Raw Soul & Funk Breaks by G.E.D. Soul

Nick DeVan: The new album by Uptown Downtown Sound has a bunch of really dope reggae-styled tracks that we recorded around the same time as the first Magic in Threes album. The drum sounds in particular have the same vibe. Dark and dreamy sounds of melodica, organ, and piano are all over this album.

Also, the new DeRobert & the Half-Truths album 100 Yard Dash has some really crisp drums, horns, and vocals that are ready for remixing or sampling.

We’ve got a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder that we used for drums and bass for most recordings that are on Tracklib. After we recorded drums and bass to the cassette, we’d dump that to a one-inch 16-track tape machine and record the rest of the instruments. We typically use vintage Ludwig drums, a 70’s Fender Jazz bass, a Fender Rhodes piano, and other keyboards. The reverb you hear is always some sort of spring reverb from either a guitar amp, a Fostex 3180, or the Fisher Space Expander. We use an old TEAC reel-to-reel for tape delay. Recently we got an Ampex 440 2-track and an MCI JH-110 1” 8-track tape machine that we’ll be using on all our upcoming releases.

We feel like the music is informed by those genres but not limited to them. Feeling comfortable blending genres and influences to get where we want to go musically, whether it be dubbed out tape delay on a tracks like “Blowfly 1980” and “Beautiful Starship” or Latin rhythms on songs like “Rancho Relaxo”, we can use several different brushes to get the vibe we’re looking for.

I think Tracklib is making it easier to pay for a sample than not to. At one time, if you were a small to mid-level producer, and you found a rare record that you wanted to sample, you wouldn’t even know where to begin to try to secure the legal rights for sampling it. So what would most producers do? Say fuck it and release the track without securing the rights and just risk having a cease and desist letter sent in the future. Now with Tracklib, you can log in, find a sample, get a legitimate license, and put your release out without having to fly under the radar. Then you can confidently promote and exploit your song without the underlying fear of having to take it down.