This years '8bitch award' for making loads of great tracks and sharing the demos and the the process of making music with me goes to teaandcakerecords.
Many thanks again to Tim, Brotto, Bandshell, Brickwall Brigade, Planet Soap, Grillo, Railster, Bunny On Acid, FoolK and Matt The Good and to everyone who supported, blogged, tweeted, downloaded and played any or all of the eps. More is planned for 2012.
Really pleased to hear new stuff from Brotto, now going it alone after his debut on teaandcakerecords.
Some great beats and glitchy stuff again but personally I can't get enough of out and out hip hop track, Tree'kle, featuring a very clever use of Roots Manuva's Join The Dots. As this is one of my all time favourites, this could have got very wrong for me but I'm really glad to say Brotto's beats flow naturally next to Rodney's rhymes as if they could have been there all along.
Download it now for free from bandcamp and keep your eyes peeled and ears to the ground for details of his full length album featuring a few guests which should be appearing fairly soon.
Here is second release from teaandcakerecords, Brotto Remixes.
Am not certain Tim will necessarily agree with this so this is all my opinion but I always liked (no that's a lie, I actually often hated) when records used to come in two parts; the original release and then the remixes and if you bought the original but really wanted all those Morales Red Zone dub mixes, then you had to get the second part too.
Anyway, I think there is something for everyone in this set. The glitchy hip hop of Brotto's original goes off down several roads marked "Italian electro", via some dubstep from Israel and beats from Slovakia before winding up back in the UK for what I am claiming a first (and probably last) - some minimal 2step from Matt The Good and finished off with Brotto's own reworking with a rather large, checky sample.
Well here it finally is, the little project me and Tim teaandcake have been working on since September last year. I think the one thing I can now say with some certainty and authority is everything takes a lot longer than you would imagine, even for a very small idea like this.
Admittedly, if we had rushed out something sooner using the early demos we picked up on soundcloud and the first rough drafts Brotto sent us around November, we would not have been doing it with music we could wholeheartedly put up our hands and say truthfully say that this is very strong stuff and we have become passionate about working with this guy so that more people can share in this music and give it the audience it justifies. Thankfully now we can.
I don't want to blow our own trumpets too much and anyone who knows anything about me would know how much I can downplay something that is in fact special so for me to say that we were shocked at just how good these tracks are and that it was actually a privilege for us to be working with Brotto, you know I'm being genuine.
The fact that we were able to rope in some good friends, more seasoned professionals in the industry (and I don't think they come much more seasoned than the likes of Charlie Dark who we owe a huge debt of gratitude for his input and words of wisdom and support) who also spotted that these tracks were strong told us it wasn't just us getting caught up with the moment and getting carried away with it all.
And whilst we are on thanks, shouts also to Goran Piece Of Shh for delivering us a superb remix, to BNJMN for the kind words of encouragement, to Svpreme Fiend and DJ Contakt for their work behind the scenes for us and to Amelia putmeonit for the last minute tips (you saved us there :) ) and those are just my thanks, I'm sure Tim would also big up more.
So anyway, I think the experience for us has been a pretty steep learning curve, things we never really considered back when it started but the phrase "it's ok, we'll play it by ear" must have been said at least a hundred times yet still we've managed to make it to release day.
