Feature: Vocal Exercises

Vocal sampling. The act of cutting a human voice from source audio and repurposing it in a new piece of music. It’s become fairly normal to hear a vocal sample adding an edge of humanity to a dance or electronic track at the moment, but how did vocal sampling become what it is today? And what exactly is it today? In this feature I want to examine what different producers are doing with vocals at the moment and why, but in order to do that we need to start at the beginning.

Royal House – Can You Party (1988)

I’m not going to get into discussing breakbeats or sampling itself, because there has already been plenty of interesting discourse on the subject. The first examples of vocal sampling in dance music seem to be in the Acid and Chicago House tracks of the late 80s. Once hardware had become complex enough to sample voices, songs started to emerge where vocals were sampled and manipulated rather than a vocalist having to physically record their voice for each track. These tended to be in the stuttered, repetitive vocal phrases that populated the genre, look at any of Todd Terry’s classic productions for reference points.

Youngbloods – Got Me Burnin’ Up (1991)

This technique was taken further in the East-coast sound of the early 90s, with the emergence of what we now know as Garage. By this point the actual words sampled tended to be an exciting or catchy line that would ramp up anticipation and enjoyment on the dancefloor, but at the same time the samples started to become used more and more as hooks and percussive elements as we recognise them today, removed from their original context and meaning. On Nightcrawlers’ Push The Feeling On (The Dub Of Doom) we can hear and early example of a vocal that has lost all meaning, used purely as a catchy melodic element. Although this sounds fairly average by today’s standards, one can imagine how it might be strange to have a human voice there that was manipulated into a form where it is impossible to discern the words, in what can essentially be seen as a levelling of the human voice into a base musical element. Of course this was nothing new considering the amount of wordless song that have existed throughout the ages, from pagan chants to choirs, but it was the first time that a vocal that once had meaning was deliberately manipulated through electronics to lose that meaning, and then repurposed as just another instrument.

Nightcrawlers – Push The Feeling On (The Dub of Doom) (1992)

From the beginning of sampling in the US, I now want to move on and focus this feature on the UK dance scene. The root of vocal sampling as we now know it in the Bass music scene is most clearly grounded in UK Garage, which took the aforementioned sounds of Todd Terry and co and gave them a hard UK edge, as well as pushing vocal manipulation a lot further than it had ever gone before. Artists like Todd Edwards and Tuff Jam cut up multiple vocal samples and laced them together to form the melodic core of their tracks, retaining the warmth of the human voice (especially important in their dark Garage soundscapes) while stripping away any meaning whatsoever, and letting the sample work just as another element in the sound.

Tuff Jam – Key Dub (1999)

As UK Garage charted a slow shift towards Dubstep in the British underground, use of vocals diminished. Excepting occasional use of brooding voices, early Dubstep was characterised by the space and darkness of its sound, and although UK Garage-style sampling continued in some respects, the technique was not furthered in a major way for several years.

Burial - Archangel (2007)

The next producer to really hit the Electronic mainstream with innovative sampling was Burial, a producer I’m sure you all know well. Although his sources were nothing new, he used his samples to evoke a melancholy and darkness rather than a catchy hook, which was unusual at the time. Added to this, he expressed a fondness for pitching male voices up and female voices down to create “sexy vibe” and an ambiguity of gender, another technique that is fairly commonplace by now. Burial  stated while discussing the early UK Garage scene in a 2007 interview with The Wire, “I’d love these vocals that would come in, not proper singing but cut-up and repeating, and executed coldly. It was like a forbidden siren.” It’s a simple description for a musical technique that has accelerated Burial to Electronic stardom, where he introduced samples just as much to highlight absence as their presence, as can be seen in a 2009 interview with Fact; “That’s the sound I love…like embers in the tune…little glowing bits of vocals…they appear for a second, then fade away and you’re left with an empty, sort of air-duct sound…something that’s eerie and empty.”

XI - Squeeze (2012)

Fast forward to the last few years, and vocal sampling is everywhere. There are more producers than you can count who wield their samples to achieve the same effect as Burial, as well as a few others who have taken his style even further into the dark. See for example XI’s recent single Squeeze, in which a super-clipped vocal sample is treated and "de-oxygenated” (as RA described it) in a fashion that highlights a humanity and warmth that has been stripped away, strengthening the menacing, inhuman feel to its tough percussive workout. XI further dehumanizes the voice by pitching it up and down to form a skipping melodic variation, proving how far a voice can be taken from its original meaning and humanity. It is curious to imagine that a producer would choose to add a person’s voice which makes a song feel less human, but it is a potent tool which adds to the paranoid power of the track.

