Thursday 31 January 2013

Scruffy

I've got some time to kill, and its come to my attention I've only posted Mr. Scruff's later work. So today I'm going to correct that a bit, with some slices from his debut album that was originally self titled, but was cleverly reworked for it's re-issue into Mrs. Cruff. Tracks and more after some of the Scruff man's charming art.


We have the fittingly titled Jazz Potato to set us up. It has the distinction of being one of the first Scruff tracks I heard along with Get A Move On. While having the Jazzier edge of his later work, there is a clear lean towards the beats and bassline side of things, something that will become more prominent in a bit.



This one's a bit more explicit with the beats and basslines angle, saying that there is still liberal use of jazzy samples and other bits and bobs to keep it fresh, hence the title. There's a wealth of material on his debut LP, the re-issue only has 2 tracks out of twelve with a run time less that 5 minutes, which can make it a bit difficult to listen through the whole thing in one sitting.




And finally we get to the meat of my point, there a few tracks like Limbic Funk in Scruff's later LPs, and the same applies to earlier tracks like Sea Mammal and Bass Baby. It does make the few that there are wuite nice to listen to tough, so enjoy. Fun Fact: according to the liner notes; Scruff's debut required little to no mastering when he sent it off, and is pretty much pressed as-is.



And finally, I thought I'd share a little gem I came across the other day, taken from a Japanese compilation of remixes of the Cowboy Bebop OST comes this. There were some interesting ones on there for sure, including one from AFX's long time chum Luke Vibert, but Scruff nails it once again. It probably helps that the OST was pretty Jazzy to begin with, Scruff certainly had fun with this one that's for sure.



Arms, Legs, Everywhere!
- Claude Van Foxbat

2 comments:

NightShark said...

I'm getting a 404 error on Jazz Potato. Just thought I'd let you know.

Claude Van Foxbat said...

oh thanks, trust the one time I don't check all the players that something goes wrong!