Melting Vinyl

Rip It Up, Issue 220, 1 December 1995, Page 30

Melting Vinyl

MC OJ & Rhythm Slave have been a big part of the New Zealand hip-hop scene (yes there’s a scene!) since their humble beginnings as innocent 17 year olds with a love for blunts, beats and spray cans. Nationwide fame came with hits like ‘Money Worries’ and ‘The Marijuana Song’. Hey Otis... “Wassup?”. What do you think of your early stuff now? “Some of it I’ll listen to and think: ‘Ouch, that’s bad, but I’ve got no shame, we were really young, you know. It’s been an evolution to get where we are now.” Which is an inner city cafe (suspiciously enough, the same cafe that features on

the front of the New Groove acid jazz compilation, hmmm...) But back to the matter at hand. Who are Joint Force? “Joint Force is me, Slave and shock DJ DLT. It’s weird, a lot of people are still saying: ‘Joint who?,’ but after a couple of singles and videos, people will work it out. Joint Force is like starting again for us, which is cool, with the advantage of having some history.”

Joint Force have released the One Inch Punch EP, produced by DLT. A big step forward, it’s a much harder sound than previous songs as ‘OJ & Slave’. The single, ‘Static’, was a hard hitting, interference drenched media attack. Other tracks include some dreadwise dub and some

Jamaican dancehall flavour. “We love dancehall, it gives me the warm fuzzies. Give me a blunt, a big system, some Buju Banton, and it just does my head in. Since we love dancehall so much, we thought: ‘Why don’t we try and do some?’

So they did. The ‘Burntime’ remix single is the happy result, featuring some free flowing Caribbean flavour, and some tropical toasting a la Otis. Is that melting vinyl I can smell?

“Yeah, the single will be out on vinyl featuring DLT’s smooth instrumentals, limited to 500.”

Say no more, I’m down. ‘Burntime’ is out now.

ANDY