Brenmar - Temperature Rising (2011)

Producers are now using cut-up vocals not just to express a human touch to contrast a moody soundfield, as Burial did, but to other purposes. In Temperature Rising Brenmar was just one of many producers who twinned choppy RnB vocals with fast-tempo Bass production to demonstrate a silky, overt sex appeal, while in the second You on Gold Panda’s Lucky Shiner album, a single-word vocal sample repeats to a powerfully mournful effect. It’s clear this particular style of vocal sampling can be manipulated to evoke almost any emotion the producer wants.

Gold Panda – You (2010)

Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo (2009)

Nowadays the current Bass scene is saturated with artists cutting up RnB and Funk vocals to varying degrees of success, but it begs the question of why an artist would prefer to chop up their vocals than leave them as whole phrases. Two plausible answers occur to me, the first musical and the second more based in meaning. Some producers use cut up vocals almost as a human alternative to a synth, as merely another musical tool to be manipulated and sequenced into the melody of a track. In a song like Disclosure’s i love...that you know or Joy Orbison's classic Hyph Mngo, a heavily treated vocal line, with the actual words often  (or completelyindiscernible, forms the central hook of the track. It’s an interesting idea to remove meaning from words to just hear the melody of language, and a producer’s willingness to just let a manipulated vocal line be the core of a track is intriguing, trading the meaning of words for their musicality.

Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka – Halo feat. Abigail Wyles (2012)

The second reason I can think of to chop vocals in this way is to do with the meaning and emotion evoked by the words in the listener. Simply put, if a vocal is treated so the words are difficult to make out, then it’s likely that the listener will attribute their own language and meaning to the song. The result of this is that the song forces no specific emotion on the listener, more a general mood, to which the listener can attribute the words and sentiment that personally suit them at the time. It is irrelevant to consider whether this is a case of the listener subconsciously ‘hearing what they’re feeling’ in terms of language or if it’s a more conscious process of application, because either way by becoming linguistically ambiguous, a song actually increases its emotive scope. Benjamin Damage and Doc Daneeka’s Halo is a perfect example of this, with Abigail Wyles’ muffled vocals freely interpretable by the listener as long as their chosen meaning suits the subdued vibes of the song. It seems almost paradoxical that by making a voice less recognisably human you can actually increase its emotional appeal, but this is the intriguing effect of a lot of contemporary electronic music.

Wolfgang Voigt – Kafkatrax 2.1 (2011)

With the rapid development of audio manipulation tools, the use of vocal samples is now only really limited by the producer’s imagination. There are only two ways to push the use of these samples; forward and backward, and there are great contemporary producers pursuing the path in both directions. For an example of someone pushing use of vocals forward into more extreme territory, one need look no further than legendary German producer Wolfgang Voigt, who many of you will know as Ambient Techno producer Gas and the head of Cologne-based label Kompakt. In his recent Kafkatrax series, Voigt producer a series of tracks comprised solely of vocals cut and treated from a Kafka audiobook excepting the inclusion of a single kick drum. The result is as cerebral and successful as any of Voigt’s work, the vocals assembled into deep, hypnotic Techno with some sounds still recognisable as human voice and others so far removed as to sound like they were recorded entirely from a synthesiser.  This is, in some ways, the upper limit of that trade-off between musicality and meaning, the press release states that the use of Kafka, “is entirely meaningless to the final musical product – Voigt is only interested in the sound of recited vocal text.”

Doc Daneeka & Abigail Wyles – Tobyjug (2012)

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are producers who traditionally used samples that are now drafting in vocalists to sing original vocal tracks for their Electronic productions. Doc Daneeka, who built his reputation on hard-bodied UK Funky and Bass music, reigned in the force of his productions and once more collaborated with vocalist Abigail Wyles to produce the Electronic soul ballad Tobyjug, in which he allows her voice to take centre-stage, lyrics and all. There is certainly a trend emerging of vocalists being called in for Dance and Electronic productions, from the poppier end of the spectrum with Jessie Ware (recently produced for by Julio Bashmore), to Funky muse Fatima, to SBTRKT favourite Sampha.

SBTRKT – Hold On (feat. Sampha) (2011)

So on one side we now have experimental tracks entirely made of vocals, and on the other producers are returning to the historic technique of inviting original vocalists to feature in tracks, not to mention the thousands of producers working and sampling somewhere between the two extremes. It’s important to realise that those that feature vocalists shouldn’t be seen as regressive in any way, Dance music has always run in cycles with techniques going in and out of fashion, and furthermore the application of new styles of Electronic production mean the results sound nothing like the 20-year old songs that used live vocals in a similar fashion. It’s impossible to predict where vocal sampling can go from here, but considering the resourcefulness of producers in using the human voice as a tool so far in Electronic music, it’s probably best to not have any specific expectations. The world of Electronic music moves so fast and offers so many surprises that you probably won’t have to wait too long to find out anyway.

