3 Broklyn Beats 45s

Broklyn Beast, Criterion and Doily cook up dub from scratch, 2001-2002

From a column called “Singles Again” (explained here), obscure little vinyl records picked off my shelf and decoded, with years of hindsight.

Broklyn Beast: “March of The Oil Barons”/”The Vampire Strikes Back” (2002)

Clearly there’s a concept of historical importance here, not to mention a craft project: The label – featuring a photo of George W. Bush with fangs drawn on his face — is not actually on the disc, but rather on a sticker inside the sleeve, ready for the listener to cut out and apply. “Since United Records wouldn’t print our label you get to do it yourself!,” exclaims a Brooklyn-addressed press release, which I also tucked into the sleeve. That same one-sheet explains that the record is “a one-off experimental breaks project with production by label heads doily and Criterion,” and calls the music “hard dub and chug fun for the summertime,” which overstates matters somewhat: I hear skipping vinyl noises, cartoon-like sound effects, distorted scratch sounds, all switching gears and shaped and repeated into a clanging facsimile of a rhythm. Sort of reminds me of the early works of U.K. industrial band Test Dept. The flipside is equally repetitive, but faster, and even more disruptive, with abrasive horn-sample additives. An intriguing curio that tries to answer the question: “How far from what people think of as music as you can go and still maintain a recognizable beat?” Not quite this far, but maybe close.

Criterion: “Race Traitor”/”Honky Talk Hits” (2001)

Two more aural experiments from a mad-scientist laboratory in Brooklyn, working overtime to resurrect dub without reggae life support: “Honky Talk Hits” lets an inverted piano mess and minstrel-show vocals that go “yeaaaahhh…..” dig through sand dunes’ worth of dirt; “Race Traitor” is closer to some of Adrian Sherwood’s more outlandish ‘80s productions, or maybe Keith LeBlanc’s 1983 12-inch “No Sell Out,” credited to Malcolm X. A repeated sample of Dick Gregory growls “We don’t dislike you, we hate your stinking white racist insti-tooo-shuns,” which slogan performs the musical duty of keeping the experiment grounded, so centrifugal force doesn’t yank everything apart.

Doily “2000 Dumb”/”Welcome Home” (2001)

The martial rhythm sounds submerged – on a submarine, maybe. Springs and gadgets and bellows (both kinds) succumb to nautical miles of deep-sea echo. Deadpan spoken phrases, seemingly from movie dialogue, emerge out of the abyss: “Shot down in cold blood.” Gradually the music turns into a busted pinball-machine on tilt, or better yet a firing range, heard through static over a broken field radio in the back of a Jeep with no doors. That’s the A-side; the B-side has not-quite-tuned-in shortwave transmissions evolving into dub reggae, or some bassline’s recognizable approximation thereof. The transmissions fade in and out, do backflips over Pymgy of the Ituri Forest drums, thicken into quicksand until you start losing your belongings. Word is that some Brooklyn gal pieced it all together.

Blurt, 2008