Conceptronica

[pattycakes_]

It was high concept without seeking your validation. It was a test. How freaky are you? What level are you at? No need to announce itself. It allows itself in, does its dance and leaves you to clean up after. This was music made of bravery and cum. Totally materialised. Tangible, juicy. Maybe a little slippery for some, but for the heads it's about as nutritious as it gets.

 

[luka]

Padraig always finds a way to insert some old disco record into the conversation!

 

[pattycakes_]

Now you have a generation of kids who've been able to educate themselves about past movements and mix and match them together however they feel like. Collage. How can it be the the same as people entering uncharted waters? Too calculated. The goldsmiths kids, with their headfuls of interviews, features and documentaries. At least they're smart enough to pick the classy names to drop. But there's no urgency. No rebellion. Nothing on the line. It's pure curation So you end up with that cold white wall, glass case gallery vibe. Totally about the blurb explaining itself as opposed to the actual music.

Time to burn the art schools.

 

[luka]

Burn the art students.

 

[pattycakes_]

And how better to neuter the potential than getting your students to do retrospective analysis. It plays on their desire to be taken seriously. Appeals to their ego. Righteous narcissism. Idpol centric masturbation. Someone like Sprinkles is smart enough to still do it with the same quality of wink and nudge of the Levan level. A sense of humour. These new fucks are just boring, middle class wind bags with f all to say

 

[luka]

We've had all these debates before, at great length, over post-dubstep, which was another form of music that craved Reynolds' seal of approval and had a temper tantrum when it didn't get it.

Some people say it doesn't matter. That it is a separate infrastructure and a separate audience to real music, a sideshow, and the disproportionate amount of media attention it gets is ultimately not important. It's not really gentrification because it's a separate sphere entirely. They haven' t taken over your favourite pub, they're drinking elsewhere.

I think there's a lot of truth in that. It's just another party you're not invited to. So what?

But there's still something which niggles. I don't know exactly why.

 

[pattycakes_]

Maybe because it only amplifies the void left behind the corpse it so fervently feeds off of?

 

[pattycakes_]

Burn the art students.

Expecting anything less from people who turn to academia to learn how to make art perhaps lays the joke on us?

There's value in learning the techniques there ofc. But after that?

 

[luka]

There's always going to be art students they're always going to make rubbish art attached to vapid statements and under thought, jerrybuilt conceptual frameworks.

So, the argument goes, better to laugh at it when it comes to your attention then go back to looking the other way. It's a self-contained, self-sustaining ecosystem that has nothing to do with you.

 

[thirdform]

Maybe because it only amplifies the void left behind the corpse it so fervently feeds off of?

well, it's more that dance music is economically organised like a complete vertical monopoly so it was easy for the fact mags, and RAs, xrl8rs to take complete control of it, they just had to position themselves as the voice of the streets. piece of cake really.

Especially RA, organising everything from ticket sails to reviews to curation, it's grossly capitalistic in the extreme. I can't think of an arts industry where that is more the case at the moment.

 

[thirdform]

I mean Martin blackdown despite his best efforts created post-dubstep. all that anti-wobble gatekeeper stance. similar thing with techno gatekeepers making their industries closed shops and then they realise hey they're losing revenue so we gotta diversify. otherwise it's not like most of this conceptronica audience knows anything about remarc or steve gurley, not at all. most of them were going to four tet and night slugs nights in 2012.

 

[thirdform]

crowley can vouch for me most of this crowd got every single thought they had from fact mag. even truants is basically a factmag spin off, though they will never admit it.

 

[luka]

Well this, for me, is part of what needs to be established. To what extent is that true? Has it become impossible for dance music of any kind to exist outside of that structure?

Is it possible to build and sustain a scene that exists as an independent principality or must everything be absorbed into empire?

I'm not into dance music so I don't know. I feel like that must happen simply because it has always happened. There have always been scenes, often very big scenes, that have flourished despite not attracting the attentions of 'the liberal metropolitan elite.' But I might well be wrong.

 

[muser]

We should like it because they've worked terribly hard at it? They've made a real effort with their homework? Holly learned to work with complicated tech she was up all night revising.

Wasn't asking you to like it mate! Dont think the music making process has any bearing on whether it should be appreciated or not. Just trying to highlight the difference between 'conceptual art' which doesn't necessarily require any skill or effort so at times totally relies on the concept, which is why allot of people criticize it and music which, if anyone is going to listen to it, always requires some level of skill to put together.

I think the main issue is the constant looking back and drawing from the past, makes everything feel a bit pointless..

 

[luka]

There were always scenes, which, to put it crudely, were too ethnic, too lumpen, too unfashionable, and as a result were left alone to do their own thing. Often, as I say, for fairly large audiences, larger in many cases than the music which was endorsed by the liberal metropolitan elite.

 

[thirdform]

Well this, for me, is part of what needs to be established. To what extent is that true? Has it become impossible for dance music of any kind to exist outside of that structure?

Is it possible to build and sustain a scene that exists as an independent principality or must everything be absorbed into empire?

I'm not into dance music so I don't know. I feel like that must happen simply because it has always happened. There have always been scenes, often very big scenes, that have flourished despite not attracting the attentions of 'the liberal metropolitan elite.' But I might well be wrong.

proper house and garage exists almost completely divorced from that empire. which is weird given its traditionalism. but then so does progressive house/trance. and gabba of course.

the problem is *new* and not old developments are totally gobbled up by these empires.

 

[thirdform]

Well this, for me, is part of what needs to be established. To what extent is that true? Has it become impossible for dance music of any kind to exist outside of that structure?

Is it possible to build and sustain a scene that exists as an independent principality or must everything be absorbed into empire?

I'm not into dance music so I don't know. I feel like that must happen simply because it has always happened. There have always been scenes, often very big scenes, that have flourished despite not attracting the attentions of 'the liberal metropolitan elite.' But I might well be wrong.

a lot of wonky techno as well, is almost totally ignored by the mags, with only some vague nods. but new developments are almost latched onto because it's cool to pretend to be down with the lumpen proles with their bacon sarnies now. naturally this is likely to change in the next 10 years which will be a breath of relief for us but that's the reality at the moment. a lot of RA types still delude themselves that they are anticapitalist lifestylists. once their aesthetic poses are shown to be a lack of politics, and once they can no longer be entertained as a whimsy fancy by the proletarian class and deposited safely back in the embracing arms of the class enemy.

 

[luka]

to some extent, a scene comprised of your ethnic minorities, your working classes, your lumpen suburbanites, is inoculated against co-option simply because the liberal metropolitan elites won't enter those dances, partly from fear, partly from distaste.

What happened with grime is a two-tier system was formed with the artists doing both raves for the original core audience and a completely different set of events for the liberal metropolitan elite.

 

[thirdform]

What happened with grime is a two-tier system was formed with the artists doing both raves for the original core audience and a completely different set of events for the liberal metropolitan elite.

yeah that's a really important point. this dynamic was under way in 2005. lethal b and fucking babyshambles ffs.

 

[pattycakes_]

to some extent, a scene comprised of your ethnic minorities, your working classes, your lumpen suburbanites, is inoculated against co-option simply because the liberal metropolitan elites won't enter those dances, partly from fear, partly from distaste.

For me it's the opposite. The exotic has been fetishized, coopted and defanged by those liberial whites ever since this new age of taste making websites came along and started doing what you mention above. Think about South African House in 2009.