Samplethon – Digging The Bruton Vaults

If Bruton Music does not register on your radar, don’t fear. You may have heard music from the label’s catalog without even knowing it. Sampled by everyone from Kaytranada to Kanye West to Erykah Badu to Gangstarr and more, the label itself has been churning out high quality music for over four decades for television, films, and radio. It’s this high quality sound that drew these artists to incorporate the original compositions in their own work. So what better way to bring out the best of the catalog then grabbing up the UK’s best known diggers to get in the Bruton vaults, pick out hidden samples, then pass those samples on to twenty up and coming and established producers who would compete against each other and a specific time frame (6 hours) to see who can come up with the best tracks using these samples. The wonderful result is Samplethon: Digging the Bruton Vaults During this event, the judges/ mentors: Ollie Teeba (Herbaliser), Johnny Cuba (SoundSci), Breakage (Digital Soundboy), and Roni Size, no introduction needed, worked closely with participants to give advice, check out progress, and eventually judge the event.

I think there was more a sense of camaraderie than there was competition. The creativity level was on some next level totally. – Johnny Cuba

The final project itself is definitely dope. With eight tracks from Big Kidd, Sup NASA, Chris Read & Pugs Atomz, Mr. Thing, Mark Rae, and Danny Drive Thru, the music runs the gamut from aggressive and in your face hip hop to laid back, chilled out beats, to old school flavors and lo-fi hop sounds. It’s the process that gets us as well: a meeting of the old and new, digging through forty years of top notch productions to create a whole new scenario that was eventually laid down and pressed on vinyl. The Bruton catalog gets highlighted and so do these producers/ artists and their work, it’s a win/ win situation. If you ever were curious on how this process works, the video below encapsulates the event. Not familiar with library music, pay close attention to the samples in these tracks, then go search through Bruton music yourself. You’ll be glad you did. Watch the video of the event and pre-order the record available on February 8th.