Raund Haus s âRH-101â Celebrates Five Years of the Durham-Based Collective and Label
[Raund Haus; Feb. 26]
Thereâs an image I will forever associate with Raund Haus, the Durham-based collective and label thatâs celebrating half a decade of far-out beats with the compilation
RH-101.
Itâs February, 2020, and a man dressed like an Old West undertaker is onstage at Motorco.
With a dramatic flourish, he presses a glowing button on a custom console, dropping a drum into the sample stretching the air, and this tall kid posted up by the stage just canât take it. First, his arms fly up like heâs literally falling over the drop. Then, bobbing deeply, he clutches his head as if it were the only thing keeping him afloat on the vortex of the beat.
Said Deep s Duck in Idaho Is a Love Letter to Sampling
[Raund Haus; Oct. 23]
Just before MP3s and file-sharing became ubiquitous, the 1990s marked a heyday for a certain strain of vinyl-sampling turntablist. Armed with Akai MPC samplers and enviable record collections, artists like DJ Shadow and The Avalanches assembled entire albums from samples aloneâbricolages of forgotten LPs, dusty drum breaks, and disembodied spoken-word.
Twenty years later, itâs no surprise that The Avalanchesâwhose 2000 album,
Since I Left You, is considered a high-water mark of sample-based musicâhas experienced something of a second life. As so much of our world goes digital, thereâs a renewed craving for the analog experience these artists represent.