Beat Tape Co-Op Presents - The Foundation Producer Series 028 Introducing Kollage [Beat Tape]
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01. Good Morning
02. Fat Caps
03. Buoyant
04. Pianciano
05. Block Party
06. Layup
07. All City
08. Cutlass Supreme
09. Hot Sauce
10. Turnpike
(Preview)
Beat Tape Co-Op Presents - The Foundation Producer Series 028 Introducing Kollage
Kollage is an artist, music producer, and beatmaker born in South Korea, but a Chicago native since the age of 3. Growing up in southside Chicago in the 90’s, Kollage was first introduced to Hip Hop in late grade school through his friends with the likes of Common Sense, A Tribe Called Quest, Gravediggaz, and Wu-Tang Clan. He gravitated to the raw honesty, hard beats, deep sounds, and diverse creativity of the culture. Along with his friends, they started a crew and he would try his hand at all four elements of Hip Hop, but gravitated to the DJing/Turntablist and production aspects the most.
Over that next decade+, he would continue honing his craft by DJing and producing beats for a variety of local Hip Hop MCs and groups that he was a part of, releasing a solo album, as well as DJing and performing his own music at various venues and festivals in the city and across the midwest. Unfortunately, it was during this timespan that his passion began to wane and he grew disinterested in the local music scene. He also began to focus more on his professional career, in design and technology, and his personal life, getting married and starting a family. This unintentionally turned into an unplanned decade-long sabbatical from performing and releasing music, essentially “disappearing” from the scene altogether, but never actually stopping. He continued to master his craft alone, in the lab, with only his closest friends and family actually hearing the unreleased/unfinished music from that time.
Starting in 2021, coming up on 20+ years of making music and dealing with the stresses and challenges of the pandemic, Kollage needed an outlet. Something he could own and control in a time that felt chaotic. Through those tough times and self reflection, he found a renewed purpose, mindset, and desire to begin releasing music once again, not for the glory or praise, but for the love. He has since been riding this creative wave consistently releasing new music, including: 4 albums, 2 singles, and 1 remix, all in the span of the last 6 months. One of those releases entitled, “Dilla Time!” (an homage and appreciation to the late great J Dilla) was even featured on Okayplayer’s Mixtape Mondays.
About this album
This new album release will be available through Beat Tape Co-Op, a staple and continuous supporter of beatmakers and producers worldwide since 2008. This new volume (#28) in the Foundation Producer Series was created over the course of a month before its release. In that time, Kollage challenged himself to use a limited amount of tools to make the album in a limited amount of time. There was a sound he was attempting to create for this release, and he felt that this constraint can help best achieve the desired result.
There was minimal use of Teenage Engineering’s OP-1, mainly for synth bass-lines that Kollage played himself, with chops and sampling done solely on Teenage Engineering’s handheld battery-operated sampler (PO-33 K.O.), and recorded live into the Zoom R8 multitrack recorder. He then used the individual recorded tracks on the R8 to perform and record the track live while bouncing it down to a single master. Ableton was only used to mix and master the final track from the R8.
This album is unapologetically raw from its sample selection, its imperfect micro-chops recorded live, to how it was intentionally mixed and mastered. That imperfection adds a “life” or humanity that can sometimes get lost in grid-based, sequenced music. If you like or need polish and quantization in the music you listen to, this album wasn’t meant for you. For the heads that want that raw bounce, turn it up!
Cheers,
Jonah
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