paper buddha

13 years ago, I spent a weekend in Austin, TX at the studio of a very talented DJ/producer (and good friend at the time), Scot Gray. Scot and I had a fondness for acid breaks and we spent this particular weekend creating what would be one of only two dance tracks I would produce as an active DJ. The things I remember most about this particular studio session were that we did most of the work in one weekend and we used Cubase as the sequencing software and a Mackie board (can’t remember the rest of the equipment). I was also committed to using a snippet of James Brown from “Make it Funky” and the baseline from “For the Love of Money” by the O’Jays. If memory serves me right, we also did the bulk of the work the first day and auditioned the track live that night on a DAT at a now defunct club on 7th Street called OHMs. Scot was a resident DJ at OHMs and I was his guest DJ every now and then. I think Saturday nights were also broadcast on a local Austin radio station. Anyway, that night was the only time someone other than me or Scot would ever hear that track. A few months later I retired as a full-time DJ, and Kelly and I moved to LA to start a new chapter in our lives. I ran into Scot in 2000 when I was in town for SXSW and that was the last time our paths crossed.

So, I was rummaging through two big boxes of mix tapes yesterday and decided it was time to begin digitizing and posting them here on Paper Buddha. The first tape I pulled out was one called “DJ Gary-O & Scot Gray – Untitled”. I dropped the cassette into the deck, hit play and what started playing was not a mix tape, but that track from 1996. It sounded great for a 13-year-old tape so I digitized it for you to enjoy. It’s long – almost 11 minutes – and there are a handful of breakdowns and change-ups that could easily have been the foundations for alternate remixes. I guess we decided to throw everything together for that live audition at OHMs. Suffice it to say, I think it sounds pretty good for a mid-90s acid funk track that was never fully produced and mixed down. Maybe with sprucing up some elements could be repurposed. Only problem is I don’t have the original source file and the tape deck I’m using has a recognizable hum in the background. I’ll have to do some work to get this cleaned up, but I’m posting what I have for now so you can have a listen. I think I called this track”Q-bass’d” back in the day so I’ll leave it at that.

Scot – if you see/hear this and you’re interested in re-connecting, please drop me a line. I’d love to catch up.

DJ Gary-O & Scot Gray – “Q-bass’d”