the dope report

TDR mix of the week: Andy Votel

Andy Votel is the kind of character that is spoken about in hushed tones by record collectors, producers and the music literati. He started off like many beat denizens in the 90’s who shared a love of hip-hop but quickly became more interested as to the source of the samples that were being used by these producers. He cut his teeth in the production circles of Manchester, djing, and making beats that caught the notice of many his contemporaries.

Since then, he has started the wildly successful label Finders Keepers that re-issues the crème de la crème of rare forgotten music from around the globe, all of it focused around the funkiness or oddity of its import. For a long time his taste in music was more appreciated by the rock intelligentsia, critics and the like. It’s difficult to introduce anyone else in the music community to French prog, Welsh folk music, Hindu soundtracks, and Turkish psych without them chanting the tome of obscurantist elitism.

Now that has all changed with time and his stock has risen considerably with the beat heads and the hip-hop community due to the unmistakable funkiness of what he brings to the table. Madlib’s younger brother “Oh No” sampled Turkish psych goddess Selda for one of his tracks and at his last show in San Francisco which I had the pleasure to attend, I was stunned as I saw young kids in hip-hop attire bobbing their heads with fists in the air as Andy melted their brain with rock from Eastern Europe, disco from Pakistan, and funk from Gambia, all of it with healthy back crushing breaks of course.

This mix that he did for RBMA Radio was a live set culled from his performance at the Meltdown Festival in the UK. He starts the set with Japanese funk-prog, moves into the opiate dens of Bombay for some belly dancing beats, takes a dip into a Cairo snake charming ritual and continues the National Geographic tour through the valleys of Palestine and the deserts of Africa. This one is for the adventurous in search of the perfect beat.

RBMA MIX

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Finders Keepers