blog to the oldskool

Not the easiest record to find, Cool Hand Flex’s “ZX2″ EP is well worth tracking down for its 3 totally different sounding but all excellent tunes. The A side is the massive track “Your Risk”, also released on this EP. Definitely one of my favorites by him and one of his catchiest early tracks. The B1 side switches things up totally and features weird choppy drums in the A1 tune, ala Uncle 22’s “Super Mario EP”.

And then there’s this track. I don’t think I ever gave it too much thought because of the strength of the A1 track on the EP – but I just listened to it this weekend and was suprised how weird it is! The main melody sounds really familiar to me, perhaps also used in another De Underground release? There’s also some nice pitched up Zapp and Roger sounding vocoder funk stuff at 2:11 in the track.

Usually, I’d be just post “Your Risk” because that’s the bigger tune, most people would like it more and I realistically play it a lot more than B2. But I’m always looking for strange/interesting/off kilter sounding oldskool tracks, and this b2 track fits the bill perfectly. In addition, I think this track is a good example of some of the cool weird sounds found in some of those early De Undeground/related label releases, which gave their releases their own unique vibe in comparison to slightly more streamlined stuff on Sub Base and shadow.

Cool Hand Flex – ZX2 B2

Sorry for the weird sound, the track is pressed kind of quiet so I ran it through a maximizer to boost it back up – think the bass might have ended up rumbly in parts though. For anyone not into the the above track, here’s the aforementioned “Your Risk” tune as a consolation prize:

Here’s a fun track from 93, slightly reminiscent of something on Limited E-Edition. The drums don’t hit particularly hard, it’s just a bunch of crazy vocal loops dumped on top of each other, with a sample occasionally saying (what sounds like) “straight out of the jungle”. Needless to say I totally love crazy stuff like this, tracks where it sounds like someone throwing a bunch of stuff against a wall and seeing what sticks (and maybe using some electrical tape on an off bit which is sliding down the wall not really sticking, to belabor the analogy). As I’ve mentioned before, if anyone has suggestions for strange tracks like this which I haven’t posted yet (check the search box on the right hand side), please drop me an email.

FT & Myth – Straight Up

I got this EP today because it sounded really weird and I had never heard of it before. It’s actually pretty mediocre in my opinion, but the artist name / label name (”beast baseball”) / obscurity factor provided sufficient WTF-age to convince me to drop a buck or two on it. To be honest, I was surprised enough just to find out that it actually was a hardcore record, based on the highly incongruous name/artwork. Maybe someone will actually like it…. for me though, this is definitely an obscure-for-the-sake-of-obscure post, which I’m mainly uploading for any veteran collectors who have run across this before and wondered what a hardcore record by an artist called “COOKIE” could possibly sound like.

The track on the other side has some sort of marching band beat on top of a half speed breakbeat, with simple bass and a pitched down sample of a voice repeatedly saying “We are witnessing the demeez of music”…. yeah, makes perfect sense…
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