Background

Cut Slash Kill was a collaborative project of Philip Brophy & Ian Haig. Their shared interest in movies, rock, hip-hop, comics and mixing led to the release of a mini-LP on Present. The record also included a 16 page comic produced by Ian and Philip. Philip continued solo with the project for 2 tracks on the Present Compilation CD.

A Fistful Of Rock mini-LP © 1989

Credits

Composition, mix& graphics - Philip Brophy
Sound bytes, editing - Ian Haig

1989

A Fistful of Rock mini-LP - Present Records

1990

Pop Art Corn & Soft Pop Porn - 2 tracks on The Present Records Compilation - Present Records

A Fistful Of Rock comic © 1989

Overview

A Fistful of Rock

Original press release

Let's see ... all the right ingredients seem to be here. Time to mix-em up. We'll throw AC/DC in with Madonna; reunite Adam & The Ants with Bow Wow Wow; fuse Olivia Newton John with bits from West Side Story; Slash Queen with Kraftwerk; cut Power Station into Gary Glitter; Feed Romeo Void to The Creature Form The Black Lagoon; and force Faith No More to dance with Chic. Cut Slash.Kill.

None of them could fit together prior to the wonderful mutations scarred across the first vinyl release of Cut Slash Kill. The aptly titled A Fistful of Rock forcefully clutches together a disparate bunch of chunky rock rhythms and holds them in front of a widescreen barrage of the coolest of movies - from Russ Meyer to William Castle to Roger Corman to Sergio Leone. Even Hulk Hogan and Macho Man make an appearance, Blast your ears and you are there.

Pop Art Corn & Soft Pop Porn

Original press release

Philip Brophy continues moonlighting in the studio with some cut-ups and remixes under the name of Cut Slash Kill. Developing the 'media-collage-music' of 1989's A Fistful of Rock, the subject of these two new tracks is a perverse fusion of broadcast television and hi-tech disco. The Many Deaths of Andy Warhol sets news reports of warhol's death to a souped-up version of Hot Butter's Pop Corn. Invasion of the Teenagers takes slabs of The 1990 Miss Teen USA Pageant and racks them up against an ominous acid-tinged beat. Gross, obscene, pornographic.

The Present Records Compilation CD © 1990

Technical

A Fistful of Rock

The tracks for A Fistful of Rock were produced in two stages. First, Philip recorded a series of breaks of 'faux-rock' from a slew of recent 12" at the time which were fusing slabs of guitar noise with electronic/disco-oriented club production. Key influences were braced between Sigue Sigue Sputnick's Giorgio Moroder-produced Flaunt It! LP (1986) to the "Derek B.'s Urban Respray" 12" mix of Eric B & Rakim's "Paid In Full" (1987, with its powerfully incongruous blasts of the opening chords to John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack & Diana"). Philip recorded the breaks onto 1/2" mag tape and made 4-track tape loops. The loop was then played, with live dub-mixing (flicking various tracks on and off, punching in reverb bursts, etc.) to a 2-track mix-down. This mix was then handed to Ian who sampled a pile of film dialogue sound-bites from VHS into an SPX delay (an early proto-sampler which allowed up to 2 seconds of digital sampling). Ian then manually 'played' the samples by repeatedly hitting the 'play' button on the SPX delay unit. Once he had saturated the breaks with these bursts of dialogue, the tracks were then mixed and mastered.

Pop Art Corn & Soft Pop Porn

Extending the general rubric of remixing and appropriation of the Cut Slash Kill project, Philip remixed two of his early → ↑ → releases: a track from the Ads soundtrack, and his gaudy discofied version of "Pop Corn" from the Soundtracks LP. To each he added a variety of keyboards and synths, changing the tone and the melodic slant of the tracks. To the former, he added fragments of the numerous television broadcasts reporting Andy Warhol's death; to the latter he added a cut-up of the opening speeches from most of the contestants for that year's Miss Teen USA Pageant.