Words By DJ Sorce-1

Horror movies and rap music have always seemed to have a loosely formed bond. From The Geto Boys “My Minds Playin’ Tricks on Me” to The Gravediggaz conceptual 6 Feet Deep album, there has been no shortage of inspiration drawn from scary cinema in the world of rap. Even RA the Rugged Man and 8 Off the Assassin used an image from the grind house classic Basket Case for the cover of their “Til’ My Heart Stops” single.

With all the source material out there to choose from it was only a matter of time before a savvy DJ decided to make a horror-themed mix tape. Leave it up to DJ P, the same man responsible for Uneasy Listening Vol. 1 and the gangsta rap-themed Gangsta Mix, to take the honors for tackling such a project. P’s initial Halloween themed mix tape Hell On Wheels (originally titled 10/31/98) combined old sound effects records, dark rap songs and horror movie samples to create an unforgettable listening experience.

Due to critical acclaim and some deep roots in the world of fright flicks, P decided to release a sequel in 2003. Since the release of both Hell On Wheels mixes, P has taken the next logical step. P, along with the help of some talented video editors, is in the early stages of making a video mix to go with the entire Hell On Wheels 2 CD. From The Shining playing over an Eagles remix to The Evil Dead flowing into a Queen blend, viewers are in for a memorable experience when the DVD drops.

Find out more about the roots of these spooky mixes and P’s personal horror movie preferences in the newest edition to our Reconstruction series.

TSS: Around what age did you start to get into horror?

DJ P: I was nine or ten. It was around the time Movie Channel came out. Cable TV was introduced to the Midwest and I started seeing trailers for scary movies. It was intriguing to me. I’d never really seen anything like it before, and as a kid it caught my interest.

TSS: Was there one particular movie that kick started your love of horror?

DJ P: The two movies that were big for me that were popular on Movie Channel at the time were My Bloody Valentine and The Funhouse. The Funhouse was directed by Tobe Hooper. He’s the same guy who directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My Bloody Valentine was a Canadian horror flick.

But if I really think back on it, I’d say my first horror influence was Halloween. It came on regular TV and it still scared me to death. I wasn’t able to finish the whole thing. I think I was intrigued by it because it scared me that badly. I liked it. I ended up growing into horror and I became a fan of the Halloweens, Friday the 13ths, Funhouse, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. All the old stuff is what I really love because it’s what I grew up on.

Friday the 13th is another one that I shut off in the middle of the day. Kevin Bacon’s death was brutal. It happened while he was lying in bed. A hand comes up and pins his head down, and then a spear actually goes up through the bed and through his body. That freaked me out. That scene freaked a lot of people out. It looked like he really died. It wasn’t an illusion of a knife going in; you could actually see a spear coming out. That was done by the makeup artist Tom Savini. If you ask me, he’s the god of slasher and horror movies. He did Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and the original Friday the 13th.

TSS: Pretty much every great horror movie had make-up done by Savini.

DJ P: Yeah he’s just a great make up artist. Dick Smith, who was another great make up artist, was a big influence for Savini. I’ve read books on Tom Savini. I’ve got the illusion books that show how they did all those effects. It’s like an art form to make it look like someone’s head is coming off. I know it’s not the most positive thing, but I have an appreciation for how they make things look real in movies.

I’m not a fan of watching violence in real life. I don’t like the Faces of Death stuff. I’ll never watch that crap. I’m not into the realistic stuff, but I really like scary movies and suspense. These days it’s not so much about the gore. That was cool in the beginning, but now it’s about how good the story is. Back in the day of course, it was how many pounds of blood were going to be in a movie.

TSS: When you did the Hell On Wheels 1 mix tape in 1998, what made you want to take the leap from just watching horror films to putting together a cohesive musical project based around them?

DJ P: The idea came from me trying to think of the most creative tape I could make. One day I just had the idea to do a Halloween themed mix. I was thinking about songs like “My Mind’s Playing Tricks on Me” by The Geto Boys, “Nightmares” by Dana Dane, and “A Nightmare on My Street” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. I just went to town on it.

That’s the mixtape I made without a sampler. All the samples came from the VCR. I had to time the samples by pausing the movie at a certain place and hitting play at the right time to make it fall in place. It was crazy. That tape has a lot of scratching too. I’ve never cared for my scratching too much, but it came out decent. It was more technical than the second Hell on Wheels. It took me a while but I finally finished it.

TSS: Hell on Wheels 2 came out in 2003. Did you do the sample movie dialogue in the same fashion with a DVD player or did you use a sampler?

DJ P: No. By then I had a CDJ. I was recording the samples form the DVD’s on to CD so I could load the sample onto the CDJ. Hell on Wheels 2 wasn’t as technical with all the samples, but that’s how I added them.

TSS: That must have been a lot more manageable.

DJ P: Oh yeah (Laughs). I had a sampler for the first one. Every sample you hear from a movie on Hell on Wheels 1 was from a VCR. I was using a 64 digital 8-track to make the tape. It was an 8 track digital recorder, but each track had 8 virtual tracks. I only used the top 8 though, and I’d just got back and forth. Hell on Wheels 1, if you have it on CD, has been edited down. It was originally a 90 minute mix tape I had to edit down to 74 minutes.

