Customer Reviews
So good it HURTS!!! - By: Hans Berg, 13 Aug 2008 
The original Kut Up Wizard - Still equaled by none!
Classic alll the way, 2 CDs full of pure genius. It's fun, It's funky, It's original, It's Brilliant!
BUY THIS NOW!!! It's a Bargain!!!
It's Overused, But This Is Genius - By: pjr, 12 Jul 2008 Once upon a time a sound engineer & a dj/advertising copywriter decided to enter a competition set up by Tommy Boy Records to remix a track callled "Play That Beat Mr DJ" by G.L.O.B.E & Whizz Kid (2 members of The Soul Sonic Force) after spending a day at Dee's studio Double Dee & Steinski had their mix they entered the competition with "The Payoff Mix". Not only did they win but in the process changed the way people listened to & thought about hip hop.
There are certain times when you hear something totallly insane & new, but not often. Double Dee & Steinski took the scratch mix formula familiar to hip hop listeners & sent it into the stratosphere. They used the old sound engineer technique of taking a razor blade to their tape & splicing together their track. Where as most people might add four or five tracks into their mix & use the breaks & scratches to spice it up by splicing in a studio the duo added 24 sound samples, creating not so much a remix but a sound collage of the like not heard before. It was pressed up as a promo & became legend. The sheer number of samples meant that Tommy Boy could never clear them alll & release the track but the first great cut & paste track was born. Followed by 2 further mixes Lessons 1-3 are, quite literallly the stuff of legend.
It's ridiculous to underestimate the importance & influence of them & this compilation is the most legitimate release of these tracks shows that these tracks from 1983-5 sound as fresh now as they did then. Documented here are pretty much alll of Steinski's recordings (exculding his late 80's work for 4th & Broadway records) of the past 25 years. Listening to this is like hearing the best, most crazy mix you could ever wish to hear. Mixing familiar tunes with eclectic samples from films to dance instruction records, TV broadcasts of the Kennedy shooting to whatever the track requires for its subject, this is quite simply extraordinary. Disc 2 consists of a mix made for BBC Radio 1 & gives an idea of what his later incarnation as a radio dj sounds like.
If you have an interest in turntablism, mash up culture, sound collages, hip hop mixes, sampling, or simply adventurous music you probably need this album in your collection. Most of the tracks here are not easy to find & the early stuff has never been available in more pristine form. The first 3 tracks are some of the most influential things made in last part of the century. They have influenced a generation & still sound amazingly good. The consistency rarely drops across the tracks here. Genius is a very overused word in our culture of the hyperbole but here it almost doesn't do justice. Buy this & own a vital piece of musical history.
