the "expansions" EP

When I lived in Berkeley, Sixtoo was living in Oakland and we’d hang out somewhat often. He’d randomly pop by my apartment and we’d also hang out at the warehouse where he lived with Sole, Alias, and Mayo. I was a huge fan of his “Work in Progress” record. I had his “Crystal Senate” EP from before I knew any of them. He’s an amazing producer (still is). I can’t seem to find a picture of it online, but he had a handmade version of his “Songs I Hate” cd that came in a slipcase and had a vellum overlay. I went with him to a Kinko’s in Emeryville around midnight. We were all making somewhat large quantities of cdr releases, running off our own covers at copy shops. He had this expensive green vellum paper that he printed the covers on. There was a young woman working there and he asked her to bulk-cut all of the vellum covers. She did. If you’ve ever used one of those cutters, they can sometimes shift a bit and cut inaccurately. Ideally, it wouldn’t, but it was midnight and things happen. She handed him the covers and they were not cut correctly. Understandably, he was not happy. Kinko’s didn’t have any of the vellum paper to replace these, so there really weren’t any options. It was incredibly uncomfortable being there, but I always laugh a bit when I think about that moment. That poor woman took the wrong shift and had no idea some indie rap nerds were going to come in with high expectations for some midnight paper chops.

Tangents. This whole newsletter is based on them.

I tell that story to set the scene. Sixtoo and I were friends and we still are. He is obsessive about almost everything he does and it’s fascinating to watch. If he does anything, he does it to the fullest.

I don’t remember exactly when, but he went back to Canada around 2001 I think. At some point later, my friend Matt (Matth), who I also hung out with a lot, told me that he was going to go visit Sixtoo and they were going to work on songs for a 45. Sixtoo had a friend who was starting a label called Bully. It was a collaboration between Sixtoo and Marco Boileau. Sixtoo helped bring in artists, he mastered the records, and he did the art for most of the releases. They were all run in editions of 1000, had silkscreened covers, and they were all hand-numbered and packaged by Marco. Sixtoo asked if I wanted to do one and the idea of doing two standalone songs was a little intimidating to me, so…

I asked if I could do a double 7-inch EP. This is somewhat common for me, I get a little hint of an opportunity and my mind starts racing about expanding it into something else. Ironically, the record is called “expansions,” but I can say with 100% certainty that that connection never crossed my mind until right now. I actually got the name expansions from flipping through records. I generally name things by flipping through books and records and seeing what words jump out at me.

I don’t remember the exact order, but I think this record was within the first 5 or so records on the label. Sixtoo was doing some really elaborate covers for the label, some of the later ones got even more complicated and even had scented ink. I don’t know exactly why, but I had the idea to keep the cover really simple. It’s just minimal text. It’s something that does not translate to this modern, thumbnail-sized-art streaming world. The first run was printed on black paper and was numbered. It did well enough that they later released a second run with a maroon cover that wasn’t numbered.

Marco and I ended up becoming really cool and we talked a lot, although it was always by email or instant messenger. We never met in person and I have not heard from him in quite a long time, but we were always cool with each other.

A collage of photos of my apartment in San Francisco, where I made “expansions”

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Shades Of A Former You

When I started making music for this project, I knew exactly how it would be presented. This was way before streaming was what it is now. This was going to come out on vinyl and vinyl only. Additionally, I was supposed to stay within about 3 and a half minutes per side. That gave me structure and a target. I knew I wanted them to be standalone songs and not as much of the collage style that I did on Left Handed Straw. This was pretty new to me.

At the time, I was still working heavily on an MPC 2000. I had recently gotten a new computer with Pro Tools, but I was still learning. Tracking things out and mixing was completely foreign to me. This record and the “Bumps” rap mix are how I learned Pro Tools. I was making the Bumps mix around the same time and it felt like a great, no-pressure way to get familiar with working in a DAW.

I was kind of worried that people might thing this song was too dancey and not really in my style. I liked it, but I wasn’t sure if it would work. It’s somewhat of a slow builder, based primarily off of a really slowed down harp sample. When I started working in Pro Tools, I started thinking of things in a sideways manner. In the MPC, you’re generally working with sequences that repeat. You make variations and you arrange them all in the order you want, but it’s more like a series of chunks that you play in a pattern. In Pro Tools, it feels more like writing a series of long sentences. You may repeat things and it’s essentially the same idea, but moving to that sideways style changed the way I thought about things.

I always like using multiple drums for layers and this runs through a few. Most people probably don’t notice it, but there’s a little high pitched chime type sound that plays a melody (it’s reversed for part of it). I played that on a little children’s toy piano, which you can see on a shelf in the photo above.