TSS: Really? I didn’t realize it was on cassette before CD.

DJ P: Yeah. The original title was 10/31/98. I still have the original cassette cover. I’m standing around the turntables with these flares coming out of my eyes. When it came out on CD the cover was a goblin sitting at an organ with some ghosts floating up from it. A buddy of mine did the goblin cover. That was for the first 1000 CD pressings. Then I redid the cover again and had it done with a bunch of horror villains. I had someone different do it, just to give it a different feel. I liked the other cover a lot; I just wanted to repackage it.

TSS: Do you have a preference between number 1 and 2?

DJ P: When I listen to the first one I kind of bug out because of all of the effort I put into the samples. I like the first one, but the second one was more of a challenge. When I did the second one, I was like “How the hell am I going to come up with enough new music to do this?” I used a lot of the Halloween-themed music that I like on the first one, so I had to dig deep. I had to really think.

Part 1 was more scratching, samples, and slower samples. It didn’t move as fast. Part 2 had more of an Uneasy Listening feel to it. I would do mixes like “The Terrorist” by DJ Vadim over “We Will Rock You” by Queen. For it’s time Part 1 was cool, but Part Two was more digestible. A lot of people tell me they like Part 1 better, which is cool. I’m going to start doing more mixes like that again. I miss doing those kinds of tapes with fast scratching and weird samples from oddball records. Read the rest of this entry »

Words By DJ Sorce-1
Graphics By P.

Lately, I’ve been listening to nothing but pre new millennium music. With a few exceptions, if it came out post 2000, I haven’t been fucking with it. Call me bitter. Call me a hater. Call me whatever you want to, but I sorely needed a break. I needed to go back to a time where ringtone sales had no meaning and there were no mix tapes only featuring 50, Jigga, and Weezy.

Shit, I needed to go back to a time when the word “Weezy” meant nothing to me.

One thing that has been in constant rotation in my ride during this phase is Vinroc’s Recon-Struction mixtape. DJ Neil Armstrong, Vinroc’s crewmate, cites Recon-Struction as his favorite mix tape of all-time. Released in 1997, it’s a perfect mix of great early to mid-nineties hip-hop, flipped with a turntablist aesthetic. Vinroc’s presentation of this era is a unique one as each track represents a mix of a specific group. He crams in three to five minutes of dopeness from each group and then moves on to the next. Vin successfully rides the fine line of displaying his skills as a DJ without going over board throughout. He flexes enough cuts and juggles to make Recon-Struction unique while simultaneously letting songs play uninterrupted when appropriate. The result is one of the purest hip-hop mix tapes I’ve ever heard.

These days, Vinroc is known more for his production accolades than mixtapes. The world of music is a much different from the world in which Recon-Struction was created, yet Vinroc’s memories of the tapes genesis remain fresh. Take a walk down memory lane as TSS’s Sorce-1 revisits Vinroc’s mixtape masterpiece.

TSS: What tapes influenced you before making Recon-Struction?

Vinroc: Hmm. That’s a tough question. I used to just listen to local Jersey stuff during that time period. I always checked my homie Ed Swift and bought tapes by cats like Camillo and DJs from Queens. But I can’t really say that stuff influenced Recon-Struction. That was just hip hop shit I was into.

TSS: So was the turntablist and battling scene more influential than the mix tape scene?

Vinroc: Yeah, that scene influenced Recon-Struction. At that time, other than battling, I was straight hip hop with what I listened to. I was all about Mobb Deep, Raekwon, and neighborhood music. Recon-Struction was paying homage to the stuff that came out a little before that and up to that time. I can’t say it was really influenced by anything but my personal taste.

TSS: What did Recon-Struction mean to you and your career when it was released?

Vinroc: My manager at the time pushed me to put Recon-Struction out and I’m still selling it to this day. It first came out around 1997 and was originally on cassette tape, to put the time in perspective (Laughs). If I recall correctly, I also did the cover art for it. At that time, I was a heavy duty battle cat…a real turntablist type. It was always on my brain. I was young and the turntablist and battle scene was at its peak. The music I used on Recon-Struction was the music I grew up with. I wanted to create something like a team turntablist set with golden era hip hop samples that flowed together well.

One of the first times I owned any “real” studio equipment was during the creation of Recon-Struction. I had a Tascam 424 tape based 4 track, which everyone used back then. I had just moved to Cali and I’d bought my 4 track from Canal St. a few months earlier. I basically pooled all of my favorite artists and the joints that they made and put them together as I was hearing it in my head. A lot of the composition and mixing philosophies that I used on that tape were part of what the Triple Threat DJ’s eventually became. If you’ve ever seen some of our videos, there is a lot of Recon-Struction-style composition mixed with Skratch Piklz techniques.

TSS: Can you talk a little bit about how things have changed since Serato? Back in the day you had to have a physical copy of each record that you used on a mix tape, or at least borrow one from a friend. How was it different having to collect each and every piece of wax? Read the rest of this entry »