and I was blown away. It sampled and had a sequencer! That was amazing to me. I found one at a used shop, sold the ms-1 and the dr-5 and moved onto the EPS. That's how it all started for me.

2.) Walk new producers through your production process.
I've gone through different phases. When I first started I was just really innocent and didn't know what I was doing. I would get so excited to hear something looping and throw some drums on it. I would make beats really fast.

These days I actually take more time and plan things better. I used to just grab stuff and make a beat in an hour or so. There was definitely a benefit to that. It was fun and carefree and I didn't get hung up on minor details. Now I'll spend more time trying to get things right. I like to figure out the whole map of the song ahead of time. Almost like an outline for an essay.

I usually start with a main sample. Sometimes I’ll start with drums, but I usually start with the sample first. I’ll go through tons of records and look for things that work well with what I’ve already got. Sometimes I'll spend days, months, or even years looking for something that I think is missing. A lot of the time I just never find that missing element. That's kind of what differentiates a beat and a song for me. Some samples are more flexible and allow me to develop on them and the ideas come naturally. Sometimes I'll be working on something and there is just nothing I can add to change it. So, in those cases I usually just decide that that one will be just a "beat" and not a "song" if that makes any sense.

3) Left Handed Straw is a great album; the artwork, everything was smooth.Talk about making it and describe the time in which it was made.
I made Left Handed Straw when I was going to Berkeley. I was so excited about music then and I was eager to work on anything I could. I made most of that stuff really fast. The funny thing is that a lot of the beats were made in an hour or so, but piecing the whole album together took about 6 months. I had most of the individual parts done, but I would spend 3 or 4 days getting the transition from one beat to another right. Sometimes there would be a drop in record static or something that just felt wrong to me and I'd go back in and add little things to make it sound more seamless. I'd add little things that you don't really hear, but help the overall flow sound more natural.

I made it using a 4-track and an mpc2000. The funny thing about the 4-track was that once I finished a section I was stuck with it. It wasn't like pro tools where I could easily take a chunk from the beginning and move it to the end. So, when you listen to LHS you are listening to how it came together over the 6-month period. I laid out the first 10-minutes while I was on Christmas break in 1999. I was originally piecing it all together as a mixtape for my friends to listen to. It was like a combo of all these beats I'd made over the past year and a bunch of little skits and records I had sampled for other projects. I made a lot of stuff specifically for LHS and specifically to fill in certain spaces. I had a micro-cassette recorder to record lectures at school, but I ended up using it to record sounds all over Berkeley. A lot of that stuff ended up creating the atmosphere of the record. There are a lot of things on that record that embarrass me, but I still enjoy it for what it is.

4.) As a producer, what is your dream project?
I used to want to make some magnum opus sample based epic masterpiece, but I'm not all that concerned with that these days. I'd like to make a whole album with a vocalist, but I've never really found a good fit. I'm slowly working on a few projects right now. I don't have any real dream project. I'm just happy working on stuff I like to listen to. I'm not trying to be famous. I just want to make stuff that people respect and enjoy.
5.) How did Buddy Peace’s South Paw Symphony happen?
Buddy Peace bought a t-shirt off of me about 7 years ago. We ended up talking through email and he sent me a cassette he made of some remixes and mixes. I really liked it. It had some great stuff on it. We've kept in touch since then and he's probably sent me about 30 other mix cds. He's crazy. I actually can't remember if he asked me if he could do the South Paw Symphony thing or if he just did it. It was right after my "expansions" ep came out. He did a great job. It's kind of like his take on my music. It's more than just a mix. He did some re-edits and made some tracks of his own using my songs. He's an incredibly nice guy.

***Buddy Peace's South Paw Symphony in its entirety below. Thanks Bud!

6.) What’s a cool, obscure track you think our readers should check out?
Dennis Olivieri ‘s "I Cry In The Morning". It was made famous because DJ Shadow sampled it for 6 Days, but the original is amazing. It's just a beautiful song.

***Hear “I Cry In The Morning”.


7.) What’s on your plate next?
I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. I've been on a bit of a musical vacation. I haven't put anything out in awhile, but I've got some stuff done. Hopefully I'll get some stuff out soon. I've got about two albums worth of stuff done. One is more of a collection of beats and out-takes from the past 7-years and the other is more of a focused album, along the lines of an updated Left Handed Straw. I've got some mixes done too. Some half-done. Some ideas still in my head.

***For more info on Controller 7 and his releases pictured above, please visit Controller 7.com

***To find out more about Buddy Peace and his ongoing work, visit his myspace and 2600 Recordings.

Obsessive Compulsion

Maybe I'm just extra-susceptible to the power of suggestion, but from the first spin, I've been obsessed with Obsession, an incredible compilation of funky international psych. The project was put together by Mike Davis (no relation to design genius/DJ/2600 Kid Mike Davis) owner of successful NYC record shop Academy Records and released by the ever-reliable Bully Records. The sounds contained within its grooves are nothing less than bugged-out, fuzzed out, surprisingly DJ-friendly goodness. I had never heard of a single tune or artist featured on the comp, so I decided to contact Mike and get us all a little bit more information on his collection and the origins of the project.