First Choice – Let No Man Put Asunder (1977) 

Before the playlist, I'll leave you with this First Choice classic, almost every single line of which has been sampled in one dance track or another. See how many you can recognise. Also, listen out for a very early example of vocal manipulation at the end of the track.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the discussion on vocal sampling, included below is a selection of a few tracks from the last few months that have used vocals in particularly interesting or gratifying ways. Enjoy!

Tracklist:

Bondax – All Inside

Arthur Beatrice – Midland (Bwana Remix)

Shlohmo – Wen Uuu

Airhead – Wait

Lianne La Havas – Forget (Shlohmo Remix)

Above & Beyond – Love Is Not Enough (Synkro Remix)

Burial – Ashtray Wasp

Brenmar – Let’s Pretend EP

Let's Pretend

Temperature Rising

Done (Don't Luv Me No More)

Brooklyn-based producer Bill Salas has certainly had a very busy year; with two EPs, a good few sleek mixes and his own touring schedule to grapple with, he’s managed impressively to embrace the producer’s life. However, good time management and a prolific approach to releases does not a great artist make. In the increasingly crowded scene fusing Bass and Juke with a more-than-healthy amount of RnB, can Salas truly stand out from his peers? On the basis of these three tracks (and a clubby remix), I’d say the answer is a definitive yes.

His release earlier this year on Sinden’s Grizzly label, Let Me Make (Tasting) was a densely layered selection of club hits, and here he’s taken a cooler approach, giving his rhythms and samples more room to breathe. It’s a great move, because Salas clearly knows his way around his production kit and the added space in these tunes really works to his benefit. The Chris Brown-sampling title track combines bouncing bass and pained RnB vocals, with a choice synthline introduced a couple of minutes in to great effect. It’s a nice tune but honestly in today’s bass scene it doesn’t really sound particularly special. Fortunately, the same can’t be said at all for Brenmar’s two other productions on the EP, which easily rank among the best of his work and are a pure pleasure to listen to.

The aptly-titled second cut Temperature Rising announces itself with a restrained bassline and synth stabs, before bursting into a brilliant and propulsive bass number. For me, the thing Brenmar does best and most distinctively throughout this EP is his excellent vocal sampling, often leaving entire phrases to run before echoing offstage, or looping the start of a phrase before letting it play out. Both techniques are used here to fantastic effect, and this track could be perfectly placed in any bass/RnB flavoured mix. It’s also insanely sexed-up, for anyone who’s interested, from the sultry breakdown to the lyrics themselves (“spread yourself all over the bed ... you should feel my nature too”). This track alone would be enough, but Brenmar manages to step it up another notch for his final piece, Done (Don’t Luv Me No More)¸which is easily the standout track of the EP. Here stomping bass, synth stabs and condensed finger clicks combine into a dark banger, with RnB samples chopped into jukey snatches to absolutely stunning effect. The track mutates every so often, the percussion and sub-bass slowly becoming more and more prominent until it all comes together beautifully for the close. MikeQ takes over remix duties on Done, straightening it out with a solid beat and more concrete rhythms. The outcome is definitely a nice listen, but it’s hardly essential.

This EP is surely the best thing Brenmar’s put out to date, and the two latter tracks are easily some of the nicest in their field I’ve heard this month. The bass scene is becoming rather overpopulated, yes, but when the talent is this fantastic it’s hard to care.

8/10

October Dance Roundup

We’re now entering the dark depths of winter, and so what kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t try my hardest to supply you all with tunes to keep you dancing through those cold nights? I’ve collected together twenty one of my favourite dance tunes from the last month or so, downloadable as a playlist from mediafire here, so let’s get going.

Classixx - Into the Valley feat. Karl Dixon (Julio Bashmore Remix)

First off is a clear contender for track of the year in Julio Bashmore’s euphoric remix of Classixx’s Into The Valley, running classic Chicago house stylings through a thoroughly modern filter with everything you could possibly want from a dancefloor stunner; ecstatic keys, emotive vocals, and one of the most irresistible grooves around.

Maurice Donovan - Call My Name

Keeping up the retro feel is Maurice Donovan’s (aka Ramadanman / Pearson Sound) throwback cut Call My Name, in which a cloying vocal line is stretched around a straight and bouncy house track that has all the right elements in all the right places.

Coat of Arms - Is This Something

Coat Of Arms’ low-key release Is This Something is probably my most played track of the month, a gorgeous piece of bouncy bass with a Faith Evans sample twisted almost beyond recognition that can pretty much be mixed with anything to sound brilliant.

Mercury - You Lift Me Up

Still holding onto those upbeat vibes we have Mercury’s September release You Lift Me Up, where diva-licious vocals are styled and chopped with classic garage trimmings and some gorgeous bassy synth-work. This is an absolute banger.

