Turntablism:
the new style
Part One of a two part series concerning the rise of turntablism and what the hell it means to the rest of the music world.
The Invisbl Skracth Piklz and the X-ecutioners bring a new form of expression to hip hop and electronic music.
The worlds of the visual and the aural arts tend to walk similar paths. As the styles within each become stale, the environment becomes fertile ground for experimentation and innovation. Painters and musicians both loathe predictability, and, therefore, find it necessary to reinvent their genre as often as possible. In our time, the worlds of hip hop and electronic music have become bland enough to necessitate a new aural revolution. The DJ has become either the big beat party starter or the background beat-maker for talentless emcees. But the truly artistic DJs are reclaiming their art. Although still in its infancy, truntablism is making a difference.
But most music fans still have no concept of what the turntablist is and/or does. Because this genre has its own terms, personalities, and techniques, this often the hardest hurdle for the neophyte to overcome. Perhaps understanding this world can be best explained though an artistic analogy.
When painting at the turn of the century had become stale, a group of rebellious youths sought to turn the art world on its head. These Impressionists were classically trained, but had a new vision full of ribald statements and confusing styles. After these artists made their statements came new and innovative styles which defied defintion and questioned the meaning of art itself, now simply called modern art. The turntablists of the world have done the same to our musical landscape. There is now a new area somewhere between hip hop and electronic music that is navigated only by the turntablists of the world.
The world of the turntablist has its own aesthetics and its own terms. Much like the hip hop world of old, many turntablists run in crews, as opposed to solo. In addition, turntablism also has its own stylistic and technical vocabulary as well. There is no longer simply scratching on a track; there are flare scratches, crab scratches, tweak scratches, backward/forward scratches, drum scratches, and more being created everyday. Like the hip hop world, there also seems to be a distinct difference betrween the sounds, styles and philosophies of the West Coast and the East Coast. While the West Coast style is represented by the innovative and perplexing Invisibl Skracth Piklz, on the East Coast, the reigning kings of the wheels of steel are the X-ecutioners. Both seek to change the world of music, but each chooses a completely different style and holds to different aesthetics to do so. Like the Impressionists and the modern artists within the analogy, both react to world of the mainstream, but use different philosophical means to affect it.
Let's start with the East Coast.
Our Impressionists within this analogy are New York City's X-ecutioners. In a day where boring Southern booty rap and simplistic hook laden hip hop songs with no statement rule the radio, true hip hop is being saved by these four turntable 
terrorists. Consisting of Mista Sinista, Rob Swift, Roc Raida, and Total Eclipse, this crew of DJs seeks to reclaim the original role of the DJ in hiphop culture. They take the ideals of the past and present them in a new and innovative way. Instead of being simply derivative, though, these DJs have changed the definiton of the hip hop sound and updated it for this new era. Like the style of the Impressionist painters, the X-ecuitioners debut album, X-pressions (Asphodel) is the perfect blend of both old and new. The X-ecutioners lay down a blueprint of basic hip hop aesthetics, and then paint over this a layer of beats a scratches unimaginable to the old school DJ. The sounds, noises and beats are completely avant garde, but provide the perfect accompaniment to the old school beats and flavor on the record. While the album is constructed around staple hip hop samples and boasts the talents of underground emcees and singers, and there is no doubt that X-pressions is a hip hop record; the spotlight is reserved for the DJs and their techniques. Like the visual artists of the past, these DJs have taken the old rules, appropriated them, and twisted them to create a new mode of expression.
The only member of the X-ecutioners to release a solo album thus far is Rob Swift, and his record, too, presents the same school of thought. His individual tracks all recall the world of true hip hop, including everything from hard emcees to poetic spoken word flows, but luckily never wallow in the mire that seems to bog down the current radio fare. The cuts and scratches here are among the best in the world, and the delivery is swathed in fabulously innovative raps and beats to bring to the listener a new perspective of the old school. The Abilist (Asphodel) presents the turntablist along side rappers, singers, keyboardists, but never as background for them. This is one of the only albums where the DJ is an equal collaborator with musicians and artists of all leanings. The scratching on the record is the backbone of each track and is the thread that keeps this record strong. more so than X-Pressions though, Swift's solo effort pushes the envelope more by keeping more of the tracks rap free and relying more heavily on the scratching as the song structure. The Ablist seems to allow for more of the turntablist's view of hip hop, as opposed to X-pressions's statement about the role of the DJ within the bounds of today's hip hop. While half of the tracks boast rappers and songs, this is a DJ's record and represents not simply the old school, but a new aesthetic.
Part 2 : a profile of the world's most innovative turntablist crew, the Bay Area's Invizbl Skratch Piklz.
by Miguel Banuelos
info@outersound.com
