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On making records within records
A major epiphany has taken place, itself the result of a workflow realisation. For a while I have been struggling with the following conundrum: How to know when to stop mixing the samples? As a samplist, I understand whether a source functions effectively in the context of sample-based Hip Hop when I hear it as part of the process, as part of the production layering. When trying to create a phonographic moment outside of this context, albeit...
The First Chop
I often remember the aha! moment that occurred when I first ‘chopped’ my own constructed (blues) phonographic material on the MPC sampler (a Renaissance model borrowed from University of Westminster where I used to work as a lecturer). I was going through an analytically-focused rather than practice-based phase of my PhD, whilst previously, I had been recording multi-layered, overdubbed performances in various styles that could facilitate a...
Insights
...Not a diary, but "a critical questioning of experiences"
(Cunliffe, 2016, p. 762). Insights is a reflexive journal I have kept throughout the making of album KATALH3H and whilst writing Reimagining sample-based Hip Hop: Making records within records. It deconstructs, exposes and provides interpretations of the thinking, analysis and sonic motivations behind both the book and the album. It's a place of fragility, conceptual pursuits, eureka...
KATALH3H (Beats Deluxe)
Label Red Planet Records Artists Stereo Mike Genres Beats, Hip Hop, Instrumental Release Date 2023 KATALH3H (Beats Deluxe) is the extended and largely instrumental version of Stereo Mike's long-awaited fourth album, six years in the making. Featuring 69 original tracks and spanning over four hours of music, it represents the final instalment of his album trilogy - following XLi3h and ANELI3H - in the form of an epic, dark and densely layered...
Reimagining Sample-based Hip Hop: Making Records within Records
Preface Reimagining sample-based Hip Hop: Making records within records deals with the poetics of hip-hop record production making use of originally constructed source material, rather than previously released phonographic content. The idea behind the project was borne out of a practical conundrum Stereo Mike faced when, in the mid 2000s, he gradually transitioned from underground beat-maker to a major-label tenure with EMI Music (Greece) as a...
XLi3h
XLi3h (pronounced exélixi) is Stereo Mike's first album of the major-label trilogy he embarked on when signing with Minos-EMI in 2007. The title is in leet and stands for 'evolution' in Greek. XLI3H really means Evolution for Stereo Mike. The second studio album of the artist a.k.a. Mike Exarchos, demonstrates the multi-dimensional artist's intentions even with its title. A word-play that exposes not only the evolution, but also the XL...