Label: Pan – PAN 58. LP Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Mixed, Reissue Country: Germany Released: Mar 10, 2015 Genre: Electronic, Hip Hop Style: Illbient, Trip Hop, Industrial, Experimental
PAN digs into the archives of WordSound label founder Skiz Fernando Jr. (a.k.a. Spectre) to reissue his 1998 experimental hip-hop mixtape, Ruff Kutz, originally released as an extremely limited edition cassette. A 90 minute, mixtape featuring hits and remixes, previ- ously unreleased tracks, and dub-plate specials featuring Sensational, Mr Dead, Bill Las- well, Jungle Brothers, Kevin Martin and many more.
The early ’90s witnessed a spike in mutant strains of future dub. In Bristol, trip-hop and jungle were on the rise; in Manhattan it was noise and breakbeat. But in Brooklyn, hip-hop experimentation was gaining momentum, led by Skiz’s independent label WordSound. With support from Bill Laswell, WordSound charted the experimental edge of hip-hop and dub, taking equal inspiration from Bronx Rap and Jamaican Roots music as they pioneered a lo-fi sound both primal and futuristic. By the turn of the decade, the combination of dub, ambient, and hip hop aesthetics had been baptized by The Wire magazine as Illbient—a short-lived classification now being exhumed in the form of Spectre’s obscure mixtape, Ruff Kutz.
Ruff Kutz revisits the years between 1994-98, a formative era for WordSound and experimen- tal beats in general. The original cassette, according to Skiz, was comprised ofalternative mixes, obscure beats, and unreleased tracks and edits. Unsigned material from Dubadelic (supergroup of Bill Laswell, Ted Parsons, DXT, and others), rapper Sensational, Kevin ‘The Bug’ Martin’s Techno Animal project, Professor Shehab as his lyrical alter-ego Psycho Priest, Djini Brown, Mr. Dead of the Metabolics, Doc Israel, Scotty Hard, and Slotek all feature throughout this vinyl reissue, fully mastered for the first time from the original DAT tapes in their original sequence.. (NM/NM)
Tracklist A1 Intro A2 Crooked A3 Only In The Darkness A4 Operation Duppy Conqueror 2000 A5 Hype Flavor B1 Sub Version B2 Elephant, Mosquiot B3 Dust To Dust B4 No Prisioners (Techno Animal Remix) B5 The Ill Jazz B6 Last Rites C1 9th Secret Rule Of The Order C2 Thuds Like Scuds C3 Nice With Mine C4 Black Abstract Italiano C5 Sessed Out D1 Get Into This D2 Freak Accident D3 Submission D4 Stolen Moments
