| New Jersey garage producer Todd Edwards is wideley aknowledged to have exercised a formative influence over the UK underground scene. While some British artists e.g Tuff Jam continue to emulate his funky disco basslines and busting lo-fi beats, it is Todds sampling technique which has proven most iinfluential accross the spectrum of UK Garage, linking his work with the vocal science so apparent in 2-Step. Like many producers on both sides of the Atlantic, Edwards sources most of his samples in 1970s disco tracks. However, rather than extraxting barlong loops like DJ Sneak and others, but Todd prefers tiny fragments of vocal and instrumental texture, rather than whole samples, which are then stitched together in long, ragged, jump-cut skeins. The result is a bubbling, shifting, uneven sort of sound, full of unexpected ruptures, sudden jerks, dizzying plunges into the internal workings of Todds production techniques. This is a far cry from the slick, masterful opacity aimed at by many US garage artists in many ways it has more in common with the deliberately abject practices of the best contemporary electroacusations. |
