It is September 2001.
9/11 has just happened and I’m in the midst of trying to convince Dose One, Jel and Sole from Anticon to get on a plane to Australia to perform and do workshops at Sound Summit 2001 (at This Is Not Art in Newcastle). They’re stuck on the East Coast and need to get back to the Bay Area to catch their flight to Sydney – and of course all the flights are grounded, not to mention a nervousness about long haul flights.
Sole is talking to me over a dodgy international telephone line and he’s super excited about this unnamed remix of DJ Krush that Jel has just completed. He plays it to me over the phone – it rocks – despite the compression and distortion.
The tour actually happens, we hire a van for them to drive across the USA, they make it to Australia, and then blow everyone away at Sound Summit. Their rhyming and production workshops subsequently influenced a whole slew of folks in Australia – not just in ‘Oz hip hop’. [Did anyone actually record those workshops? My photos are long gone sadly, lost in the ‘time before digital cameras’. The above pic is via Mark Lambert and AliaK has a few from the gigs]
But that remix – it never appears.
In 2002 DJ Krush releases a collaboration with Anticon – Song For John Walker – on his The Message At The Depth album. Its not the track I’m looking for.
Then silence.
Krush releases a few other things. Anticon changes/expands/diverisfies, Sole moves to Spain, Dose and Jel do a whole bunch of collaborations. Time happens.
That remix is gone. A snatch of audio over an international telephone line, lost to memory.
Anyway, I was trawling Bandcamp as I do every month – looking for things to check out – and there it is. Jel’s released it – finally! It is on a collection of his early 2000s remixes written on his SP1200. Go buy it – the whole collection is $5.
Does it sound like I remember? I’m not sure anymore. But I’m glad its out in the world.