It’s 1997. I’m a senior in high school. I’ve got my DAT recorder from the Good Guys and I’m plotting and scheming. The Roland MS-1 is no more and I’m learning how to use my newly acquired Ensoniq EPS. The internet was still pretty basic at that point, so you couldn’t exactly go online to learn things like you can now. I bought it used, so I didn’t have a manual for the EPS. It was a lot of trial and error. I am sure I picked up a few tips from Tape Mastah Steph and I probably learned some stuff from Adrian (Age), who I worked with at Rasputin’s.
I will fully admit that I did a lot of really dumb things and crammed square pegs into round holes. 3/4 loop…what’s that? Everything can fit in a 4/4 sequence if you change the tempo or pitch the sample. I probably had about 2 crates of records at the time and most of them were rap and scratch battle records. Rasputin’s had a large dollar bin section, so that was where I did the majority of my digging. My first two tapes are centered around that dollar bin cheese.
I was coming at things very much influenced by Prince Paul and the De La records, but there was also an unhealthy dose of El-P influenced chaotic drum programming a la Co-Flow. What El-P did brilliantly, many confused and did poorly. When you’re young and dumb and full of enthusiasm, you might think slamming the repeat button on some kicks is where it’s at, but it really sounds like hitting a metal garbage can with one of those massage guns.
Around this time, I happened to fill in for a 1-3 AM slot at Santa Clara University’s KSCU radio station. My friend normally played shoe gaze and modern rock, but it was 1 in the morning and nobody was really listening, so I played rap. Someone called the station and basically started asking who I was and what I was doing. It ended up being Drew (aka Werd - who is now the DJ on The Voice in Germany). He was the hip hop director for the station and he invited me to his show, which was called “The Curbside Radio Show.” Besides those few encounters with Dave Dub, this was my introduction to the San Jose hip hop scene. I hung out at the show a lot. I also made some of their theme songs, which were some of my earliest productions. (I’m trying to find audio for those).
The first Controller 7 release came together in maybe 4 months. A few things happened at this time. I got a new 4 track recorder (the Yamaha MD4) and I was taking an electronic music class where I ended up taking on the name Controller 7. In true self-deprecating fashion, the tape was called “A waste of tape and paper.” I had never put anything out before, so I thought that nobody could really hate on me if I beat them to it. I am not sure what inspired the cover art. There’s graffiti, my turntable and mixer, my sampler, and surfer white guy drawings. I honestly don’t remember if I thought this was funny, cool, or anything in-between. In fairness, it was not uncommon for “underground” tapes to have crude, nonsensical art like this.
There's a few good ideas on it, but a fair amount of naive stuff. I nervously gave a copy of the tape to Ken Hamilton aka Spiderman from KFJC’s Monday Beatdown radio show and the hip hop buyer at Rasputin’s. He pulled me aside and told me that he liked it and that I should keep going. He wasn’t going to stock it in the store and it wasn’t an instant classic, but he gave me the confidence that maybe I was on to something. It actually meant a lot to me.
I think I only made about 30-40 copies of that tape. I have no idea how many still exist (I hope not many).
In 2007, I bought a DAT player off of Ebay and transfered all of my DAT tapes. I took a few songs from this release and some from Cross-Eyed Dyslexics and put them out as The Lost Tapes.
The following beat is actually one of the first beats I made and it was done on the Roland MS-1. It never came out on anything before The Lost Tapes.
On the original “Waste of…” tape, this song was called “Shaggy on the Vibes.” For some reason, I changed it to “Xylophone” on the Lost Tapes. I was watching cartoons after school one day and I just happened to catch that Scooby Doo dialog. This song is a pretty good example of the whole naive, force it to work style. There’s a lot of strange stuff going on here. It kinda works in a way. It’s not a complete train wreck as a listening experience, but try counting it. I guess it’s in 5/4 for, but I am highly doubtful I even understood any of that back then. It may very well have been a 4/4 sequence that was slowed down to loop this way. I’m not sure, There are a few things that are distinctively Ensoniq (EPS, EPS16, and ASR). Since it is keyboard-based, I think a lot of people ended up doing more loop based music than a chop style that you’d hear from an SP1200 or an MPC. This song is kinda like a series of rounds, like Row Row, Row Your Boat, looping and layer at different times. Full disclosure, this stuff was all made by naive feel and not through some sort of genius planning.
In some ways, I really admire how free it all is. I didn’t know any better and I didn’t really care. My worst enemy has always been overthinking things. When you’re not really worried about anyone listening, you just do whatever comes to you.
I’ll cover Cross-Eyed Dyslexics in the next post.
"When you’re not really worried about anyone listening, you just do whatever comes to you."
- Controller7
Love this quote and find it to be so true. I've applied this approach with my photography and writing here on Substack. It's refreshing to have a place where no one is following you to try out new things.
Having a blast going through all your stories about music and life in the early 90's. Can't wait to read more!
✌🏼