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Writer's pictureCallai Watson

#1 The Roots, "Things Fall Apart"

Album of the Month #1 kicks off with a selection by Dave Miller from Circa 16 Sound Recording- The Roots, "Things Fall Apart". Below is an interview with Dave chatting about the album.


What album are you listening to this month?

The Roots, “Things Fall Apart” has been on heavy rotation this month!


What is your favourite track off of the album?

I love “The Next Movement”, which kicks off this month’s playlist. I just love the open and natural percussive elements and bass. Always struck me as being a lot more “human” than some of the more full-on sample based hip hop music, and much more of a shift towards that rap/jazz area taken up by those like Robert Glasper later. A lot of that probably comes from Questlove’s drum style/feel/technique, but they also have a lot of interesting in/out, left/right vocal snippets of interest and ear candy in their production which I’m always a fan of. The scene setting “Act Won” also makes me laugh most times: “If you played the s**t that they like, people will come” and the preceding line! Can I quote that here?!

Where do you listen to it? Set the surrounding..

I’ve always been a fan of more of a set listening space - something that actually led to developing the “listening party” events prior to the pandemic. Somewhere that I can put tunes on without a great amount of distraction. I mainly listen to albums from start to finish, so I like to get settled with some nice food or coffee. I have a wee turntable and a couple of semi-decent speakers at home where I’ll enjoy music, although I plan on shifting this to a permanent space within the studio as soon as I’m able.


How did you discover the album?

I actually did a roots remix at some point in my recording/production training. The artist always stuck in my mind, and this led to me exploring the back catalogue (this would have been a few years after “Things Fall Apart” came out). In some ways, this is always a strange thing in genres like this, as you are usually missing some amount of the social “setting” or context around the record, but luckily, the themes seem to prevail! I had an iTunes copy, when that was the done thing, but I actually only bought the record after seeing a 20th Anniversary edition in a record store a couple of years ago and it’s been on heavy rotation ever since, can’t seem to put it away!


Click here to listen to Dave's playlist, including tracks from Gil-Scott Heron and Alfa Mist.






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