Illegal Art | |
---|---|
Founded | 1998 |
Founder | Philo T. Farnsworth (pseudonym) |
Status | Inactive |
Genre | Mashup, electronic, dance, glitch, experimental, pop |
Country of origin | United States |
Official website | http://www.illegal-art.net/ |
Illegal Art is a sampling record label that was started in 1998. The label gained immediate notoriety from legal threats surrounding Deconstructing Beck , a compilation made exclusively from sampling Beck's music. [1] This was followed by two other theme-based compilations, Extracted Celluloid and Commercial Ad Hoc. All three were co-released with Negativland's Seeland Records label and sponsored by RTMark. After these theme-based compilations, Illegal Art focused on artist releases. One of the most popular artists on the label is Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis), who in 2006 released his third album, Night Ripper , to critical acclaim on the label, earning a Wired magazine Rave Award a year later. [2] [3]
Illegal Art also released the Steinski Retrospective, spanning his work from 1983 to 2006. It includes the legendary "Lessons", which have been described as "one of the most desirable and prized bootleg recordings in hip hop" (Antidote). It also contains a variety of other essential tracks, and his critically acclaimed Nothing to Fear: A Rough Mix, an hour-long mashup that was produced for Solid Steel/BBC London and hailed as "the closest to a masterpiece the genre has produced." [4]
As of 2024, Illegal Art's website states that the label has been on an "indefinite hiatus" since 2012.
Ninja Tune is an independent record label[1] based in London with a satellite office in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1990 by Matt Black and Jonathan More, known professionally as the electronic duo Coldcut, with Peter Quicke joining as label manager in 1992. The label was created as an outlet for more experimental music, allowing Coldcut to break free from the restrictions they faced in the mainstream music industry.
Intelligent dance music (IDM) is a style of electronic music originating in the early 1990s, defined by idiosyncratic experimentation rather than specific genre constraints. The music often described with the term originally emerged in the early 1990s from the culture and sound palette of styles of electronic dance music such as acid house, ambient techno, Detroit techno and breakbeat; it has been regarded as better suited to home listening than dancing. Prominent artists in the style include Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, μ-Ziq, the Black Dog and the later duo Plaid, as well as earlier acts such as the Future Sound of London and Orbital.
Beck David Hansen, known mononymously as Beck, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. He has musically encompassed folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronica, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 14 studio albums, as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music.
Mutations is the sixth studio album by the American songwriter Beck, released on November 3, 1998, by DGC Records. Though less commercially successful than the preceding Odelay, it won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
Jungle is a genre of electronic music that developed out of the UK rave scene and Jamaican sound system culture in the 1990s. Emerging from breakbeat hardcore, the style is characterised by rapid breakbeats, heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples, and synthesised effects, combined with the deep basslines, melodies, and vocal samples found in dub, reggae and dancehall, as well as hip hop and funk. Many producers frequently sampled the "Amen break" or other breakbeats from funk and jazz recordings. Jungle was a direct precursor to the drum and bass genre which emerged in the mid-1990s.
The Bran Flakes are a Canadian-American indie pop group formed in Seattle in 1992. The group, whose line-up comprises Otis Fodder from Montreal, Quebec, and Mildred Pitt from Seattle, Washington, specializes in creating sound collages from pre-existing sources. Until 1997, they recorded on 4-track in bedrooms and did not play any shows, putting out hand dubbed cassette tapes and distributing tapes through direct mail-order, zines and indie catalogs.
Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo formed in San Francisco and currently based in Baltimore. M. C. (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their performances, including notably J Lesser. Apart from releasing twelve full-length studio albums and numerous collaborative works, Matmos is also well known for their collaboration with Icelandic singer and musician Björk, both on studio recordings and live tours. After being signed to Matador Records for nine years, Matmos signed with Thrill Jockey in 2012. The name Matmos refers to the seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo in the 1968 film Barbarella.
Dark ambient is a genre of post-industrial music that features an ominous, dark droning and often gloomy, monumental or catacombal atmosphere, partially with discordant overtones. It shows similarities with ambient music, a genre that has been cited as a main influence by many dark ambient artists, both conceptually and compositionally. Although mostly electronically generated, dark ambient also includes the sampling of hand-played instruments and semi-acoustic recording procedures.
