K-OTIX: Untold Legends – Spontaneity

***K-OTIX Universal Original Run in heather gray***

Spontaneity

For me, “Falling Behind” was a turning point in our creative process, and it was a song that came out of thin air. I went to Russel’s apartment one evening – a rare evening off of work and school – to check out what he was working on. He’d just pulled out a record by _____ ______ that he’d glossed over a couple of times, and played a simple, 2-bar piece that he’d been racking his brain to sample. And he’s wasn’t getting up until he got it down. While the drum track played on loop, I pulled out the trusty pad and pen and started jotting down lines as they came to mind.

Within a few minutes, he’d come up with a couple of primary sequences, and I had the first verse done. After a bit of refinement, he cleaned up his chops, and I recorded a demo of the song. And I think we knew it at the time – whatever project we were working on was officially on the clock. We’d already recorded other songs that would eventually end up on Spontaneity, but like every other project, Falling Behind was the song that signaled the extra gear of creativity that we needed to work on something official.

 I immediately drove to Mic’s job with a cassette and waited for him to get off work. When he did, we sat in his car and listened to the song on repeat. He agreed – we’re officially where we need to be. By the time we met with The Are again, he’d already created the track that would become Falling Behind II, and though it would make a good remix for Part I. We did a complete re-recording  of the first, and he dedicated the track to his grandfather that had recently passed.

Spontaneity also represented the first time that we recorded in a full studio (and paid for our studio time out of pocket). Sound Arts Studios in west Houston. Our engineer was a guy named Brian who worked around the clock, and fell asleep at the boards at least once a session. We recorded on 2” tape, 24 tracks. Still have the original reels in our possession – the truest definition of “owning your masters”. The Are created the K-OTIX logo from a magazine cutout (we didn’t have reliable computer gear back then), and I created the EP label by sneaking on my mom’s computer at her job. I still have the original cut and paste Xerox pages. And by cut and paste, I mean literal cutting and pasting.

We paid for the record pressings out of pocket. The first run featured yellow labels. The 2^nd had red labels. The third run, which came years later, had a blue color scheme. When I have more time / space someday, I’ll give a more thorough breakdown of the project. For now, understand that this was our first official project, released in 1997, sold independently, and figuratively put us on the map.

The one song on the EP that raised the most eyebrows was “7 MCs”. Everyone wanted to know who we were talking about. So we addressed their questions by releasing a sequel…