| Twisted Funk Records / Music Blog |  | | Twisted Funk | Twisted Funk Label goes digital. The label was formed in 2002 by Marc Mac as a subsidiary label of Reinforced Records. This label focused on the fusion of different styles of music from hip hop to broken beat, techno to d&b. Most of the 12"'s were never available digitally until now. Over the coming weeks we hope to have all the back cat online and brand new digital exclusives. stay with it...
Discography:
TF 1201 Hopper Spiritually Active Understanding [S.A.U.] (12")
TF 1202 Somatik Interaktion (12")
TF CD 001 Various Scattered Snares (CD)
TF LP 001 Various Scattered Snares (2x12")
TF 1203 Nu Era Some Think Electronic Version 1.0 (2x10")
TF 1204 Almost Human & John Tejada From Here To There (12")
TF 1205 Somatik Really R (12")
TF 1206 Shade Of Soul & Marylin David Hopin' For A Good Day (12")
TF 1207 Cyberworks Funk Cluster (12")
TF 1208 Hopper Take Us To The Place (12")
TF 1209 Marc Mac Headspin (12")
TF CD 002 Various Scattered Snares Volume | | 2008-01-25 19:33:44 | | | Straight no Chaser artical about Marc Mac | Marc Clair aka Marc Mac evinces such keen prescience in his music, one would think he sits back grinning smugly every time he finishes up a tune. Perhaps a less humble man than Mac would, but he knows all too well from whence his musical inspiration comes. As one half of the trailblazing duo 4 Hero, a founding partner of several record labels including Reinforced, Twisted Funk, Raw Canvas and Omniverse, and a producer who has worked with Terry Callier, Jill Scott, Masters at Work, and Patricia Marx, Mac has lent his touch to an impressive library of forward-thinking music spanning genres from house to hip-hop to drum-n-bass to soul. In his latest venture, ‘Dirty Old Hip-Hop’, a full length LP for the Visioneers on Omniverse Records, Mac explores the sonic relationship between hip-hop and jazz.
For Mac, hip-hop played a significant role in bringing jazz back to its “old dirty” roots. As jazz came of age during the 20th century, it found a home on the streets and in the clubs of major cities around the world. Yet, while hip-hop soared towards its zenith in the late-1980s to mid-1990s, young audiences perceived jazz as “unhip”, notes Mac. Young people gravitated towards the new underground street sounds – mid-tempo rhythms punctuated by lyrical stories of basketball, breaks, bravado, big-bootied girls and brand-new shoes.
“A lot of young people don’t realise that jazz was street music; it was radical,” Mac observes. Hip-hop producers brought jazz back to the street level where it came from. That’s why they used to sample it and rappers rhymed on it. Jazzy Jeff introduced me to jazz, you know. If it weren’t for A Touch of Jazz, I wouldn’t have gotten into the Mizell Brothers. With ‘Dirty Old Hip-Hop’, I wanted to pay homage to those classic hip-hop producers for their part in bringing jazz to younger listeners. You find the samples they used for the hip-hop tracks, check out the breaks, and after a while, you'll start checking the whole song to see how the other instruments sound with the break. You'll get into other parts of the record -- the guitar, the vocals – and that’s how you find out about all these geniuses like Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers. It’s up to the older producers to educate the younger ones on where this new music comes from. That’s why I have loads of respect for Madlib and his ‘Shades of Blue’ project; he took it back and lets you know where he got some of his ideas from.”
With multi-talented, long-time associates and label mates, Brad “Somatik” Munn and Luke “Hopper” Parkhouse, Mac creates an unparagoned sound embodying jazz greats like Charles Stepney and Doug Carn as well as hip-hop legends like the late J. Dilla and DJ Premier. The Visioneers trio performs the vocals with help from Carina Andersson and rappers Voice and Capitol A.
As much as the Visioneers project is a tribute to hip-hop, it also provided Mac an unconstrained artistic outlet. “After working with a major label with 4 Hero, I wanted some musical freedom. I had some freedom at Talking Loud, but I really just wanted to do my own thing. I wanted to make 7-inch records because that’s what I like. I wanted to do a limited release of 500 because that’s what I wanted to do. Plus, being a collector, I see old records piled up in the second-hand shops all the time and I dread the thought of seeing my records piled up there one day,” he admits with a laugh. “So we did a limited release. If people want more, then we'll release more. I think the first Omniverse release is up to about 1500 now.”
I was actually hoping to see the Visioneers album released on all 7-inch records. Mac confesses that he considered that option, but it was prohibitively expensive. Instead, ‘Dirty Old Hip-Hop’ will be released on CD and vinyl. The next Visioneers single, ‘Ike’s Mood’, is out now as a limited 700 copy release on clear 7-inch vinyl. “We definitely want to keep the 7-inch collectors happy,” Mac says, referring to those who have been lucky enough to snag one of the four limited releases which preceded the album. The group has no plans to perform live at this point, despite many inquiries about the possibility. However, they do plan a launch party and some limited DJ dates. As he finishes up the Visioneers release and promotion work, Mac is turning his focus to the upcoming 4 Hero album which is planned to hit later this year. | | 2007-11-27 08:16:42 | | | Twisted Funk Records | Reinforced offshoot Twisted Funk Records run by 4 Hero main man Marc Mac. Marc Mac is better known as one half of 4hero, the duo that changed the shape of UK electronic music and picked up both a Mercury Music Prize nomination and MOBO award while doing so.
Marc Mac's production credits includes Jill Scott, Roy Ayers, Vikter Duplaix, Ultra Nate, Terry Callier, Ursula Rucker, Shaun Escoffery to name a few he also has a long list of remixes under his belt from Masters at Work | | 2007-11-27 06:50:56 | | BLOG ARCHIVE
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