 MySpace page.
artist info :: purchase :: jump to song samples
Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
And thy commandments all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
—Hamlet, Act I, Scene V
I doesn’t believes me ears!
—Popeye
It's a rare occasion when Hamlet, Popeye and Tony Robbins come together to contribute vocals for a project, but such is the case on Before I Used Acid, a provocative turntable experiment by EngLebuRt. Though it’s unclear whether the hallucinogenic tease in the title promises pre-trip clarity or grist for the mill, a headphone audition suggests it’s probably both.
The formula EngLebuRt concocts on B4IUA involves long-playing vocal samples over five tracks of a short-form EP. In the first minute, buRt appends a Hamlet soliloquy to a record scratch and drops a Godfather-esque string riff on top. Thereafter, we hear the animated squabbles of Popeye, the wisdom of a shaman and the playtime exercise of a kids’ show all get scratched over beats as tastefully selected as the samples themselves. Finally, janitor-turned-self-help-celebrity Tony Robbins poses the question, “What if you could reinvent life?”, and buRt continues to reinvent Robbins as he has everyone else on the disc.
If Beck were a DJ in his early career, he might’ve made a record like this. buRt has a tendency towards noise and a sweet tooth for phonic chaos reminiscent of Beck’s obligatory distortion tracks. Throughout B4IUA, buRt offers far-fetched solutions for atmospheric creativity: throw the beat into a phaser in the middle of the track; lace a break with an ear-splitting, supersonic whine; ride a midi tone up and down across every note of two octaves. Somehow the entropic bliss is nicely married to the metaphysical abstractions of the vocals. These orations range from seriously contemplative to condescendingly educational; through parity of placement and parody of significance, they paint a vague landscape of spiritual bleakness that permeates the record.
None of these mixing performances are especially polished, but buRt has a skilled touch in placement and rhythm, laying samples tantalizingly behind the beat. Each track tends to decay towards its own finish, hinting at the radioactive half-life of drug-induced wisdom. The inspiration of the concept, however, proves thrilling throughout. Whether it’s perfect samples over perfect breaks or hearing the sailor man’s “Blow me down” get scratched for posterity, buRt brings a keen ear to both crates and turntables, splicing disparate elements into a quasi-unified theory of pop culture.
—Cedrick Boltze for the Frozen Foods
| Track | Track Name | Length | | |
| 1 | Mixed With Bass and Matter | 6:13 |  | Listen to Sample | |
| 2 | Renouncing Injustice | 7:48 | | | |
| 3 | Popeye vs the UFO | 10:06 | | | |
| 4 | Stuttering Teapot | 7:28 | | | |
| 5 | Reinventing Life | 12:24 | | | |
|
