Community Flips

"Community Flips", from Philadelphia-based writer, producer, and DJ, John Morrison, is a love letter to sampling in the creative process. All samples utilized in Community Flips were sourced from sounds created by Community College of Philadelphia students and faculty, and Spring Garden Records artists. Throughout 2023 and 2024, jam sessions were recorded in the Spring Garden Records studio, along with an online portal that allowed individuals to upload raw ideas, sounds, demos, and voice notes to be used for the project. As samples came in, Morrison went to work chopping them up and digging through the virtual crates.

Discussing the creative process behind Community Flips, Morrison writes, “For as long as I can remember, sampling has been a major part of my creative process. As a kid in the late 80s, I’d watch my brother and his friends make beats and songs in the back bedroom of our house. I’d watch attentively, as they’d chop up tiny snippets of James Brown records and layer over them with booming drums from the Roland TR-909. As I got older, my brother would teach me this same process of beat-making and sampling, and I have been using bits of pre-recorded material to make new music ever since. The act of digging for samples and curation on Community Flips became a communal act. What was once a solitary practice with a single producer, their sampler and record collection now includes an entire community.”