Crate Digging: A History

Crate Digging: A History

One of the touchstones of hip-hop, how can one revive this practice in the age of digital music?

Crate Digging. Literally. The practice of rummaging through crates of records at car boot sales, flea markets and second-hand record shops originated as far back as the early 1970s as hip-hop DJs, hungry for samples to pepper their beats with, turned to vinyl records as a way to integrate sounds from genres like disco, jazz, and funk into their music. These pioneers of the genre would cut, mix, and recontextualise familiar hooks and obscure cuts alike to generate new and fresh aural textures out of their musical archives. This practice of sampling can be seen in a wide variety of musical releases today, from pop and hip-hop, to electronic and R&B, while access to physical crates is becoming more and more of a luxury. With record shops facing alarming rates of closure due to changes in listening habits and the difficulties faced by small businesses during the pandemic, it has become more important than ever to preserve and continue the custom which has birthed some of the past few decades’ most beloved and important music.

Once only accessible to those with a record player, labels such as Habibi Funk, Numero Group and Dust to Digital have begun the process of reissuing vinyl recordings with previously limited releases for the modern digital listener. What follows is a short list of some of these records, reissued onto Bandcamp and other streaming services for your listening and foraging pleasure. I hope you are able to find something new to add to your digital music collection within this short selection and that it perhaps inspires you to do some of your own hunting once shops begin to open up again. Happy digging!

1. Disco Jazz – Rupa (disco)

Perhaps one of my favourite EPs of all time. This masterclass in disco grooves and catchy hooks could have perhaps remained unheard by future generations, were it not for it having been spontaneously discovered and uploaded to YouTube. Created as a result of a happy circumstance on a family holiday to Canada in 1982, the album is a fabulous mix of disco and funk rhythms on a backdrop of Indian instrumentation. Selling only very few copies, it wasn’t until Rupa’s son googled the album 20 years after its release that she even knew of how beloved Disco Jazz would come to be. It has since been reissued by Numero Group Records, allowing for it to achieve cult-like status among disco fans, transfixed by its effortlessly funky energy and rhythms. Stand out tracks are the absolutely glorious ‘Aaj Shanibar’ and the glitteringly funky ‘Moja Bhari Moja’. Give it a spin next time you’re sat somewhere sunny; you won’t regret it.

2. Love is a Hurtin’ Thing – Gloria Ann Taylor (soul)

Another cult classic, this soul record times in at 35 minutes yet is absolutely full to the brim with haunting piano chords, powerful vocals and killer guitar riffs. Strikingly off the wall and completely innovative in its fusion of genres, this album remained a hotly sought-after item for collectors for years until its reissue in 2015 by Ubiquity Records. Every new listen uncovers a new common thread between tracks or an energising musical phrase which you just didn’t catch before.If there were ever an album to take to a desert island it would be this one.

3. Mouasalat Ila Jacad El Ard – Issam Hajali (jazz folk)

Recorded and disseminated in the form of 75 cassette tapes while in exile in Paris due to the mounting Lebanese civil war in 1975, this impressive blend of jazz, folk, and traditional Arabic and Iranian music was reissued by Berlin-based Habibi Funk Records in 2016. Now retired from music and the owner of a jewellery shop in Beirut, the collection of Issam Hajali’s Paris recordings titled Mouasalat Ila Jacad El Ard meaning ‘Journey to Another World’ stands as a beautiful testament to Hajali’s homeland. Chronicling his experience as an immigrant in Paris; nostalgia for the ‘other world’ saturating the gentle vocals and santur accompaniment. Reading the translated lyrics of the opening track ‘Ana Damir El Motakallim’ is enough to make you weep; ‘I am the rendezvous, the joyous cries of birth and the tears on the embroidered handkerchief of exile / I am the mint plant of the hill, I am the source, and the rose branch.’ 4. Dreamin’ Wild – Donnie & Joe Emerson (soul, blues)

No list of rediscovered gems would be complete without this album, now considered an indie classic, owing to the track ‘Baby’ being covered and sampled by the likes of Ariel Pink, Eevee, and Dean Blunt. Growing up in the small town of Fruitland, Washington, the father of the two brothers invested a loan of $100,000 into a home recording studio where this album was born. Selling only a handful of copies in 1979, Dreamin’ Wild was destined for a lifetime of obscurity until Ariel Pink’s cover of ‘Baby’ prompted a reissue in 2012. Listening back now, the album’s dreamy innocence fully encapsulates a sense of youth and naiveté. Its recording plunged the small-town family into financial insecurity, but now—30 years on — the pair have begun to re-release some of the lost demos through Light in the Attic Records. The recordings are miraculous odes to creative passion, unadulterated by the harshness of time, both eerie and affirming in their credulity. 5. Ethiopiques, vol. 21: Emahoy (Piano Solo) - Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (classical)

Released in 2016 as part of the Ethiopiques series by French record label Buda Musique, the album is a compilation of the Ethiopian-born nun’s hard-to-find original recordings from 1967 to 1996. All solo piano pieces, they are some of the most profoundly beautiful and captivating pieces of music one could hope to find. Combining elements of classical piano technique and her unique, bluesy and off-the-cuff style, compositions such as ‘The Homeless Wanderer’, ‘Mother’s Love’ and ‘Homesickness Parts 1 & 2’ are poignant and startling in their inimitable breadth of form. Listening to this album evokes in one such a meditative state, that it should come with a warning against operating heavy machinery. The release of Emahoy (Piano Solo) has opened up Guèbrou’s compositions to an even wider audience and the world is all the more beautiful for it.