The song ends with a voice saying something unintelligible. That is my friend Greg, who had been on all of my previous releases. If you play it backwards, he is saying “Is that where it ends? Wait.” I was pretty self conscious about making these standalone songs and I added that in there because I felt like I’d somewhat abruptly ended things, but the song had run its course and it was close to the 3:30 cutoff point.

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Reactionary

I didn’t know it at the time, but I think Sixtoo used this same sample on something. He must have tilted his head when I turned these in for mastering. He never said anything to me, but I heard it later.

I worked this one for a long time. I have a bunch of variations of it on a Zip disk for my MPC. This was a time where the idea of lots of crazy drum programming really appealed to me. Similar to the first song, this runs through a few drums over the course of the song. For the end part, there are actually 4 different breaks at the same time, all with some guy saying “order and sense” over chaos. This was a time when I was trying to make these big, grand compositions. I don’t think I ever achieved what I set out to do, but I definitely put a lot into them.

This song ended up on Amon Tobin’s “Solid Steel Presents Amon Tobin Recorded Live” mix cd, which was really cool because I was a fan of his music. I still see pennies every now and then on a royalty statement. It was never anything I really made money off of, but it felt like a cool validation that he knew of my music and included it in a mix.

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I Tried To Speak, But Couldn’t

I like this one. I was pretty unsure about all of these when I made them. I tried some new stuff, I was learning Pro Tools, and I’d never made songs this long and with as much intention. It’s kind of like an angry b-boy cut. The synth line that starts around 37 seconds was definitely influenced by listening to Fantastic Damage a lot. All of this was done on an MPC with no effects. I never got comfortable with plug-ins or got them to work on my 2001 Mac G4, so the only effect I ever used was the default Pro Tools reverb (D-Verb). I developed a style of mixing that was mostly done with hard edits and gain adjustments. This is generally true for almost everything I made up through Billy in 2020. I made ever record on that same Mac with OS9 and Pro Tools 5 until I made exhale01 in 2020.

I wouldn’t do things exactly the same, but the basic song structure and the changeups seem pretty on par with how I still make music. I don’t hear people talk about these songs much anymore. They aren’t on streaming, although they were at one point. I decided to just keep them on Bandcamp. A few years back, it ended up in a Vans commercial for a China Ferguson shoe. It was a total surprise to me and I found out through a check in the mail (some of my songs are published by Third Side Music, which was started by Ninja Tune’s Jeff Waye).

I like skateboarding. I like Vans. Chima is amazing, so it was a cool surprise.

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Bad Blue (last chance)

It may not seem like it now, but this song was sort of unique at the time. It was “that song that’s just drums.” I’m not saying it made huge waves, but I think it stood out because it really was almost nothing but drums and it was on a 45. Originally, I made this song for Doseone. He was going to do something with it and I burned him a cdr of it to write to. I don’t think he ever did anything, at least not that I know of. When I was making this EP, I went back and decided to finish it up. I changed a few things and added some stuff, like the changeup in the middle and the guy saying “that’s weird….here we go.” It’s all samples, pretty much everything done on the MPC 2000.

I am pretty sure the “Bad Blue” in the title comes from a title of a song on a record I had sitting around. The “(last chance)” part is there because I felt like this was the last chance to do something with this song/beat.

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Footnote: When these originally came out, I think they cost around $12 in 2003. It was a double 7-inch, hand silk-screened covers, and limited to 1000 numbered copies. 1000 was not a lot back then. It was on the more expensive side. You could probably get most 7 inches in the $5 range, which seems insane now. There was a Cat Power 45 on Matador at the time that was $0.99 and even had a sticker on the front that said don’t pay more than 99 cents. Most full length LPS cost about $12-15 for a single disc. Records were produced in large quantities and labels could afford to sell records for much less because they were selling so many. Bully was a small, boutique label out of Canada. It probably cost around $7-8 to make the EPs, plus they had to be shipped internationally, so the $12 price tag wasn’t a huge jump and there really wasn’t much profit in the end.

One day, I was at Amoeba in SF looking for records and I ended up talking to some people from Hawaii. One of them knew who I was. His friend pulled out the expansions EP and gave me a long lecture about independent hip hop and how no 45 should cost more than $2 or something like that. Lots of keep it real, DIY hip hop stuff. More concerned with some bumper sticker slogans than the fact that a real person was in front of him. Despite the disinterested look on my face and lack of enthusiasm in my tone, he continued on.

Don’t be that person or you may end up getting mentioned in someone’s newsletter 20 years later.