Scorpio – Mellow Song (Full Cycle Records, 1996)
I dropped a little breadcrumb to today’s post in my previous breakdown of Photek’s ‘Rings Around Saturn’. I mentioned Dr Who Dat?’s Beat Journey LP, which includes a track that uses the same Pharoah Sanders sample as Rupert Parkes’ masterpiece. Produced by Jneiro Jarel, who would later go on to collaborate with MF DOOM, it’s a superb album of globe-trotting instrumental hip-hop in the Madlib/Dilla vein that is perfect for hot, sunny days. The music of Brazil is a large influence on the album with several samples from Brazilian artists, and that’s where the link to ‘Mellow Song’ comes in.
Scorpio were the duo of Roni Size and DJ Die and while they had frequently worked together before, this 12″ (with ‘Turn Dance’ on the flipside) was their first use of this moniker. Scorpio is Roni’s star sign, but is also the name of a break regularly used by the Bristol crew, taken from the Dennis Coffey track of the same name. They would go on to use the name on a string of big tracks such as ‘Li Li’, ‘Trouble’ and ‘Ali Baba’.
‘Mellow Song’ opens with hazy vibrato keys and these come from the beginning of ‘Brazil’ by Azymuth and were also sampled on ‘Ageless Daisy’ from Beat Journey (one of the album’s highlights for me). I first came across the sample when Azymuth’s 1975 debut album was re-issued in 2007, my attention drawn by a second disc of remixes from the likes of Marc Mac, Kirk De Giorgio and Peanut Butter Wolf. It’s worth noting that another track, ‘Morning’ (AKA ‘Manhã’), was sampled by DJ Hype on ‘Closer To God’. In an interview with Ransom Note last year, Roni Size explained the ethos behind the Full Cycle imprint that he co-founded with DJ Krust and Chris Lewis:
“Full Cycle was about trying to add some musicality to the music and just trying to add in influences from the musical side of things”
The sample on ‘Mellow Song’ gives the track a nostalgic quality that I love and demonstrates the more melodic style that Roni wanted for the label, which can also be heard on tracks such as ‘Music Box’ and Bill Riley’s ‘The Chill’. Bristol has a rich musical heritage and Roni and Die grew up with pirate radio and sound systems playing hip-hop, soul, reggae and r’n’b, with crews such as the Wild Bunch and City Rockas. These influences informed their productions when they started making jungle. Die recalled to Resident Advisor back in 2020:
“Those guys have record collections, like Roni’s brother General who was in a crew called UD4, he had a massive record collection so we’d kind of go digging in his crates”
The sample is combined with the Sesame Street break until it gives way to a trembling bassline. Scuttling drum edits build underneath before a “check it out” vocal brings in some wonderfully stuttered Amen to raise the pressure levels during the mid-section. They keys then briefly return as the track rolls out in a more chilled fashion. This is the kind of minimal, jazz-inflected tune that could only come out of Bristol and a favourite of mine from this era.
It was included on Music Box, an essential Full Cycle compilation from the same year that featured highlights from the back catalogue along with new material. That ‘Brazil’ sample would crop up on another tune by a Bristol based producer in 1997 when it kicked off Bill Riley’s ‘The Ninja’, which has recently been given a little bootleg rework by Coco Bryce. Check it out below:
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