Wave Twisters

Wave Twisters is the name of the full length album released in November 1998 by the excellent mixer, DJ Qbert. It showcases the skill and talent of this artist in an astounding 45 minutes of beauty. The album purports itself to be a soundtrack for the fictional TV show, Wave Twisters. Many of the tracks can be imagined to be themed for a TV show.

Track List-

1. Turntable TV
   Intro to the album. A harsh intro to the type of style Qbert will be using throughout. Mostly the words "Turntable TV" warped and twisted for a minute and a half, with a few samples thrown in.

2. A Word from Fresh Breath Mouthwash
   A very cute little "commercial" spot for the show. A very lightly mixed spot of a young woman singing a theme song for a mouthwash. Very cute.
   "Now here's something to think about, something very important about your health. Brush your teeth, please do it, brush them night and day, the very best care will keep them there and they'll never, ever move away."

3. Enter the Wave Twisters
   "And now, Fresh Breath Mouthwash Presents, Wave Twisters!"

4. Inner Space Dental Commander
   If you like linear lyrics, the rest of this album is not for you. Now Qbert gets right down into the mixing and sampling. This "theme song" for Wave Twisters is a dental themed, three minute mix fest with some horns, and about three samples.

5. Redworm
   Now we're into the show itself. Outer space antics sampled from terrible 50's sci-fi, with turntable goodness all around.

6. Cosmic Assassins
   Star Wars, Star Trek, Blaxploitation samples, with jazzy interludes. Beauty.

7. Destination - Quasar 16.33.45.78
   This is my favorite track on this album. This was the track off of this album that I heard in a small grocery store, which prompted me to pick up the album. Samples from many, many sources, with an electronicy background. Includes samples from MechWarrior 2 and StarCraft. Aww yeah.....

8. Paranoia
   Another excellent hard core sampling track. Almost an extension of Destination - Quasar.

9. Invasion of the Octopus People
   The attack of an alien race on the Tv show. Rapid sampling done at low volumes. This track is mostly a showcase for the skratching itself. Excellently done.

10. Electric Eye Beam Abduction
    Creepy track. The Aliens have obviously taken over. Features several different warpings of Star Wars samples.

11. Razorblade Alcohol Slide
    Deeply bass-ful Thumping and Skratching. More Samples.

12. Sneak Attack
    The humans mount a counter attack against the aliens. Hard skratching and samples.

13. Movement 1 - Quadraphonic Element Download
    These three movements all finish up the "TV show" part of the album. These three tracks show off all of QBerts skills, from mixing and sampling to hard core skratching.
    
14. Movement 2 - 6 Fingered Fury
    
15. Movement 3 - Inside Out Body Warp

16. Turntable TV (Blueprint)
    Remix of the above Turntable TV track.

17. Aphrodisiskratch
    Only available on some imports, this amusing track samples a 50's short about nocturnal emissions. Much moaning and ooh'ing.

Guess what? The TV Show that this album could have been a soundtrack for isn't fictional anymore.

In 2001, Wave Twisters: The Movie took the world by storm. Led by illustrator Doug Cunningham (a/k/a Dug1, a legendary San Francisco graffiti artist) and directed by Syd Garon (who did music videos for Marilyn Manson) and Eric Henry, Wave Twisters is the perfect compliment to one of the most interesting concept albums to come to pass. The animation clicks seamlessly with the soundtrack, which is exclusively comprised of DJ Qbert's Wave Twisters LP in its' original form. Action is synced to each scratch, each sample, and each beat in a impressive display of CGI, cel-based animation, photo collage, and live action.

As is described on the back of the DVD, the plot is a sci-fi kung fu epic. Our hero is the Inner Space Dental Commander, who goes throughout space and fixes the grills of many different species. One day, as his ship falls under attack by the Red Worm, our hero discovers a turntable-watch inside the mouth of one of his clients after getting high on nitrous oxide and hallucinating an appearance of the ever-famous Buckethead. He and his partners, Rubbish the medical robot and the lovely Honey Drips find out that this watch is actually the Wave Twister, the only weapon with enough power to destroy Lord Ook and free the residents of Arrow Town, thus restoring the Lost Arts (MCing, Break Dancing, Graffiti, and DJing. They're told this by B-Boy Grandpa, whose missing hand actually contained the Wave Twister when it was discovered by the Innerspace Dental Commander.

When they arrive on the planet, they find that the residents of Arrow Town are under seige by the Octobots, who are piloted by members of the Invisible Skratch Piklz (including DJ Qbert himself) as well as DJ Flare. We learn that Lord Ook's henchmen actually use the forbidden Lost Arts in order to enslave the population, who look surprisingly similar to Playmobil people.

As was mentioned before, the Wave Twisters LP is the exclusive soundtrack to the movie, with no other audio added. Every scratch and every sample gets put to good use, and the chapter titles mirror the track titles mentioned in the writeup above mine, even including the Turntable TV tracks, but not the Aphrodisiskratch import track.

Wave Twisters was tied for first in the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2001, along with Super Troopers and Ladyporn, and is a permanent part of the San Francisco Modern Art Museum's digital archive.

The DVD contains tons of extras, including commentary, film to animatic comparisons, a 5-angle clip of the DJs in action (taken from when they were filmed for the movie), the ever-important deleted scenes, and subtitles in plenty of languages. It's region free as well, so you can enjoy Wave Twisters anywhere. Running time is roughly 46 minutes.

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Source: www.wavetwisters-themovie.com, www.djqbert.com, www.imdb.com