Our influences

Parliament - Flashlight



Squarepusher Circa 1997



Ice Cube - Bop Gun [ft. George Clinton]



Dorian Concept live at the wireless



Herbie Hancock - Chameleon [live]



Just a few of the less obvious J-Treole influences. We're always working on fitting as much of what we like in, as Squarepusher said, [to paraphrase] it's about getting as much as you can in, from the 40s bebop, to the 70s funk, and 90s dnb, the lot!

Parliament, for me, summed up evolved funk sound, psychedelic, bass heavy, synth ridden, and most of all, fun. George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell are all massive influences on all of us in different ways. Get to know Parliament! They changed music for-ever! I think it was important for the idiom too, that it was around the first time funk became loud! James Brown invented the genr, but Parliament jacked it up to 11 [if you excuse the cliche] massive amounts of backing vocalists, marshal guitar amps, Moogs and the lot...

Squarepusher was a really early J-Treole influence, as he was someone taking Jazz in a different way. He played the bass like a bad-man, but had real good harmonic direction to his tunes, proper tunes. His break programming, today, remains un-paralelled, and he keeps shape-shifting, re-defining people's conceptions of him. J-Treole used to cover his Iambic 9-Poetry from the Ultravisitor album, he did a lot for us then, and he still does now.

I threw in this Ice Cube video, not only 'cos it's an awesome tune and features George Clinton, but it's from another time in Hip-Hop, when things were different, back to '93, when G-Funk ruled. Hip-Hop has had some damage done in recent years, but true greats live on. The likes of J-Dilla, Nas, Pete Rock, Doom, Madlib will be timeless, and always overshadow this current fad of Hip-Pop.

Dorian Concept was introduced to me by part-time J-Treole'er Simon Panrucker. This funky-ass glitch master, plays live keyboards [like I've never heard!] and has a free jazz drummer, as well as running ableton loops and doing the most bizzare sound design. All live, this is the key... he dosen't hide behind a laptop cue-ing tunes. He makes music... He's still up and coming, but he's going to make a big difference to a post-dilla scene. See him with the likes of Flying Lotus in terms of hall-of-fame.

Finally, another HUGE influence, mr Herbie Hancock himself. This video is of Chameleon. Amazing how the deepest funk his re-played entierly live! He rips up the Solina, Clavinet, Rhodes, Moog, he only has two hands! This album is a mile-stone in Jazz, Funk and music in general. Herbie did alot for mixing jazz with rock, electro and even drum'n'bass [argueably more than the great Miles Davis, who's last album was a Hip-Hop callaboration] Herbie's been there since early days, being featuired in Miles Davis' "2nd great ensemble" and being at the fore-front of alot of big music. Herbie also was one of the first people in jazz to use samplers [the farlight, youtube it...]

anwyay, enough for now...