Blockhead Sources De Wolfe Music Library For New ‘The Art of the Sample’ LP

New York beatsmith, Tony Simon, bka Blockhead, has proven to have a fairly solid grasp of social media, drawing in thousands of followers to his respective accounts across various platforms like Facebook and Instagram.  Along with his personal blog, Phat Friend, these have become outlets used by the producer to regularly dump out ridiculous and engaging content.  His social media presence is so effective that a good percentage of his followers may not even be fully aware of his professional accomplishments.  In fact, last April, Tony captioned one throwback image of himself on instagram  with, “I realize the majority of people who follow me on here do so cause of the funny pics but I’m curious how many of you know I make music. Like this pic if you know me like via music and not pics I steal off the Internet. This is a scientific study!”  After one commenter assured him that his followers were music fans, Blockhead responded with, “I guarantee that at least 80% of my followers are cause of funny pics. That said, I have a shit ton of followers.”

The son of an artist, Simon grew up surrounded by visual art, but found his calling in the sonic world, building an overwhelming and genre spanning tape and CD collection.  This was the foundation for his ever increasing knowledge base that he would later draw from; exploiting the eclectic palette of soundscapes at his disposal, during the production of his own work.  Making his initial impact by crafting beats, Blockhead‘s name became closely linked to rapper, Aesop Rock, whose critically acclaimed albums, Float and Labor Days, Simon produced the lion share of, along with half of Aesop’s Daylight EP.  A sought-after underground beatmaker, he has also worked with such indie rap luminaries as Atmosphere, Murs, Mike Ladd, and Open Mike Eagle, as well as for labels like Def Jux.  Somehow, Tony still carved out time to create the instrumental masterpiece, Music By Cavelight, an album that was released by UK powerhouse, Ninja Tune, more commonly recognized for releasing electronic efforts by artists like Amon Tobin, Bonobo, and Wagon Christ.  Personally,  I consider the solo debut to be one of the truly monumental instrumental hip hop endeavors, alongside DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing and RJD2‘s Dead Ringer.  Like Endtroducing, however, Music By Cavelight can be somewhat difficult to pin down and classify.  It’s through that release that I was ultimately introduced to Blockhead‘s work.  It’s an album with traces that can still be felt, influential for a particular demographic of listeners and future producers.  The thing about Simon is that he has continued to stay, not only productive, but incredibly consistent, releasing one solid and refreshing solo LP every couple of years, or so.  This doesn’t even take into account his equally prolific collaborative work.  The fact that Blockhead isn’t more celebrated, or that he’s celebrated for much less important associations, is something that I’ve always felt was unfortunate.  It’s not as if his skill set has miraculously evaporated, over time.  This guy has definitely has still got it.

Today, we’re really excited to announce a brand new project that is guaranteed to operate as further evidence of that claim, one that places the man in a position to truly utilize his impressive talents and craft something uniquely compelling.  In short, Simon was given access to the coveted music archive of historic UK production company, De Wolfe Limited, based on the premise that he would be creating new music of his own by sourcing its contents.  More specifically, he would be crafting an entire album and; even more specifically, what he would be making is his own library record, by using library music as his foundation.  For the large majority, the term “library music” will require even further specifics to explain it, but for now, I can tell you that, as far as library music is concerned, no name is bigger than De Wolfe.  They were the ones that established the entire concept for it, way back in 1927, with the introduction of talkies entering the film world.

Blockhead, himself, provides some insight and a bit of background on the company, the field, and the concept of the album, as follows:

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“For those who are unfamiliar with De Wolfe, they are a music library that has been doing music for film, radio and television for nearly 100 years. They make original music that gets plugged into all sorts of things and has been heard around the world. If you’re a producer, you have very likely sampled them and not even realized it. I was fortunate enough for them to allow me to make an album entirely out of their back catalogue.”

