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Manual labour King of all scratch DJs Q-Bert says he's into hand jobs by MIREILLE SILCOTT
Moby tried a backlash of his own--his last album was guitar speedcore. Techno jocks remain distasteful to the Bifteck nation unless they come with a "rockin' live" show kit. Yet Ninja Tune saw a varied 1,000 people show up to the Medley two weeks ago; the X-Men crowded Groove Society with Plateau types the week before that. Say the name of DMC champion A-Trak to anyone and they'll go on about the future and the turntable-as-instrument. "I am anti-sample," says Q-Bert, the leader of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the Bay Area collective understood by all who trade in needles and records to be the best scratch DJs in the history of static. "Sampling is non-human. Scratching is totally human. The human feel is back, rather than the electronic thing. I mean, with sampling, all you have to do is press a button and the whole song plays! That's STUPID!" If Oasis weren't dabbling with 808s now, I'm sure they'd say the same. It's a guy thing. You've got to have your hand hitting or pushing some instrument to make it real. For sure, Q-Bert will find there are many anti-samplists about--only they never remixed Coldcut's "Beats and Pieces," the most sample-heavy track in pop. "They just sent me pieces of music and I scratched it up," says Q-Bert. "I'd never really heard that Bits (sic) and Pieces track before." The Skratch Piklz (mainly Q-Bert, Mixmaster Mike, Apollo and Shortkut, plus many honourary Piklz) are now working on an album. Q-Bert, a 27-year-old San Franciscan born Richard Quigevis, heard about scratching as many did, by listening to "Rokit" and being interested in breakdancing. In 1991, Q-Bert decided to try his first DMC mixing competition. The rest is well-noted history: three world titles and a message from DMC in 1994 that the Piklz couldn't enter the competition anymore because their talent was intimidating others from entering. "Meant to be," shrugs Q-Bert. "We got into music making instead of battling." He and the Piklz also helped set up the ITF--the International Turntablist's Federation, along with scratchers such as New York's X-Men, as an alternative to the DMC competition. "At the DMC you have six minutes to do your routine. The ITF is more of a challenge from another point of view. It works in minute and a half [sequences]--one guy will go up, and then another guy goes against him. Then they'll go for a second round. They get eliminated that way. So it's like a battle type thing. It's more spontaneous, more hands-on." At Sona, Friday, Sept. 26. Luc Raymond, Ray Ray, Redd Dredd and Tiga in the bar. Doors at 9pm. $20 |
When washed-up techno-Christer Moby was asked what he thought about sampled music getting through to North America, he said, "I'm waiting for the backlash."