Video: Aupheus feat. Prolyphic – Me So Hornacek

The 3rd video from “Megalith”, the SFdigi debut of AUPHEUS! Ltd edition 7-inch Square Picture Disc Lathe Cut Records, CDs, & Cassettes (all including Instant MP3 downloads of the full album) are available at StrangeFamousRecords.com!!!

“This is the third and final video from the MEGALITH trilogy.

As with the other videos in the series it was a transatlantic collaboration with Prolyphic being in the US and me in the UK.

I made the beat with Prolyphic in mind. Despite the fact that I had some specific themes in mind for the MEGALITH album, we didn’t discuss any lyrical themes or subject matter beforehand; I really dig what he does so just wanted to see what he would come up with instinctively. He came back with something that I was not expecting – a song referencing Jeff Hornacek with a nod to a classic Miami Bass track.

As a kid in the 90s I was a huge basketball fan and also played a hell of a lot of NBA Jam on the Megadrive, so that along with the old school hip hop references meant that this felt like an appropriate fit for the album, as well as bringing something fun and unexpected into the mix.

I asked Prolyphic to film himself performing the track, gave him a loose brief in terms of the framing and lighting I was looking for and left the rest up to him.

Once that was shot, Pro sent the footage over to me here in London where I edited and added the motion graphics and animation.

For the beat I made use of 2 Korg monotrons, the standard model and the monotron delay. Most of the electronic sounds in the track are those two, riding the knobs and ribbons manually, sampling them and running through effects in Logic.

Hope you dig it.” –AUPHEUS, December 2019

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PROLYPHIC on the making of “Me So Hornacek”:

“Aupheus is a very talented man and I have nothing but love for my dude. He hit me up about doing a song for his new album and I was like, “of course, send me a beat and I’ll drizzle the dizzle”. When I got the beat and sat down to listen to it, I wasn’t sure what my approach to the song was going to be. It’s not a typical beat I normally rap over, so I decided to do something different. The beat gave me a 90’s video game vibe, specifically NBA Jam. I always wanted to do a song about Jeff Hornacek and this beat was giving me the goodies. I, also, grew up playing basketball. I was a short kid, but could handle my own on the court. I played ball all the way up until my sophomore year in high school. I was on the bench a lot. I hated it. BUT, I loved pick-up basketball. I played a lot of street ball as a kid in games where you don’t call fouls. Like, ever. I played in some crazy games, but I wore my toughness as a badge of honor and I respected the guards who played hard. So, I decided to write an ode to some of my favorite 80’s-90’s NBA guards from back in the day with a focus on Jeff Hornacek because he’s white and can’t dunk. I am also white and cannot dunk. I knocked one verse out and I was going to write a second, but it didn’t feel right, so I left it at one verse. Shout out to Art Bell. I went in the studio, recorded the verse then just started freestyling the hook. Randomly, came up with the line “me so hornacek” and I was like, “that’s it”. It was perfect. I wasn’t sure how Aupheus was going to react to a one-verse song titled Me So Hornacek, but he was digging it. The sound effects he added were a nice touch and the motion graphics he created for the video are great. Very happy with how everything came together.”

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London, UK-based producer AUPHEUS’ latest offering, Megalith, dropped September 21, 2018 on SFdigi, the digital division of Strange Famous Records.

Megalith is a compelling collision of disparate influences and technologies melded to form an unconventional sonic tapestry: “The album was heavily inspired by my favourite science fiction films of the 1980s and early 1990s and their soundtracks, along with the hip hop that I grew up listening to, and the writing of Philip K. Dick,” says Aupheus. It’s an ambitious mix of ambient sounds and doom-bap grit. “I used a range of digital and analog gear to achieve the sound I wanted, including vintage samplers, running things onto tape, using the turntables and various musical instruments in conventional and unconventional ways.”

Aupheus began his career in the late ’90s, initially as a turntablist, but soon after finding his calling as a producer. He self-released a pair of instrumental EPs (his last opus, Excavated, has been a mainstay of the SFR webstore for years) and produced tracks for emcees including Buck 65 and Scroobius Pip. He is also an accomplished animator, having created the acclaimed videos for Sage Francis’ “ID Thieves” and Prolyphic & Buddy Peace’s “Go Green”, and has worked on large-scale movie industry products including Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs” feature film.