In November, hip-hop producer Joe Mansfield published his 200-page 'Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession' encyclopedia/coffee-table book. It features 75 drum machines from the author's personal collection. The book is a catalog of Mansfield's own passion for drum machines. The 75 machines featured in the book are half of the 150 he owns. It features over 200 photos by award winning photographer Gary Land and is a must have for anyone in music.
It all started with one machine. The location was Boston, Mass. The year was 1985. The beat box in question was the TR-808. Almost three decades later, Mansfield's obsession with drum machines has finally spilled out of his home and climate-controlled storage space into the world at large. With 'Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession', the Boston-based hip-hop producer and music industry veteran - who helped bring the world Edo G's I Got To Have It and Be A Father To Your Child in the early '90s, and went on to found Traffic Entertainment Group and co-found Get On Down - shares his deep love and respect for beat boxes on every page.
The book itself features gorgeous photos of 75 drum machines by Gary Land; background and facts about each machine gathered by Mansfield; archival advertisements; and interviews with master drum machine programmers and innovators including Davy DMX, Schoolly-D, Marshall Jefferson and Roger Linn. The range of drum machines covered spans several decades, from the 1950's to the late 1980's.
Mansfield's collecting has never been about machines-as-trophies, hoarding or fetishism: he can play and/or program each machine he details in the book. His electronic children aren't kept in plastic, never to be touched or used. That's what gives the book its heart - Mansfield's emotional attachment to these objects that many people still see as robotic replacements for human percussion. But, as any good drum machine manipulator knows, even machines can have soul.
Mansfield reminds us that drum machines have been used in the rock and pop world since the 1970s: Sly & The Family Stone, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Blondie all benefitted from beat boxes on their hits, as did artists ranging from New Order and Madonna to Prince and Bruce Hornsby in the '80s.
All of these aspects encompassing the wide-ranging and complex history of drum machines are documented and discussed in words and images in Beat Box, helmed and overseen by Joe Mansfield's expertise. It is part encyclopedia, part coffee-table photo book, and will enthrall music, technology and photography fans around the world.
