Richy Pitch interview
(Originally published in April 2005)
Known for his involvement with London’s long running and monumentally popular “Scratch” hip-hop night, which comes highly recommended and with all the trimmings; recent and upcoming guests include the legendary DJ Cash Money, Pete Rock, Roots Manuva and one of my all time favourites, Big Daddy Kane. His website illustrates his friendly and colourful design projects and his immersion in teaching. Having fully paid his dues to hip-hop, it’s musical, social and cultural strands, his cv of tracks stands strong; the Live At Home LP appearing on the American independent hip-hop label Seven Heads and London’s Above The Clouds Recordings.
His remixes include workings of Busta Rhymes’ Dangerous, A Tribe Called Quest’s Stressed Out and Sunshine Anderson’s Heard It All Before. Work has included pairings with Apani B, The Nextmens’ Dom Search, Marcia Escoffrey and J-Live. Look a bit deeper and you’ll see he has created dancehall sevens (Collect on Scenario Records) and jazz numbers (Quasimodo on Kwerk) to boot. So, as hip-hop tightens it grip on the globe, and the information uber highway brings us closer and closer, it is so encouraging to see British artists like Richy Pitch working with such talents who clearly come from all corners of the musical and geographical globe.
It was a chance encounter with one such meld of styles that brought me to meet Richy in that I was spending yet another lunchbreak between Soho’s various record shops successfully managing to keep my spending to a bare minimum, when his version of the legendary club romp “Walking On Sunshine” by Rockers Revenge drifted over the speakers. I asked the lovely girl in Sounds Of The Universe what the record was and was quickly informed “oh, Richy Pitch? ” I mumbled to myself, knowing my money would shortly be leaving my wallet but not knowing he was stood about three feet away from me in the shop at the time. I happily paid the good man directly for said track and told him to keep up the good work. Result.
CK: I gather you have been into all sorts of beats since way back when, hip-hop being the best documented of all of your passions. What was your first set-up like? Did you get the real deal Technics 1200’s from the word go or did you learn the trade on another source?
RP: Yeah, I bought a pair in 1989, but I started DJ’ing on Cloud 9’s nothing to brag about there, these were like school disco decks!!! But you could still change the pitch so you could practice beat mixes even though the belts on the decks weren’t direct drive.
CK: What about your first studio set-up? When did you start crafting beats together?
RP: First studio set up was an Amiga computer, and octamed and 8 bit recorder/sequencer, it got me into recording loops.
CK: I thought your version of “Walking On Sunshine” breathed new life into the Rockers Revenge tune, a track I thought until then had been played to death; how did your new version come about? Is it an old favourite of yours?
RP: My friend Cyril McCammon was heavily involved in this production, he was one of the first artists to have an LP out with Soul Jazz and has played with all sorts of peeps from Don Blackman to All Saints. He had an accapella and so we got to work on a new idea for it, giving it a more downtempo soulful swing to it. It’s definitely an old favourite of mine written by Eddy Grant, I met his daughter the other day and told her about it.
CK: On the flip is your version of “Dangerous” by Busta Rhymes; do you know if your version ever reached his ears and what he made of it?
RP: Well we’ve just put it out so I doubt he’s heard it, but it’d be very cool if he heard it. Busta is one of my all time favourite MC’s.
CK: Would you try out your own exclusives in front of the Scratch crowd?
RP: Absolutely, i’ve played the Busta track plenty of times at Scratch.
CK: I always get a buzz when I hear that artists from the UK do well in The States, be it hitting the charts there or simply getting recognition on the musical scene; e.g. I love the fact the King Britt name-checks the likes of Dego on a regular basis or that drum and bass finally made it on the club circuit over there (albeit on a relatively small scale). I read the Seven Heads mention in the magnificent Wax Poetics publication and see that your “Live At Home” long player gets great reviews across the board over there, but have you noticed a greater following of late from that side of the Atlantic?
RP: Well I still have plenty of contact with the US but most of my recent projects have been on UK labels, so they get to find out less about me at the moment. Live At Home was a great building block for me and set me up as a producer. Seven Heads are a wicked label but they have changed quite a bit since I released my music with them.
CK: How about Japan? I know how those guys can often have their ear closer to the ground than most beat-diggers?
RP: Yeah I get love from Japan too, they have put my stuff out and I’ve remixed for people out there, still haven’t managed to get out there though.
CK: My favourite track of yours is probably “Don’t You” on the “Green Lanes EP”, featuring Marcia Escoffrey which I play constantly. It’s something I wouldn’t know what genre it belongs to, not that that matters of course… Are the lyrics something you wrote with Marcia in mind?
RP: Yeah lots of people like that track, we wrote it together, we started with Marcia improvising over the music then we refined it to a verse-chorus idea and got Sean in to do some trumpet bits, it turned out pretty good…a nice piece of British Soul.
CK: Please book-end your record collection; first tune you bought and last one out of the cellophane?
RP: First lp was Cheap Thrills by Planet Patrol, first tape was Blondie Plastic Letters. Last vinyl I bought was a Dave Brubeck lp Impressions of Japan for sampling purposes.
CK: I think it was Mike D from the Beastie Boys who pointed out that he took offence to term record ‘collector’ in that it implied it was someone who buys records purely because of the value it holds rather than a lover of the music; do you agree? (what’s the record you own that means the most to you?)
RP: I don’t really have one record that means the most to me, I have some worth a lot of money, i have some cheap as chips which are amazing and I have lots that remind me of good eras in my life, plus I have records I have made myself which make me proud…so music can create all sorts of good vibes.
