Bleep

Bill Kouligas’ crucial PAN imprint lovingly reissues and reappropriates the legendary underground hip-hop mixtape Ruff Kutz from the archives of WordSound don Skiz Fernando Jr. aka Spectre. Recorded through a series of late night, haze-coated sessions in Brooklyn and dropped in ’98, Ruff Kutz is a testimony of the emerging abstract and experimental beats scene of the time, taking influence from Jamaican dub and the earlier harder-edged Bronx gangsta sound then graduating it to smeared, lo-fi, ambient-laced fusion that would eventually be coined ‘illbient’ by Williamsburg local DJ Olive. Running through the near 80-minute gauntlet of obscure unsigned material from the likes of Dubadelic, Kevin ‘The Bug’ Martin’s Techno Animal project and Doc Israel, we’re dragged through a sound college of coarse drum work, scattershot dub effects and rough, improvised basslines interspliced with strung-out spoken word intros and scene setting sample cut ups. Most importantly it sounds like nothing else and stiffens the appeal of a scene that has left its smudged fingerprints in many of today’s scenes.