Sunday, June 20, 2010

Abstract Tribe Unique's Golden Quartette


As I mentioned before, in 1995 Abstract Rude was close to a record deal at Grand Royal home of the Beastie Boys. The album Mood Pieces was meant to be released there but only two tracks made it onto a compilation from the label. Behind the scenery there exist two records which have never been released, one only made it to the test pressing status, while the other probably went for promo status, but I'm not sure if it really is a promo record or just a test pressing, too. What I'm talking about is the "Blast Off Into Infinity (12" Test Pressing)" and the "Ohh I'm a Getcha (12" Promo)".
What I think is, that Mike D visited a Good Life session where he probably was impressed by a performance of Abstract Rude & the Tribe Unique and asked them for a demo tape. In his raps, Abstract Rude mentions "I handed a tape to Mike D from Grand Royal" multiple times and also "MC A plays the bass on OG Crew" which might be a hint for a different unreleased version of the "Heavyweights Round III" track, probably the one that was deleted on utube. Also a rough version of "Blast Off Into Infinity" was deleted!
The Blast Off Into Infinity record has stamped in the date NOV 17, 1995 while there isn't no direct clue on the "Ohh, I'm A Getcha" record when it was pressed except that it contains the hint, that it was mastered at Capitul Recordings. But I think that through Aceys deal with Capitul, Abstract gained access to the golden chambers and for that reason, I will definitely date it to '95.
In '97 ATU had a deal with the crown loyal label Big Dada, which resulted in another 12" with two tracks from the Mood Pieces album and later on in '98 followed a 12" on Deemo Records containing the track "Caught Up In the Rappcha" together with a track from Syndrome on the flip-side.
I think that these records give a good hint, how many obstacles upcoming artists have to pass and I don't want to know, how many patience was put into the "Mood Pieces" album through the years before it was finally self-released by ATU. Although I'm not a 100% familiar with all the background info, I think that the given hints paint a good picture of what was happened and I'm glad, that beside a ton of unreleased underground stuff, "Mood Pieces" was finally released in '98! A record that captured me from the first time I heard it and may never let me go...

2 comments:

Ramo! said...

Yo man thanks for posting the dopeness...by the way there is something wrong with the "My Experience 12" download link. The time it says to download keeps climbing (went past 10 hours for me) with no progress. I did not wait that long but saw that it would be awhile so I canceled. Anyway to fix that? Thanks again! You da man...

meeee said...

Thanks for coming over.
First I tried it but I had a problem, too!
Sometimes it happens, that MU doesn't work but the links are up for a long time and ordinarily the download is fast.
I will send you another link soon, the recording btw was very bad. I'll record it again...