Nik Furious: Sunday Best: The Wrecker

The Wrecker is a remix solely constructed from a tiny breakbeat that I discovered at the end of "Gumbo" by The Ventures.

First off, it was a dream come true for me to finally sample The Ventures. I love their instrumental music and it's been a huge influence on me over the years.

Gumbo is from the album Swamp Rock, which is an underwhelming 1969 offering that features an odd collection of country rock instrumentals.

I was surprised to find this hot breakbeat on the track, slapped on the end for no discernible reason. Mel Taylor's insanely funky drums in The Wrecker are unlike anything heard during the rest of the Gumbo, save for the last 20 seconds.

Building this remix was pretty straight forward. I was relatively limited because the song begins to fade out after about 5 seconds of the breakbeat. So I salvaged as much as I could and made a few loops from it.

I also sampled the horn blast which precedes the drumbeat. Then I layered it on top of my loops to create a little melodic diversity and rhythmic impact.

This remix is named after The Wrecker, a Marvel Comics supervillain who leads the Wrecking Crew, a group of construction-based baddies. He has an enchanted crowbar, which has gotta be one of the best weapons in superhero comics.

In fact, I nominated "Enchanted Crowbar" to be the name of a band I played with briefly in 2007. And it was almost happened! Just think... if we'd been called Enchanted Crowbar then I probably never would've left the band and I'd be here sharing the latest Enchanted Crowbar song with you instead...