Record of the Week: Brian Jackson x Louie Vega

Every week on my weekly Tuesday Morning Coffee stream (10AM-2PM EST on Twitch, all episodes archived on http://www.skratchbastid.com ), I pick a Record of the Week. This selection can be ANYTHING that has caught my ear/attention/heart recently - new music, old music, vinyl, Compact Disc, cassette, digital file... this week - it's a lathe cut. What is a lathe cut, you ask? A lathe cut is a one-off piece of vinyl that has been etched in real time. A heavy "cutting" needle runs over a piece of blank vinyl and writes the musical information that is fed into it into the special piece of slightly softer vinyl, using a special machine with a turntable. Imagine the reverse process of playing a record, basically. Instead of playing it back, it produces grooves to be played back. But only a limited amount of times -- these cuts wear out easier due to the malleable nature of the special cutting vinyl. DJs and producers make these take test copies to play in their vinyl sets, to test the levels of mixdowns compared to other records in the mix, to gauge the crowd reaction, and (most of the time) to have an exclusive piece of vinyl that no other DJs have. Dancehall DJs call these "dubplates". I was very fortunate to be gifted one of these special records when i was in Miami for Bastid's BBQ at Dante's HiFi during Art Basel. The night before the BBQ, Rich Medina & Louie Vega were doing their block party in the Dante's courtyard, and I was in attendance, loving life as a Canadian in 25 degree (celsius) weather in December. After greeting Louie and Rich and making my rounds around the grounds of my favorite bar in the world, I settled in close to the DJ booth. To my surprise, Louie reaches over and hands me a record. He explains to me what it is, and my jaw dropped! You see, the year prior, I was in the same exact spot, listening to Louie's set and he starts playing this brand new versions of some of Gil Scott Heron's catalog and I'm like "What is THIS!?". I caught him a week later in LA - same thing - more insane GSH covers. I picked his brain after and he explained that Brian Jackson - Gil's partner during his prime recording era in the 70's - had been recording with Masters At Work (Louie Vega & Kenny Dope), and some of the material was covers of some of their classic recordings. Over the past year, these songs have begun to be released. Last May, we celebrated the release of the first single from the project - "It's Your World" (ROTW clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL7hqGjiBjo ), and throughout the year, they've been slow dripping the songs from the project. EP One dropped with Omar singing Gil & Brian's classic "The Bottle" - which you've DEFINITELY heard in some of my sets. The record Louie handed me was a lathe cut of a song from EP Two, which I had never heard - a new version of "Home Is Where the Hatred Is". I read the scrawled writing on the white label and that's when my jaw dropped. I'm sharing it here with you because I love y'all, and this music needs to be heard, and records are meant to be played. it's a building groover, so push play, enjoy the ride, and cop this EP when it drops in March. i've said enough -- LISTEN!