rolling back to the future garage/post-dubstep/alt-funkstep/intelli-2step etc thread
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- air your grievances here! beardstep feminist sausagefest garage conversion i am a defender of simon reynolds' face i am skrillex insidious gentrification muppet show gallery post joe muggs' post pubstep time travel too many man transvestite vocals well i think it's still interesting wot do u call it uurrrban
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
That hasnt been a problem for semtex or westwood. Or techno djs before uk producers were making it. I dont mind oneman playing rap, sometimes its a nice surprise, but playing big stretches of it I think is stretching himself too thin. You cant cover EVERYTHING.
I didn't make it through much of the oneman cd, I took a look at the tracklist and kind of just went 'ugh'. There's no real interesting hook there, like wise said it just seems like some blandly curated mix. Was kinda surprised not to see a Disclosure of Dusky tune on there.
Decent interview with the man himself here - http://www.spin.com/#blogs/uk-dj-oneman-unites-bass-music-massive
'Bass music massive'
'Bass music massive'
Leo
Well-known member
haven't heard the fabric mix but saw the track list...not very fresh. not that it's bad to include stuff that's a year or two old, but in this case there are lots of big tunes that i feel i've heard a million times already, so can't say i'm hugely attracted.
and yeah, i remember reading mala started sets with "?". it's also the first track on the MAH "wild angels" comp from 2009.
and yeah, i remember reading mala started sets with "?". it's also the first track on the MAH "wild angels" comp from 2009.
SecondLine
Well-known member
phew, thought I was going mad for a bit there
what about juke
yeah i don't see the issue with oneman, or anyone uk, playing hip-hop.
martin surely it being popular or foreign has nothing to do with being able to engage with it - oneman also plays loads of popular garage, i don't see how that's an issue. if it means something to you or moves you, then you're engaging with it. i don't see an issue with kode9 playing cameo, for instance.
me and a couple of mates played four hours of US hip-hop last night, never got bored once and the crowd were pretty much going wild the entire time. i enjoyed it a lot more than i would've enjoyed playing four hours of contemporary dance music.
having said that, re: oneman, yeah i kind of miss the long dmz/2step blends too (and the fabric tracklist doesn't look that exciting to me - i really liked his rinse mix tho). but you can't expect the guy to do the same thing forever.
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I have questions about that too but at least it's a bit more grass roots.
Well, this issue is highly subjective i guess and i come from the viewpoint of a) being a very big oneman fan and 2) having quite firm views about what i want out of DJs I rate as much as oneman. i wrote my initial point quickly as i knew this would be a longer discussion.
what i like about the best pirate/nuum/uk djs is that they have their sound and they do this by taking hold of all the elements of the equation, from how they mix, to the tracks they select, the producers they back and which tracks from those producers, and even which tracks come out on their labels. yunx even sends tracks back if the mixdown is slipping or the arrangement needs an edit. they're writing history as they go, forging a new path.
i like DJs that make me like/want music I'd never heard before, that perpetual craving for the wot do u call it moments, not ones that i already know - and i know this makes me atypical in club land (tho less so here of course). some people just wanna get fucked and party, fair play to them.
for DJs to do this they need to go to the source, to the producers and labels and be there when the base pairs are going into DNA, and that DNA is going into the cell nuclei, so a new being is being built. but how is that possible for most UK DJs and, say, trap? if i want that from rap, i'd go to grassroots DJs in the US, right? that's the source for those tracks. people mention westwood and semtex but they've not had the effect on hip hop as a whole that say slimzee or hatcha had on their genres, nor say funkmaster flex had. they've been great local champions for it but they're merely passing on the output of the US rather having some meaningful input back into how it would sound next.
(i have the same trepidation about juke, and though i've played & released some stuff by or inspired by juke producers, i still havent ventured into making it for these reasons, though i noticed last week kode has, perhaps there's room to find new twists, he's usually a good measure of these things).
now of course oneman isn't just a dubplate DJ in the hatcha/slimzee style, he's a crowd pleaser, plays b2b anthems and always has, sounds like you guys did too for 4 hours - and that's fine, like i said up post, having a good party is fine with me. but i guess the way oneman mixed grime & dubstep he made them feel new (loefah's said as much too) and then built out of them with the post dubstep stuff from joy o, boddika et al, and that put him into GOAT category, so that comment was just holding him to his own high standards, of what he was and could be.