People Under the Stairs was an American hip hop duo from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1997 and disbanded in 2019. Since their inception, the group consisted solely of Christopher Portugal and Michael Turner. The group employed a DIY work ethic of sampling, MCing, DJing, and producing all of their output.
Gregg Michael Gillis, better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is an American disc jockey who specializes in mash-ups and digital sampling. Gillis has released five LPs on the record label Illegal Art and EPs on both 333 and 12 Apostles. He was trained as an engineer.
Jonny L, real name Jon Lisners, is a British drum and bass producer. He has also released music under the alias of Mr. L and was one half of the UK garage duo True Steppers.
Double Dee and Steinski is a duo of hip hop producers, composed of Doug "Double Dee" DiFranco and Steven "Steinski" Stein. They achieved notoriety in the early 1980s for a series of underground hip-hop sample-based collages known as the "Lessons".
Night Ripper is the third studio album by American musician Gregg Gillis, released under his stage name Girl Talk on May 9, 2006 by Illegal Art. It is a mashup album primarily composed of samples taken from other artists' music, while also incorporating minor amounts of original instrumentation recorded by Gillis himself. Produced as one seamless piece of music before subsequently being broken into individual tracks, Night Ripper was composed by Gillis in a period of around eight months, during which he divided time between production of the album and his work as a biomedical engineer.
The Information is the tenth studio album by American musician Beck, released on October 3, 2006 by Interscope Records. It was produced and mixed by Nigel Godrich, with whom Beck recorded Mutations (1998) and Sea Change (2002). Recording took place from 2003 to 2006, with Beck concurrently working on 2005's Guero with the Dust Brothers. The album received positive reviews from critics and made several publications' year-end lists.
Ten12 Records was a Brooklyn-based outsider electronic, breakbeat, and experimental record label. Ten12 was noted for its focus on facilitating collaboration between new experimental recording artists and the few remaining early-stage funk and soul pioneers to foster unique recordings that identify the link and dialog between electronic, sample-based recordings and its analog origins. Ten 12's roots stretched back to the Mission District of San Francisco where, in 2000, Charles Lazar started the label in a friend's apartment at 1012 Capp Street. Formerly located in Brooklyn, Ten12 maintained its West Coast presence with operations in San Francisco, while developing a strong international presence, with operations in Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands.
Ivan Neville is an American multi-instrumentalist musician, singer, and songwriter. He is the son of Aaron Neville and nephew to the other members of The Neville Brothers.
Burial is the debut studio album by British electronic musician Burial, released on 15 May 2006 by Kode9's Hyperdub label. Considered a landmark of the mid-2000s dubstep scene, the album's sound features a dark, emotive take on the UK rave music that preoccupied Burial in his youth, including UK garage and 2-step. Critics have variously interpreted the release as an elegy for the dissipated rave movement and a sullen audio portrait of London.
Deconstructing Beck is a compilation album released on February 17, 1998, by an anonymous group posing as Illegal Art. The album is a compilation of 13 tracks created completely from samples of American musician Beck which, by artistic intention of the group, were not approved by Geffen Records, and its release set off a large scale legal battle between the two record labels which attracted worldwide media attention. According to cultural critic Steven Shaviro, the release of Deconstructing Beck served as a challenge to the music industry since Beck's discography prominently features samples, and paved the way for new media art that became oriented around the limitations of copyright law.
Feed the Animals is the fourth studio album by American musician Gregg Gillis, released under his stage name Girl Talk by Illegal Art on June 19, 2008. Illegal Art originally released the album as a digital download through their website using a "pay what you want" pricing system. Like much of his previous work, Gillis composed Feed the Animals almost entirely using samples of other artists' music and minor elements of his own original instrumentation.
Make 'Em Mokum Crazy is a compilation album of music by various artists released in 1996 by Dutch record label Mokum Records. The album, which consists solely of music from the label's catalogue, displays the happy gabba or "popcore" sound that had emerged from Dutch underground raves during the mid-1990s and had partly started to reach mainstream success, such was the case with the album's lead single "I Wanna Be a Hippy" by Technohead. Upon its release, the album received critical acclaim for its upbeat, manic tone and happy spirit. Robert Christgau named it the 53rd best album of 1997, and, as an example of its acclaim had continued over years, Rolling Stone named it the 30th greatest EDM album ever in 2012.