WTTM: How long have you been collecting records?
Mike Davis: I've been collecting since I was about 8, which was 1970 for me.

What was the first record you ever bought?
It was a 45 of "Venus" by Shocking Blue. Still have it. That was when I learned the B-side is sometimes better.

The most recent?
The "Space Traveling" 45 by Robert Starks and the Geniuses.

What genres and/or time periods are you particularly interested in?
That's a tough one. I have a tendency to go for raw, primitive examples of all kinds of things, but I can also appreciate some slick stuff as well. Any thing that catches my ears, really. I go from the early 1900's till now.

Owning a record store, you must be exposed to a massive volume of titles. Do you find yourself sacrificing your personal collection in order to keep the store stocked, or the other way around?
When I first opened my own store I put about 300 records from my collection out for opening day to spice things up a bit. I still occasionally thin out things from my collection but I've never had to get rid of anything I wasn't willing to part with for the store's sake. Both stores have been profitable since opening so I never had that pressure.
I've gotten some nice records as a result of owning the stores, but a lot of things I've been getting recently, weird psychy stuff from far off lands, isn't ever going to come in to the store too often, so I've had to make an effort to track them down.

Was there a particular track that Obsession was built around? In other words, what was the initial impetus for compiling the collection?
I guess the main tracks would be the Atomic Forest and the Flavio Kurt songs. They are just so great and so obscure that I really wanted other people to know them. I had been thinking about making a collection when some one from Finder's Keepers approached me with the idea. I didn't end up doing it with them, but that really got me thinking about exactly what cuts I thought were the best and would really blow people's minds.

What would you say are the characteristics that link the tracks?
That's another tough one. They make perfect sense as a group to me but that's no guarantee somebody else is going to hear it that way. It's a little different in that it's not thematic, i.e. it's not "60's Peruvian Garage" or "Nigerian Afro Psych". Basically, the songs on Obsession are psychy tunes from around the world (non-European countries in particular), with strong rhythms and unique approaches to their genre. For example, there are very few genuinely psychedelic descarga boogaloos like the Sonora Casino cut, and the Atomic Forest is probably the only hard psych disco funk cut from anywhere, much less India. That said, I wanted them all to be accessible to people that just wanted to hear great tunes.

How did you acquire these amazing records? Your store? Other stores? Ebay? Travel? A little of each?
Years ago a guy from Argentina came into the store with a stack of old Argentinian rock albums, Almendra, the 1st Pappo's Blues, La Pesada and others. I had no idea what they were at the time, but they looked really cool. He wanted a lot of money for them, and I wasn't sure, but they looked too promising to let them walk out the door, so I bought them.
Well, they turned out to be awesome and I started to learn more about them. I got some more records from that guy and I was able to get in touch with a seller from Argentina that apparently had access to old stock. I got lots of Argentinian and Brazilian records, unplayed originals. I took chances on some stuff and that set me off with the idea that there were really great music scenes in countries all over the world back in the late 60's and early 70's. The records on Obsession come from all over, but not too many came in the door at the store. I wish I had more stories about travelling and meeting people but it's hard for me with the two stores to get away. Mostly I work email and personal contacts trying to track stuff down. Some things I got on eBay as well.

How did you link up with Bully, and how did they end up releasing the mix?
I'm friends with DJ Signify, who is an artist on Bully. We would hang out and listen to crazy records and we had pretty similar taste. Marco at Bully had already done the record of unreleased Silver Apples and wanted to do some more things along the lines of reissues, so Signify suggested the idea of having me do a comp. Marco came over to my place and I played him a lot of stuff and he gave me free reign to put Obsession together exactly how I wanted it. He was patient while I spent a lot of time getting the mastering and the cover together. I thought it was important to get the sound as good as possible, even though some of the originals aren't exactly high fidelity.

What has the response been like?
The response has been really great, as good as I could have hoped for. It's not the kind of thing that is going to go mainstream, but considering what it is, it has done really well and I haven't read a bad review. I like that all kinds of people are into it. We get asked a lot in the store for it, and I don't think a lot of the people asking have any idea I was involved. I think that's a good review.

Obsession is available now on CD and Double LP from www.bullyrecords.com

Please enjoy this sample track, "Gonese Don Cicegim" by Turkish rocker Ersen. In the extensive liner notes, Mike describes the track thusly:
"Ersen's place in Turkish Rock was established by his 1972 single "Kozan Dagi," a pioneering fusion of Turkish Folk and Western Rock... "Gonese Don Cicegim is one of Ersen's numerous collaborations with Kardaslar, a prolific group led by the heavy bass of Seyhan Karabay."