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Library music has served an important purpose over the years, supplying ready made, pre-manufactured music to help score entertainment media like TV and movies.  Whereas hiring a regular composer for original work, or even licensing well-known music, is often not very cost effective, library music was created with the specific intention of being affordable and fitting into any number of scenes or scenarios.  By nature, this is music that has to possess the ability to enhance a scene, while remaining generic enough to be plugged into any number of other projects easily, and without becoming too iconic or permanently adhered to whatever is using them at any given time.  This is music that can be used and reused by various projects.  It’s music meant to serve a purpose, with composers rarely, if ever, owning their own work, as they were, more or less, simply considered contracted workers.  Not unlike with the BBC Radiophonic workshop, the creatives weren’t so much respected as composers as they were viewed as cogs in a machine.  Due to this, the final products, generally, belong to contractors like De Wolfe.  A range of styles from infectious Italo-disco and funky exploitation chase music to haunting western, sensual R&B, and thrilling spy jazz all needed to be represented in the catalogs of these companies, so as to account for whatever context or occasion a project might require.  Over the years, crate digging DJs and producers have stumbled across these works and, recognizing their value, incorporated them into their own.  In more recent years, these releases — as well as the often un-credited artists that were behind them and the field at large — have begun to gain more respect and appreciation for what they are.  Some of the better titles have even been treated with vinyl reissues of their own.

Blockhead‘s new album, The Art Of The Sample is an intriguing concept for a few reasons, but the main one is the idea that he’s using library music to turn right around and create more library music.  As Simon puts it, “These are not typical Blockhead songs. They’re more stripped down and focused for the purpose of being used in TV and film.”  Whether his use of the word “purpose” indicates that the tracks are literally intended to be used for film and TV, or that they were simply sculpted while embodying that theme for a loose concept album, seems unclear, but the idea of creating background music that effects and supports an environment, rather than swallow it, is a fascinating undertaking for someone whose job is often to take this sort of source material and incorporate it in a way that highlights particular elements and brings them into the forefront.  Of course, this is the sort of thing that keeps it interesting and, for anyone familiar with Blockhead‘s catalog, this collaboration couldn’t be more perfect.

Based on what we’ve heard, it’s evident that Simon doesn’t just tackle one or two themes here, but rather takes full advantage of this remarkable opportunity to really explore producing in the style of numerous different genres within the greater “library music” canopy — while rubbing his own unique fingerprint all over them, of course.  The product description refers to this 14-track LP as a “laidback instrumental hip-hop” effort.  What it sounds like to us is Blockhead, only with a slightly different approach, while continuing to explore new territory.  And a good Blockhead album is something that I can feel positive about, knowing that I can still pull it out 10 years or more from now, only to find it as current ever; never feeling stale, or burning out it’s welcome.  Blockhead makes lifetime records.

If you enjoy the sample tunes above, you might be interested to know that the producer has already posted the entire track-by-track playlist on his YouTube account.   In fact, it’s been up for little while, but now there’s also a physical release slated for a July 6th, with a pre-order for the limited edition vinyl currently available through Young Heavy Souls.  This is a run consisting of only 1,000 copies, so if you’re looking to grab a copy, you’re probably going to want to get on that soon.

And if you’re really digging this stuff, the good news is that it looks like there will be more of these Blockhead x De Wolfe library record collabs in the future.  In referencing gaining access to their entire vault, Simon stated, “That’s SO much music. In fact, so much so, that I already have another volume almost done. So this should be an ongoing thing.”

Peep the back cover and complete tracklist for The Art Of The Sample (volume 1?), below.

Blockhead
The Art of the Sample
Release Date: July 6th, 2018
Young Heavy Souls
Album Pre-Order

Track List:
1. Silky Serene
2. Jellyfish
3. Seven Tease
4. Invisible Man
5. Coastline Cruising
6. Black  Silhouette
7. Eyes Open
8. Posse
9. Frank’s Brother
10. Skip
11. Take a Drag
12. Blessing in Disguise
13. And The Winner Is
14. Gleam