Rate My Amen: Redpine & Solo

John Stuckley and Sam Moss – aka Redpine & Solo – are a Leeds, UK based duo who have been representing the innovative end of bass in their hometown for the last couple of years, playing alongside the likes of Addison Groove, Tessela, South London Ordnance and Mosca. They've just signed to Studio Rockers and come good with a first release that utilises some of the finest amen science we've heard this side of a Ray Keith mixtape. Check out lead track Smoke City,  and you'll see what we're on about:

In homage to the fine-ness of their amen usage, we thought we'd ask the boys to review some classic amen magic. Here's what they came up with. We're a bit disappointed they weren't more into Gaycore, but hey, you can't please all the people all the time…  

Squarepusher – My Red Hot Car

Track 10 / 10
Fucking amazing tune. We’ve both spent a lot of our youth listening to Squarepusher and take a healthy amount of influence from the brain of Tom Jenkinson.

Amen 
Technical – 7.5 / 10
Groove – 9 / 10
We’ve had to split the scoring so that we can say how good the goove is on this track. The edits are pretty special, but the groove and choice of when to let the track breath is whats makes this so good.

Renegade – Dark Soldier

Track 8 / 10
Wicked track despite its lengthy intro by todays standards. Love the way the intensity builds and ‘drops’ happen without warning – no white noise sweeps leading to the payoff… It just rolls!

Amen
Technical – 3 / 10
Groove – 10 / 10
Absolute smasher! Ray Keith in all his glory! Has a rawness and skatty edge that you just don’t hear very often in modern production. This is a good example of why everyone should have a '93 – 96 jungle’ section in their record collection.

Egyptian Empire – The Horn Track

Track – 6.5 / 10
This track must have been a source of influence for artists around in the early 90s. You can hear other people’s music in this e.g. The Prodigy and even early DJ SS.

Amen
Technical – 2 / 10
Groove – 7 / 10
This is a hard one, if we were back in 92 the scores would be way higher. But with the last 25 years of the Amen being manipulated beyond recognition, we’ve had to give it a low technical score. Gets the head nodding tho, so you’ve gotta love the groove!

Mr Simon – Gaycore

Track – 2 / 10
Um, right. I think one of us has a tune somewhere on an old PC written in Acid Music that sounds a bit like this. We don't generally like to be negative about someone's self expression through music, but we'd say that this tune represents a state of mind that can only be achieved at the end of a 6 day bender – with the video to match.

Amen
Technical – 3 / 10
Groove – 2 / 10
Yeah… 

Cassius – I Love You So (Skream RMX)

Track 4 / 10
We've met Skream a few times and although we probably wouldn't invite him round for a cuppa tea in case he starts handing out our CDJs to random people on the street (check Skream's SXSW Boiler Room), we'd be lying if we said we haven't enjoyed a bunch of his tunes in our time. We like the old school piano vibes and are happy that it doesn't drop into some over the top dubstep bass, but overall.. we're a bit bored.

Amen
Technical – 4 / 10
Groove – 5 / 10
Good production, cool section at 64 after the drop, shame the whole track isn’t more like that and less "Radio 1’s Big Weekender"

Fresh Four – Wishing On A Star

Track – 7 / 10
This tune has got some serious groove, we love the tempo and the raw vocals. The video looks like it's some mid 80s New York scene edit, but it's actually Bristol. Nice. Loving the chilled drum edits, especially the reverb sends on the snares.

Amen (“Think" break)
Technical – 6 / 10
Groove – 10 / 10
The break is from Lyn Collins's “Think” (drummer is John “Jabo” Starks – look him up), which might be the second most important drum break in history. Wicked groove, wicked edits, say no more!

.. except – 
We fully support sampling. If done properly it's like the biggest respect you can pay to someone. People tend not to sample shit songs, so as long as people are doing their research – finding out who wrote/produced/played etc. – sampling just brings artist's work to a new audience.

We'd also like to promote this page 😉

Peace!

Redpine & Solo 

Pick up the Smoke City EP from over here, and follow Redpine & Solo on soundcloud here and facebook here. Studio Rockers can be found on soundcloud here and facebook here