Producer/DJ/MC virtuoso J-Zone releases his collection of instrumentals on his bandcamp page called “The Headband Years”.
“When I returned to music in 2013 after a four year hiatus, I promised myself Iâd reinvent and not perform, rehash or make Part 2s of my back catalog. Iâd make stuff available digitally for those who missed it the first time around and move on. I got a few requests for some of my old instrumentals, so I went through whatâs been sitting in my basement for over a decade. Whichever instrumental records I still had (most are long out of print or were destroyed), old DATs (which are a bitch to transfer), files (Celph Titled had to send me a few joints I didnât have), etc⊠I salvaged what I could.
As for the selection, itâs one part specific requests, one part popularity, one part availability, one part âI thought this was dope, but nobody remembers it.â Yes, there are some omissions (notably some of the Music For Tu Madre and A Bottle of Whup Assstuff). Anything recorded prior to 2004 was never in file form and many of those masters deteriorated over time or the instrumental wax was used for shows, so itâs beat to shit. (Youâll hear a skip or two and some crackle on a few of these.)
Besides the instrumentals for a lot of my solo records, Iâve included beats I made for Al-Shid, H.U.G., Tame One, Cage, RA The Rugged Man, The Juggaknots, Sadat Xand others.
Putting this together was tedious, but for the completist, the lover of instrumentals and those who got rid of all their records, I figured it should at least be available. No represses, no distribution on iTunes, etc., no promotion, no pomp and circumstance. Just 70 tracks from my headband era. Enjoy.”