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rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
sure no uk dj will ever make as big an impact on american hip hop as a dj from there will, but thats not really the point all the time. these days maybe thats more of an option as through the net you can find local djs easier but pre -net, westwood and other uk djs would have been the only way to stay on top of hip hop. westwoods a radio dj though, not a club dj like funkmaster flex, so thats a bit diff. but its sort of like saying 'hey david rodigan, you should just retire! you will never be as good as a jamaican dj - just stay at home and start bringing jamaican djs over instead please'. never mind that rodigans fucking brilliant, knows the music inside out, and has no bloodline to jamaica, nor has he ever lived there.
but anyway the point i wanted to make was that enjoyable though the argument about sticking to local sounds is, without uk djs playing american stuff, we would never have the úk sound' we all talk about in the first place. its through that that localised interpretations come around. if we were arguing about irish sea chantys or english folk or something and you wanted to argue against bastardisation or losing sight of local roots, i could maybe see your point, but london has always reacted to sounds from elsewhere - it has never been a purist thing. the day it only looks inward and becomes fatally, crippingly obsessed with its history is the day it dies really. the grassroots argument confuses me as arguably you shouldnt be touching something like juke as its so strgngly tied into its locality, no? shouldnt that mean you should stay the fuck away?
oneman will always be an amazing dj to me, and the fabric mix is technically a better mix than the rinse one, though less enjoyable but i think hes a dj who shouldnt only play new tracks. in fact i think he might be best dj-ing old tracks most of the time. hes able to do more with them.
but anyway the point i wanted to make was that enjoyable though the argument about sticking to local sounds is, without uk djs playing american stuff, we would never have the úk sound' we all talk about in the first place. its through that that localised interpretations come around. if we were arguing about irish sea chantys or english folk or something and you wanted to argue against bastardisation or losing sight of local roots, i could maybe see your point, but london has always reacted to sounds from elsewhere - it has never been a purist thing. the day it only looks inward and becomes fatally, crippingly obsessed with its history is the day it dies really. the grassroots argument confuses me as arguably you shouldnt be touching something like juke as its so strgngly tied into its locality, no? shouldnt that mean you should stay the fuck away?
oneman will always be an amazing dj to me, and the fabric mix is technically a better mix than the rinse one, though less enjoyable but i think hes a dj who shouldnt only play new tracks. in fact i think he might be best dj-ing old tracks most of the time. hes able to do more with them.
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yeah you're right, and i'm musically influenced by US music obviously, but from a DJ point of view there's a difference between just playing US music and taking proper hold of it, taking influence from it and inserting those ideas deep into the styles played here. this is obviously how UK garage came into being, but then needless to say I far prefer UKG to US garage, regardless of the debt we owe those US pioneers.
On one level, oneman can totally play what he wants obviously, fuck it it's a party, but personally when he does I do wonder where it's heading, because I look to the top DJs to lead us where we're heading. that's what the best do.
On one level, oneman can totally play what he wants obviously, fuck it it's a party, but personally when he does I do wonder where it's heading, because I look to the top DJs to lead us where we're heading. that's what the best do.
Jam City LP is
is that good or bad?
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
true, as a dj, maybe every dj should have his own sound like plastician did, slimzee, hatcha, etc, but i think onemans been all over the shop for a long time. hes basically a mirror of post-dubstep in that sense. as theres no real proper direction for that music to go in, neither is there a sense of oneman really delivering a sound of his own either. i suppose loefah does that. but onemans always been about showing how to join the dots i think.. i dont really look to him for a 'sound' per se anyway, its more about his taste/selection and mixing on the whole. maybe he could pick out a strand of what he likes - i think you get a more of a sense of that from who he signs on 502 than in his sets - but that would prob mean ignoring a lot of the scene hes part of wouldnt it....