Vic Serotonin
Active member
Blackdown went all in this month, first with his 2012 roundup:
http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/blackdowns-2012-roundup.html
"This section was for me the real heart of 2012 and in truth it’s a flex I’d been long since feeling around for – check my remix of Bias & Gurley “Roll” which I did in 2010. This is because for someone who’d loved UK garage but loved it more when it became a bit darker (i.e. dubstep) it was a bit of a no-brainer that while UK funky was fun in that vibey way, people might want a darker take on it as an alternative – an alternative to both UK funky and to the dubstep that now was unlistenable – in the way that early dubstep was an alternate take on UK garage’s sonic balances. Now that neither dubstep, (ahem) post-dubstep or UK funky are providing huge returns, the darker alternative seems even more pertinent.
(Now I know all the critical arguments around this issue, indeed against this parallel path, but… I don’t care. In fact I do care, and enjoy that it’s divisive: you’re in it or you’re not. I really, really don’t buy the line that you should over-ride what your heart tells you just because someone else’s critical head tries to tell you. So I make absolutely no apologies for liking underground music with a sense of darkness and edge: it feels so unequivocally right to me in the way that tepid tech house or bait electro house remixes of Faithless sound so wrong, that everything else is pretty unimportant to me right now. This is where Dusk & I are going; this is our flex. If people want to tell me this is UK funky but worse they're missing the point of what I'm saying.)
This sound - this collection of sounds/producers/ideas - centered around 130bpm is THE most exciting space for me right now and has been all year. It’s getting ignored by large sections of the club going public – looking at the techno dominated end-of-year-charts – and yet it feels more cutting edge and has whiff of mutating danger and possibility (rather than predictability) about it. Anyway its tiny and it’s early days but Dusk and I are up to our necks in it right now, dealing with VIP versions and funneling dub after dub by a hungry new wave of producers through our Rinse FM show, many of who seem in part to hark back to the early Forward>> and Sidewinder times we lived through."
And then backed it up with the announcement of the 'This is How We Roll' comp on Keysound, which is pretty much a roll call of the up and coming producers working around 130 who have been getting aired on his Rinse show with Dusk:
http://www.factmag.com/2013/02/13/b...keysound-recordings-comp-this-is-how-we-roll/
Tracklist:
01. Visionist, Beneath & Wen ‘New Wave’
02. Beneath ‘PVO’
03. Samrai ‘Hear Me Now’
04. Visionist ‘Dangerous’
05. Wen ‘Commotion VIP’
06. Double Helix ‘LDN VIP’
07. Epoch ‘The Steppenwolf’
08. Dusk + Blackdown ft Farrah ‘Lonely Moon (Android Heartbreak drumz remix)’
09. Fresh Paul ‘Blaster’
10. Mumdance & Logos ‘In Reverse’
11. Gremino ‘Monster VIP’
12. Rabit ‘Satelite’
13. E.m.m.a. ‘Peridot’
14. Moleskin ‘Burst’
I tried to draw attention to some of this stuff in a post on the funky thread and responses were mixed. Although Blackdown emphasizes the 'darkside funky' connection, I think it's fair to say (and the rest of his 2012 roundup certainly indicates) that there's more to it than that, and that connections are being drawn with instrumental grimey/eski stuff, slowed down/weirded out percussive dubstep, and then the synthy flavours contributed by the likes of Emma and Fresh Paul. I agree with Blackdown that this stuff offers a clear and preferable alternative to that which is embodied under the rubric of UK Bass (AKA 'post-dubstep' as conservative return to house & techno). Given that the post-intelli-whatsit thread has surely reached the terminal beach (Skrillex doing Burial), this stuff deserves its own thread, because it sure as hell doesn't belong there.
I'll start by posting a few different resources compiling journalism, key mixes, tracks, radio podcasts etc. Curious to hear other suggestions/contributions, either for and against.
http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/blackdowns-2012-roundup.html
"This section was for me the real heart of 2012 and in truth it’s a flex I’d been long since feeling around for – check my remix of Bias & Gurley “Roll” which I did in 2010. This is because for someone who’d loved UK garage but loved it more when it became a bit darker (i.e. dubstep) it was a bit of a no-brainer that while UK funky was fun in that vibey way, people might want a darker take on it as an alternative – an alternative to both UK funky and to the dubstep that now was unlistenable – in the way that early dubstep was an alternate take on UK garage’s sonic balances. Now that neither dubstep, (ahem) post-dubstep or UK funky are providing huge returns, the darker alternative seems even more pertinent.
(Now I know all the critical arguments around this issue, indeed against this parallel path, but… I don’t care. In fact I do care, and enjoy that it’s divisive: you’re in it or you’re not. I really, really don’t buy the line that you should over-ride what your heart tells you just because someone else’s critical head tries to tell you. So I make absolutely no apologies for liking underground music with a sense of darkness and edge: it feels so unequivocally right to me in the way that tepid tech house or bait electro house remixes of Faithless sound so wrong, that everything else is pretty unimportant to me right now. This is where Dusk & I are going; this is our flex. If people want to tell me this is UK funky but worse they're missing the point of what I'm saying.)
This sound - this collection of sounds/producers/ideas - centered around 130bpm is THE most exciting space for me right now and has been all year. It’s getting ignored by large sections of the club going public – looking at the techno dominated end-of-year-charts – and yet it feels more cutting edge and has whiff of mutating danger and possibility (rather than predictability) about it. Anyway its tiny and it’s early days but Dusk and I are up to our necks in it right now, dealing with VIP versions and funneling dub after dub by a hungry new wave of producers through our Rinse FM show, many of who seem in part to hark back to the early Forward>> and Sidewinder times we lived through."
And then backed it up with the announcement of the 'This is How We Roll' comp on Keysound, which is pretty much a roll call of the up and coming producers working around 130 who have been getting aired on his Rinse show with Dusk:
http://www.factmag.com/2013/02/13/b...keysound-recordings-comp-this-is-how-we-roll/
Tracklist:
01. Visionist, Beneath & Wen ‘New Wave’
02. Beneath ‘PVO’
03. Samrai ‘Hear Me Now’
04. Visionist ‘Dangerous’
05. Wen ‘Commotion VIP’
06. Double Helix ‘LDN VIP’
07. Epoch ‘The Steppenwolf’
08. Dusk + Blackdown ft Farrah ‘Lonely Moon (Android Heartbreak drumz remix)’
09. Fresh Paul ‘Blaster’
10. Mumdance & Logos ‘In Reverse’
11. Gremino ‘Monster VIP’
12. Rabit ‘Satelite’
13. E.m.m.a. ‘Peridot’
14. Moleskin ‘Burst’
I tried to draw attention to some of this stuff in a post on the funky thread and responses were mixed. Although Blackdown emphasizes the 'darkside funky' connection, I think it's fair to say (and the rest of his 2012 roundup certainly indicates) that there's more to it than that, and that connections are being drawn with instrumental grimey/eski stuff, slowed down/weirded out percussive dubstep, and then the synthy flavours contributed by the likes of Emma and Fresh Paul. I agree with Blackdown that this stuff offers a clear and preferable alternative to that which is embodied under the rubric of UK Bass (AKA 'post-dubstep' as conservative return to house & techno). Given that the post-intelli-whatsit thread has surely reached the terminal beach (Skrillex doing Burial), this stuff deserves its own thread, because it sure as hell doesn't belong there.
I'll start by posting a few different resources compiling journalism, key mixes, tracks, radio podcasts etc. Curious to hear other suggestions/contributions, either for and against.
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