Ten essential turntablism albums

Look at the track counts before you look at the titles. Twenty-two. Thirty. Thirty-one. Twenty-one.

A pop record carries ten or twelve because a song runs about four minutes, whereas the unit of measurement on this page isn’t the song at all, it’s the routine: ninety seconds with a single idea inside it and then out.

Ten American records follow, from 1995 to 2000, grouped by label. Some of them aren’t albums in the ordinary sense. One of them isn’t music to listen to.

Listen while you read

Two on Bomb Hip-Hop

Various, Return of the DJ Vol. 1 (L-44955, 1995). Twelve pieces by twelve DJs, on a label a DJ had started. Dave Paul.

DJ Faust, Man or Myth? (BHH 2007, 1998). Thirty-one pieces on a single LP, which puts the average under two minutes a side-trip.

Three on Asphodel

The X-Ecutioners, X-Pressions (Asphodel 0977, 1997). Twenty-two pieces.

Mix Master Mike, Anti-Theft Device (ASP 0985, 1998). Thirty pieces.

Rob Swift, The Ablist (0993-2, 1999). Twenty-one pieces.

Three records, three years running, and the catalogue numbers land exactly eight apart each time. Asphodel, its own page says, came out of the Bay Area and kept strong connections to New York.

Two on the DJs’ own labels

DJ Q-Bert, Wave Twisters (Galactic Butt Hair Records, GBH-0007-1, 1998). Eighteen pieces. Galactic Butt Hair was a company belonging to the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the group Q-Bert was in, so the solo record came out on the crew’s own imprint.

Invisibl Skratch Piklz, The Shiggar Fraggar Show! Vol. 1 (Hip Hop Slam, HHS-015 CD, 2000). Twenty-three pieces.

Two you don’t listen to, you use

The Turntablist, Super Duck Breaks …The Saga Begins (Stones Throw, STH 2004, 1996). Ten grooves. The titles tell you what they are: Ragamuffin Break, Scratch Sentence One, Freestyle Beat, Jack Of Braex.

This isn’t a record that ends up on a playlist. It’s stock, cut to go under somebody else’s needle.

Beat Junkies, The World Famous Beat Junkies Volume 1 (PR Records, PRR54280, 1997). Twenty-one pieces, and the catalogue files it as a mixed compilation rather than as an album.

One that came out in London

DJ Shadow, Endtroducing… (Mo Wax, MW059, 16 September 1996). Fourteen pieces, the only entry here on a British label, and not coincidentally the one everybody has heard of.

What we couldn’t find

Four of these ten aren’t on Spotify as far as we can see: X-Pressions, The Ablist, Super Duck Breaks and the first Beat Junkies volume.

That’s our search and not an absence anybody has declared. Still, the cut is clean and it falls in one direction. What’s missing is the part made for vinyl, by people who played vinyl.

What the catalogue numbers say

A catalogue that climbs by eight a year. A numbered series issued backwards. An LP with thirty-one tracks on it.

They’re all signs of one thing. These records weren’t designed as objects for a shop. They were pressed to be used, and the bookkeeping followed along as best it could.