Cut La Roc | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Lee Potter |
Born | 11 January 1972 |
Origin | Brighton, England |
Genres | |
Occupation(s) | DJ, producer, musician, songwriter |
Instrument(s) | Turntables, percussion, programming |
Years active | 1989–present |
Labels | Rocstar, Skint |
Website | Cut La Roc on Myspace |
Lee Potter (born 11th January 1972), known by his stage name Cut La Roc, is a British electronic musician, considered as a pioneer of big beat, a genre fusing elements of hip hop, house and rock.
Potter grew up in Brighton, England, and was signed to the British record label, Rocstar Recordings.
He started creating and producing music when acid house came on at the end of the eighties. In an interview he described the cause of his "infection" for electronic music and DJing: "I'd never really liked house music up until then, but this was kind of different, because it had the hip-hop element through the breakbeats, it made total sense to me". [1]
In 1998, he released "Post Punk Progression" which NME lauded as "what the Beatles would have sounded like if they'd invented jungle".[ citation needed ]
In 1999, Cut La Roc produced and released a mix album for the Ministry of Sound's FSUK imprint and performed and produced with 9 decks. He spent three years consistently DJing in Australia, the United States, Europe and Asia.
His DJ sets feature old school hip hop and G-funk to modern hip hop and trap. In 1995, Cut La Roc appeared on BBC One's Top of the Pops as the late electronic musician Wildchild on the original version of "Renegade Master", before Fatboy Slim remixed and revived the song in 1998. In 2001, he produced along with Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody, the songs "Fallen" and "Mishka". As well as Lightbody co-producing both of the songs, he also provided the vocals. Cut La Roc held a four-year residency at the 'Big Beat Boutique' and performed alongside fellow big beat musicians Fatboy Slim and Armand Van Helden.
Coldcut are an English electronic music duo composed of Matt Black and Jonathan More. Credited as pioneers for pop sampling in the 1980s, Coldcut are also considered the first stars of UK electronic dance music due to their innovative style, which featured cut-up samples of hip-hop, soul, funk, spoken word and various other types of music, as well as video and multimedia. According to Spin, "in '87 Coldcut pioneered the British fad for 'DJ records'".
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs, club DJs, mobile DJs, and turntablists. Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
Trip hop is a musical genre that originated in the late 1980s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. It has been described as a psychedelic fusion of hip hop and electronica with slow tempos and an atmospheric sound, often incorporating elements of jazz, soul, funk, reggae, dub, R&B, and other forms of electronic music, as well as sampling from movie soundtracks and other eclectic sources.
Norman Quentin Cook, also known by his stage name Fatboy Slim, is an English musician, DJ, and record producer who helped to popularise the big beat genre in the 1990s. In the 1980s, Cook was the bassist for the Hull-based indie rock band the Housemartins, who achieved a UK number-one single with their a cappella cover of "Caravan of Love". After the Housemartins split up, Cook formed the electronic band Beats International in Brighton, who produced the number-one single "Dub Be Good to Me". He then played in Freak Power, Pizzaman, and the Mighty Dub Katz with moderate success.
Breakbeat is a broad type of electronic music that tends to use drum breaks sampled from early recordings of funk, jazz, and R&B. Breakbeats have been used in styles such as Florida breaks, hip hop, jungle, drum and bass, big beat, breakbeat hardcore, and UK garage styles.
Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that came to prominence in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to refer to electronic music generally.
Scratching, sometimes referred to as scrubbing, is a DJ and turntablist technique of moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable to produce percussive or rhythmic sounds. A crossfader on a DJ mixer may be used to fade between two records simultaneously.
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating new music, sound effects, mixes and other creative sounds and beats, typically by using two or more turntables and a cross fader-equipped DJ mixer. The mixer is plugged into a PA system and/or broadcasting equipment so that a wider audience can hear the turntablist's music. Turntablists typically manipulate records on a turntable by moving the record with their hand to cue the stylus to exact points on a record, and by touching or moving the platter or record to stop, slow down, speed up or, spin the record backwards, or moving the turntable platter back and forth, all while using a DJ mixer's crossfader control and the mixer's gain and equalization controls to adjust the sound and level of each turntable. Turntablists typically use two or more turntables and headphones to cue up desired start points on different records.
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Kurtis el Khaleel, known by the stage name Kurtis Mantronik, is a Jamaican-born hip hop and electronic-music artist, DJ, remixer, and producer. He was the leader, DJ, and keyboardist of the influential 1980s hip hop and electro-funk group Mantronix. He currently lives in South Africa where he has produced and remixed house and techno music tracks by artists such as India, Junior Senior, Kylie Minogue, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, Michael Gray, Victoria Beckham, Liberty X, S Club, and Mim. Mantronik was influential in the development of hip hop music: notably, he laid the foundations for Southern hip hop genres such as Miami bass and trap music, and helped popularize the Amen break.
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Hip hop production is the creation of hip hop music in a recording studio. While the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music creation, including recording the rapping of an MC, a turntablist or DJ providing a beat, playing samples and "scratching" using record players and the creation of a rhythmic backing track, using a drum machine or sequencer, it is most commonly used to refer to recording the instrumental, non-lyrical and non-vocal aspects of hip hop.
Mark Summers is the English CEO, sound engineer and music producer of Scorccio, a music production company founded in the UK in 1996. A London DJ since 1979, he is a guest lecturer and masterclass presenter on sample replay production, sound engineering, DJ culture, sampling and the music industry. His productions have been featured on hits for Nicki Minaj, Diplo, Sam Smith, the Prodigy, Pitbull, Fatboy Slim, David Penn, Jess Glynne, Disclosure, Steve Aoki, CamelPhat, Swedish House Mafia, the Shapeshifters and many other notable music artists. He is related to Herbie Flowers, one of the UK's best-known session bass players.
Rob Swift is an American hip hop DJ and turntablist. He was an original member of the turntablist group The X-Ecutioners until 2004. He has also released numerous solo albums and collaborated with various artists, including Mike Patton, Patton's project Peeping Tom, Dan the Automator and Handsome Boy Modeling School, Lords of Acid, Portugal. The Man, and Herbie Hancock.
Jon Carter is an English electronic musician. He initially rose to prominence in the 1990s as a big beat DJ. However, as his career progressed both his productions and his DJ sets became known for including a variety of musical styles. From 2004 onwards, he began to scale back his DJing due to tinnitus, but simultaneously launched a second career as a businessman, co-founding a company that runs a chain of live music pubs across London.
"Planet Rock" is a song by the American hip hop artists Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force. The song was produced by Arthur Baker and released by Tommy Boy Records in 1982. The recording came together after DJ and producer Baker met with Bambaataa and the two bonded over the idea of creating a song about their mutual appreciation for the band Kraftwerk. Baker and Bambaataa had worked together previously on the song "Jazzy Sensation" and decided to compose a more electronic based version of the hip hop song, as opposed to the more disco-oriented work popular at the time. Along with musician John Robie, the group recorded the single at Intergalactic Studios in New York. Robie duplicated the sound on the record and had Bambaataa's rappers in the Soul Sonic Force rap over it. To create the raps, the lyricist of the group, Emcee G.L.O.B.E., had to develop a style he called "mc popping", which involved rapping off time, an unusual style at the time.
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Deejay Punk Roc is a former breakbeat, big beat and hip hop artist based in Liverpool, England. The alias lasted from 1997 until 2002. He provided remixes for Korn, Pitchshifter and Kurtis Mantronik.