CK: Being a producer and DJ amongst various other things, how do you feel about Mr Bongo closing down recently? To a certain extent I’m as guilty as the next man, buying tunes over the internet but to me this shop was a real huge part of London’s hip-hop backbone and I still love going round the various shops in town.
RP: Yeah it’s a real shame, it was a great shop and I got on well with all the guys in there: Huw, Tom, Kam etc etc. You’d get a nice personal service, something you don’t really get in your HMV’s or bigger music stores. Plus it was the best place to pick up indie hiphop!
CK: Hiphop at present is being cited as the biggest, most influential youth culture around, but do you feel this is the case? Perhaps it’s just the big-guns who are shifting units, with the small independent groups doing their own thing, as they have always done? (I remember being in Mr Bongo about two weeks before it closed its doors, CNN happened to be in there filming a spot on the rising power of hiphop. I got chatting to one of the writers of the piece and asked her if she didn’t think the project was kind of ironic seeing as she was stood in a well respected part of the hiphop scene in London and it was about to close down. She didn’t get the irony and the guys in the shop didn’t give a monkeys as they were so fed up the shop was closing. I’m sure they saw the piece as a calling card for future business, but to me it seemed weird that they put prop records up on the rack and acted like it was just another day in the store…)
RP: Yeah that seems a little weird but for the guys in the shop I know they were just ready to leave so they wouldn’t have cared either way. As for CNN, well the media always gets on band wagons and then dumps them at their convenience; we’ve had all sorts of media types, film and interview, at scratch nights but if they are there or not we still carry on. Hiphop isn’t a fashion…
CK: As well as being a DJ and producer, I hear you are still involved in teaching part-time and design work in various fields; perhaps you could tell me about how the design work came about?
RP: Yeah I like to have fingers in pies, the design story is a long one but I’ll try and keep it short. About nine years ago I went to Mauritius with my girlfriend whose family is Mauritian; I took my records over and ended up DJ’ing in the middle of a sugar cane field for a guy that ran a clothing range called Habit. He was looking for a designer so I said I could find him one, my designer friend got involved initially but had other commitments (he ended up being head of design for Evisu!)…so I decided to have a go. I’ve been designing clothing logos for them ever since and I have some great designers from London also involved like graff artist ‘Etch’.
CK: What design work are you currently inspired by?
RP: I like old school images like Top Trumps and my Football’79 sticker book, sorry this is probaly not the answer you were looking for, I’ve also got lots of books like 1000 Great Record Designs that help give me inspiration. My record covers inspire me, magazine layouts, London etc etc…
CK: Do you find it hard coming up with new ideas and concepts for your design projects?
RP: Yeah it can be a struggle but I try and source thoughts from my childhood all the way to the present day, in order to get ideas.
CK: Are you still involved with teaching? Do you get inspiration from the kids you work with?
RP: Yeah I still teach, I was working this Tuesday but it is very irregular these days. I love it, it’s really good for the soul and at the school I work at, the children really look forward to you teaching them, which is great.
CK: Do you feel that the days of loving vinyl and vinyl alone are behind us? Do you think you need to keep up with the new technologies to keep on top of the game? (Do you ever mix with CD’s/mp3’s?)
RP: Yeah I think both are important. I love vinyl and I love technology, for example I use Final Scratch on my laptop when I DJ at gigs like the Jazz Cafe, it means I can take 4000 tunes out with me, but there’ll always be promo vinyl in my bag too!!
CK: What records are rocking your world at present?
RP: The new De La Soul lp, Plantlife, Sa-Ra…
CK: What producers are you following?
RP: All sorts, from Jay Dee to Bugz in the Attic, fat and musical is the key!!
CK: Any artists you’d like to work with at the moment? You have worked with a great deal of artists over the years and don’t seem to stick to one style in particular; do your production methods reflect the sounds you are into at the time?
RP: My sound reflects the fact that I’m into all sorts of music, I’m not gonna change my name just because I make a broken beat or a house beat, I like people to know that I’m a lover of just good, warm, soulful music. I have been described as idiosyncratic and that’s cool…I hope to do an lp soon that will reflect that. Most people I know collect all sorts of music, if you just collect one genre of music you are most certainly missing out.
CK: What has been your favourite track you’ve worked on to date?
RP: Good question, the hardest but most satisfying was probably my remix of Ramp’s Everybody Loves The Sunshine which is out on a Verve soul compilation (Universal Jazz) at the beginning of 2005.
CK: What is your favourite track of 2004? favourite lp of 2004? biggest disappointment of 2004?
RP: I’m not sure about this, Kanye West continued to make a positive impression in 2004. Lets have more original minds on hiphop tunes rapping some memorable lines and not that crunk shit whose beats sound great but are let down by mindless lyrics. Put J-Live and the Neptunes in the same studio. Bugz in the Attic, IG, Mark De Clive Lowe and Yam Who continued to produce some quality tunes. Estelle got some good producers behind her and made some good chart worthy hiphop. The Electric Soul 2 compilation was one of my favourite lp’s of last year, quality tunes through out. Pete Rock’s lp was probably the biggest disappointment; mind you he made up for it with his production on the new Edo G lp…‘Boston’ is the tune, that shit is fat…check it!
CK: What does 2005 hold in store for you?
RP: More remixes, official and naughty ones. I just re-worked an Englebert Humperdink tune believe it or not for Universal Jazz. To make a Richy Pitch lp sampler and shop it to some decent labels, to continue working with quality singers and rappers. Look out for a mix tape at some point called Summer Madness…
CK: Anything you’d like to add? Any links to sites you’d like to see up?
RP: Check my stoopid site www.richypitch.com and look out for a revamp of www.scratch-web.com as Scratch has a new home at the Forum (we will still be working with Fabric too), see flyer. Cheers for the support. Richy
