Z-TRIP
Jun 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef
In 2001, Zach Sciacca, aka Z-Trip, hit pay dirt with his self-released CD, Uneasy Listening (Against the Grain, Vol. 1), a slice-and-dice mix CD on which Glen Campbell's “Rhinestone Cowboy” infiltrated Pink Floyd's “Run Like Hell” over a beatbox rhythm, and The Beatles' “Yesterday” was saturated with Hollywood sheen via John Williams' “Star Wars” theme. Dubbed a pioneer of the mash-up sound, Sciacca (with fellow spinner DJ P) was simply combining the radio fodder of his youth with the club beats he knew so well.
“I was inspired by people like Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa,” Sciacca says from his L.A. home. “I took their formula and applied it to a heavier mix. It was about taking the beats and the breaks and the old rock records and mixing it all together. I saw similarities between the drums of Led Zeppelin and James Brown and mixed them accordingly. Then, I realized it doesn't work with just drums but with the melodies, and certain melodies and songs worked together. It made sense 'cause I grew up listening to all that music; I didn't separate it.”
He made his name with the mash-up, but when it came time for Sciacca's artist debut as Z-Trip, legal hassles derailed any notion of an Uneasy Listening, Vol 2. Instead, Sciacca relied on his own music-making skills over sample-clearing shenanigans. Shifting Gears (Hollywood, 2005) shows Sciacca's years in clubland have paid off: The album is a stylistically scatterbrained outing with guest raps from former Public Enemy focal point Chuck D, Lyrics Born and Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, among others. Sciacca's production aesthetic is Spartan and functional, befitting his hit-'em-and-run style.
“I didn't really use a lot of plug-ins,” he explains. “I did everything pretty dry, and if I used effects, I ran them off vinyl through the Pioneer EFX-500 Performance Effector. Most of the actual processing I did by hand or in the sampler. If I can keep it raw and fresh-sounding going in, then it is less work in total. I try to run in everything at good sample rates and maintain the consistency of the needle going to the record and how it smacks me when I first heard it. If you have a good sample, the last thing you want to do is ruin it with processing.”
Using an Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler, a Rane TTM 56 mixer, Technics SL-1200 turntables and an Apple Mac G4 running Digidesign Pro Tools, Sciacca found that there were samples that he couldn't do without, such as those from The Scorpions' “Animal Magnetism” and Nazareth's “Child in the Sun.” But some of the album's most interesting moments are pure Sciacca, such as “About Face,” in which a barking drill instructor shouts over snare-drum cadences and fat funk beats, and “Take Two Copies,” a mash-up of Jethro Tull's “Teacher” with rapper Busdriver, of L.A.'s Project Blowed crew.
“I try to sample a loop, then chop it and make it my own,” Sciacca says. “I might like the sound of the beat, but I want to funk it up more, so the pattern is not repetitive. You have to put air in between the hits. You have to create this illusion of the ghost notes or the stuff that is not being played. Sometimes, if I sample a record and there is not that space in there, I have to fill it with something, so I will go to the beginning of the record and drop the needle and sample that bit of air while the needle is spinning but nothing is being heard. Then, I throw that in my dead spaces so it feels more natural.”
In addition to Shifting Gears, Sciacca appears in Scratch: All The Way Live (Immortal, 2005), a concert DVD taken from the 2003 Scratch Tour. But even though he may be moving up in the world, Sciacca is still a club DJ at heart. “I want to select records that are more in-depth than the normal mash-up so the average listener won't know what it is,” he explains. “That is what will separate me from the other guys who are doing this style of mixing.”
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