Visions of Trees – Novocaine (Melé Vocal Mix)

Next is a lovely vocal mix of Visions of Trees’ endlessly surprising Novocaine, where a great vocal line is twinned with stomping bass in a track full of great micro-edits and details in order to keep it well-paced and engaging right the way to the close.

A1 Bassline - Falsehood

A1 Bassline’s releases have been fire recently, and the recent Buoyancy / Falsehood is no exception. The A-side’s bassy glory is well worth a listen, but for me this darker B-side stole the show. Here great percussion vies for attention with choppy footwork vocals, before dropping into one of the best builds I’ve heard all year.

DJ Godfather – Make That M.F.

Moving on to other genres, this piece of dirty ghetto techno has had me moving all month long. Joining the ranks of the likes of DJ Assault, DJ Sluggo and Maurice Joshua, here Percolator-style bounces supplement knife-sharp handclaps under that commanding vocal line.

Boddika – Acid Battery

One of the more remarkable tracks on Scuba’s excellent DJ Kicks this month, Boddika’s cold new acid take relies on treated synths, skittering percussion and paranoid searing synths to fantastic effect.

Distal – Mamanimal

I kind of put this track in because I’m still unsure whether I like it or not, but it’s definitely worth a listen. Clipped from this month’s Frite Nite Surreal Estate collection, this mutating track settles from a stuttering bass number with precise and textured percussion into an uneasy synthline, before abandoning all of this completely for two minutes of an epic synth build and powerful beats. Has to be heard to be believed.

Brenmar – Temperature Rising

First pick of this month’s bassier numbers goes to Brenmar’s gorgeous and sexy release from his newest Let’s Pretend EP. A fantastic vocal line glides smoothly over light percussion and deep bass stabs, while a constantly shifting synth-field always keeps the song firing at all cylinders. This is one not to miss.

Jack Dixon – Clear

Another gorgeous cut from up and coming Jack Dixon, this is a light and airy cut with distinctive bass stylings. A nice vocal line echoes off into a warm and bouncy track that has the real potential to get dancefloors moving.

Sepalcure – I’m Alright

Coming out as the B-side to their forthcoming single Pencil Pimp from the NY duo’s self-titled debut out this month, this is a great sign of what’s to come. Really laid back, the vocals court light synth-work showing Sepalcure’s trademark skill and bass know-how.

Jack Dixon – Coconuts (Disclosure Remix)

Another Jack Dixon cut, this time remixed by White Noise favourite Disclosure, this has had a lot of playtime on my laptop in the last few weeks. Disclosure take Dixon’s slow and sexy tune and draw those vocals and beats out as far as they will go, crafting a fantastic tune in its own right.

Arkist – 23 Summers

(Not on youtube but included in the download)

The always on-point Arkist crafts a sinuous groove across bouncing synths and vocals that are just out of earshot, showing his consistent ability to put a warm and funky twist and contemporary dance music.

Addison Groove – An We Drop

Another track culled from Scuba’s DJ Kicks release, this is quite a restrained cut for the normally intense producer, but it’s recognisably Addison Groove in the acid-house stabs that rule the latter half of this great tune.

Gugu – Rollin

Following this year’s Afro-Cuban EP with a release on DVA’s recent Some Things Never Strange EP, Gugu stole the show for me with Rollin. Deceptively simple, the bounciest of basslines rules under sharp beats and a great vocal loop.

Kahn – Tehran

The B-side to Kahn’s last Illy single, Tehran sounds totally unique, with distinctive Eastern trappings running over the top of a pulsing dance tune. Definitely one of the best tunes of the month.

Najem Sworb – Severance

(Not on youtube but included in the download)

French producer Najem Sworb’s last single was one of the best I’ve heard in a long while, and this A side more than proves why. Through what is essentially techno he creates a busy and rich soundfield, layering mutating synthlines over a head-bobbing beat and irregular percussion.

Floating Points – Danger

Floating Points’ last experimental 7” won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but it certainly held my attention. This is micro-dance at its smallest, beats sounding like rips in the musical fabric interrupted by a tiny swirling synthline that makes for quite a cerebral listen. You might find it hard to fit this into a mix, but its definitely worth a listen.

Mosca – The Way We Were

The first track from Mosca’s free 5000 Followers EP (released to celebrate a Twitter landmark), this is a track of unusual quality for a free release. The word here is groovy, and Mosca ties soothing vocals over warm keys and tops it all off with a Wu-Tang skit. What more could you ask for?

Nicolas Jaar – Don’t Break My Love

Fresh off the press, Jaar’s free EP (available to download as of this week) shows Jaar is still on form, and he’s looking in more interesting directions than ever with his sound. What is largely an experimental percussion piece unfolds at its own hypnotic pace, with organic sounds complimenting each other gorgeously. It all finishes with an intoxicating loop that you’ll wish went on for much longer.