A Psychedelic Trip into Library Music with Nuts One’s ‘Clockwork Wizards’
Now this is what I call a great release! Well-crafted, too: the vinyl record comes in a deluxe heavy cardboard tip-on style cover (hand-numbered), including credits and photo inserts. The sample-based album is heavily built on library music with a psychedelic vibe.
Clockwork Wizards (a reference from 1971 UK horror movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes) is the newest album of Geneva-based producer Nuts One. After my auditory cortex had a hard time processing the album (in a good way though: the dark productions and samples genuinely intrigued me), I figured to reach out to Nuts to find out a bit more about the music.
Nuts One: “About 10 years ago I discovered the wonderful world of library music. Ever since I’ve been exploring this relatively obscure universe that goes from jazz to pop to electronica to psych to avant-garde. This music wasn’t available for the public at the time, it was only created for and distributed to radio, television and the cinema industry. Some of my favorite library composers include people like Paolo Renosto, Armando Sciascia, Klaus Weiss & Piero Umiliani.”
He continues: “For this album I didn’t only sample library music, but it certainly was a major influence. I carefully selected and sampled records with an electronic, psychedelic or dark vibe to keep a certain unity on the whole album.”
“Clockwork Wizards has been mainly produced on my MPC2000XL, but I also worked with some of my analog gear, such as a Polivoks analog synthesizer, Crumar Performer and a Roland RE201 ‘Space Echo’. Oh, and the album cover has been made by Parisian graffiti artist and illustrator Koolfunc’88, by the way. Had to say that, as it really was a honor to be working with him.”
“I rarely sample music that I don’t own on vinyl. I don’t want to sound snobbish, but to me, crate digging is a very important part of the game.”
“And a bit more about myself, for those who are interested: I’ve been listening to hip hop since the age of 12, around 1993/1994. Before then I only heard music from the K7 collection by my older sister and brother – new wave, punk, rock… And I started making beats about 15 years ago. These days I dig any kind of music, from jazz and psych to prog rock and soul, which also reflects on my record collection. I rarely sample music that I don’t own on vinyl. I don’t want to sound snobbish, but to me, crate digging is a very important part of the game.”
Listen to Clockwork Wizards in its entirety below.
