DJ Q Bert is a famous West Coast scratch dj-probably one of the most famous DJ's on the planet, as he has the reputation as "the Michael Jordan of scratching," or "the Jimi Hendrix of the turntable.". These big names like of help inform of his reputation, since scratching isn't necessarily everyone knows very much about-many probably never really even thought about it or realized that it was its own specialezed genre.
Back in the late 90s, he conceptualized the Wave Twisters album, to be followed by an animated movie (which took a couple more years to produce)
The movie was made with the help of graffiti artist, Dug 1, who helped with the character designs and art that the filmmakers would then digitize and animate, using cutting edge technology of the day.
The story centers around our hero, an intergalactic space dentist who accidentally discovers the Wave Twister, a tiny turntable scratch weapon thingy that he will then have to use to defeat the bad guys, who have outlawed hip hop and the lost 4 arts throughout the galaxy- breakdancing, DJing, graffiti, and MCing.
He has a crew on his side, including a cute little robot...but likewise they have to deal with the diabolical forces of Lord Ook and the evil Red Worm.
It is fascinating to hear the sound from an album be realized and animated to, it really shows the creativity and thought put into his creations. The DVD sounds amazing in Dolby 5.1, as Q Bert was known for his use of quadraphonic setup, so it really bounces around the room. The stereo version sounds equally enjoyable.
The individual chapters are given a little intro text to help clarify the plot and move the story along, but it really acts as a nice segue and reset between tracks and scenes.
I won't leave too many spoilers, but there is a battle scene where Q Bert's crew, the Invisible Scratch Piklz(playing the bad guys) have a little demonstration of how the arts can be used for evil, with a live-action scratch sequence that is very cool(and also features music not on the originally album).
There is also a brief appearance of legendary Michael Myers mask and KFC bucket wearer, Buckethead, who blesses us with a couple guitar and bass solos that are beamed from his spaceship. Other notables featured from Q Bert's crew are fellow scratch masters DJ Flare, Yogafrog and D Styles. But as stated earlier, they are not our friends in this film, so don't let your guard down!
The movie clocks on at about 45 minutes, So you don't need to dedicate a ton of time to this one! This one is definitely something different, but I give it my highest recommendation for any fan of real hip hop(or drugs too, probably 😵💫🤯... Although I certainly do not condone the latter), or just someone looking for something extremely different...or just a timepiece from a couple decades ago.
I actually saw this movie at a film festival when it came out and also when DJ Q Bert toured for it's release, so I'm a little biased, but I call this one a certified cult classic! He has since released prequel songs for many of the characters, available for free on his website ( http://www.thudrumble.com )... Let's just hope we can get another feature production, it's certainly been long enough!...Here's my autographed copy of the DVD:
I'll leave you with a stream of the movie in it's entirety, available on YouTube and finer video stores everywhere.
Thanks for reading, I hope you liked my post🐢🦖 All pictures were screencapped by me, all ownership to the creators.
