Sampling as an art: Sub Focus, Chase & Status and more

Today we are covering some of the early material from the renowned dance music artists: Pendulum, DJ Fresh, Sub Focus, Chase & Status, and Sigma. Yet again, we couldn’t avoid surprising and weird stuff…

The artists that we have this week basically sampled other music, and they did it seriously well. Sub Focus borrowed the sounds from very different musicians, such as Daft Punk, Nirvana, or the composer Vangelis. Take Me Away from Chase & Status features RnB vocals, while their commercially successful tune Duppy Man is based on the track from the dancehall artist Capleton. On the other hand, there are Pendulum with their samples from dramatic films/series: for example, in Toxic Shock we hear a speech of an Armageddon’s character. And it’s funny that the voice in Through the Loop actually belongs to Willy Wonka from the classic 1971 film… But what we expected the least is what DJ Fresh did to Gatekeeper: Dan sampled the speech of a man from the… reality show about families!

Sub Focus – Rock It (0:02) >>

Daft Punk – Robot Rock (0:30)

Sub Focus – Last Jungle (0:27) >>

Gladys Knight & The Pips – Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye) (1:15, 2:20)

“Those old memories… We don’t know… What I’m gonna do without you?”

Sub Focus – Let the Story Begin (0:00) >>

Vangelis – Spiral (0:00)

Sub Focus – X-Ray (1:51) >>

Nirvana – Breed (0:06)

Sub Focus – Soundguy (0:00, 0:44, 1:07, 1:30) >>

Xploding Plastix – Geigerteller (0:00);
Ansel Collins – Stalag 17 (0:19);
Candy Man – Killa Sound (0:13);
Buju Banton – Champion (0:45)

“My sound kill a soundboy by day, and crucifies dem by night, my sound kill a soundboy by day, on every dubplate we play… Hot off the press, and I’ve got to pull up”

Sub Focus – Druggy (2:13) >>

David Behrman – Leap Day Night Scene 1 (1:00)

Chase & Status – Take Me Away (0:58) >>

Black Box – Ride on Time (1:50)

“Let me tell you
Let me tell you what you do
What you do, what you do to me
Take me away
Found you,
So happy I found you
What you do to me, yeah
Come on and take me away
Uh…
Sometimes I can get so down
Sometimes I feel trouble
You take me away
I love you, uh…”

Chase & Status – Smash TV (0:22) >>

Guns N’ Roses – Welcome to the Jungle (Live) (0:01)

“About five or six years ago I hitchhiked here and ended up in a skunk out in the middle of this place and it turned up outta the freeway. This little old man comes up to me with a backpack, about 10 bucks between us, and he goes “You know where you are? you in the jungle baby!”

Chase & Status – Duppy Man (0:00) >>

Capleton – Who Dem (0:00)

Pendulum – Another Planet (1:34, 4:56) >>

Jeff Wayne – The Red Weed (Part 1) (0:26);
Akira Ifukube – Gojira Tai Mosura (0:06)

Another track that contains the sample from Gojira Tai Mosura is ShockOne’s Chaos Theory (1:08):

“I wandered through the weird and lurid landscape of another planet”

Pendulum – Through the Loop (0:23) >>

Gene Wilder – The Wondrous Boat Ride (1:17)

“There’s no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There’s no knowing where we’re rowing
Or which way the river’s flowing
Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a-blowing?
Not a speck of light is showing so the danger must be growing
Are the fires of hell A-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing?
YES! The danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing
And they’re certainly not showing, any signs that they are
slowing!
Woooooooaaaaaa”

Pendulum – Axle Grinder (0:27) >>

The Twilight Zone (1959) (0:10)

“You’re travelling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sound but of mind. This is not a new world or otherwise. It is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned the ripping imprint on the pages of history since the beginning of time. Time is the future”