kode 9 and spaceape album
- Thread starter mms
- Start date
K-punk feature /interview on mr nine and spaceape over at FACT. A really enjoyable piece of writing which captures the mood of the record perfectly.
http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/da/42229
http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/da/42229
S
simon silverdollar
Guest
loved k-punk's piece but couldn't really understand what kode9 was on about at all in places:
what does this mean, for example:
"Methodologically, 'bass materialism' is a strain of machinic or virtual materialism. I use the concept as a way of opening up the politics of vibration, its forcefields. As opposed to a bass fundamentalism, I’m interested in vibration as micro-rhythm or micro-relation, so I use this as a way of accessing the rhythmic continuum which cuts across the urban frequency spectrum, constructing a cultural tectonics. I am interested in a vibrational rhythmanalysis of the control city."
?
it's just sonic theory word porn 
elsewhere it's interesting where he talks about his position as producer / theorist and how he refers to praxis and top down / zig zag theory. i've been very interested in to what extent he frames his own audio creations within his theoretical ones.
elsewhere it's interesting where he talks about his position as producer / theorist and how he refers to praxis and top down / zig zag theory. i've been very interested in to what extent he frames his own audio creations within his theoretical ones.
Last edited:
Its all top fun post-deleuzianal babyl-bollocks, but the bit Simon's extracted here, talking about bass vibration as micro-rhythm is true, especially when the music is as bass centric as dubstep, the lead rhythm becomes not the drums but the bass frequency, (eg- when the sub hits the correct frequency certain parts of yr body and the room vibrate in a certain way?) I think he's opposing the creative potential of this (which exists on the rhythmical level- and thereby can be related to other urban/rhythm based musics?) to bass-as-fundamentalism, which I presume is viewing it as a body crushing totalitarian instrumental device. However this is perhaps a false dichotomy? I actually think the most interesting bit as an installation art form (ie- club-based) comes at the most totalitarian sub-bass/human interaction.
so is he claiming that with low-enough frequency bass, we perceive it as rhythm instead of pitch?? because, from what little psychoacoustics I remember, the sub-bass in dubstep would not be perceived (i.e. by the ear and brain) as micro-rhythm. Of course, you can talk about it that way as much as you want, but then that becomes true of any pitched sound, regardless of frequency. Then again, the wobble bass sort of gives you an approximation of that... As for feeling (in your body) lower pitches, that seems to me (from my admittedly minute experience in clubs) to be totally bass-fundamentalism and not at all micro-rhythm.
There is a rhythm of sorts, but I agree that that is only possible when your body itself becomes a resonant surface (drop in body without organs type reference here if you're feeling fruity) which is in itself something which approaches totalitarian bass-music as total-war... [perhaps we've got the wrong end of the stick here?]
I like the sound of "cultural tectonics" tho!
I like the sound of "cultural tectonics" tho!
bruno
est malade
as poetry one might be able to get away with this sort of thing but this is unintelligible. and a bit stale, a bit suspicious, like something out of a hafler trio manifesto. also, do people read anything apart from ballard and deleuze? it's tiring to have to bump into the same fucking names all the time.
i'm buying the album, though.
i'm buying the album, though.
Hmm... I think the micro-rhythm he's getting at here isn't necessarily perceived as rhythm itself. Rather, the rhythm inherent in any vibration. But beyond that, since the frequencies of sub are lowest, they will be most percievable as such before the wave becomes inaudable. [Also, note, the wobble bass won't actually be due to the oscillation of a sine wave or whatever, but an LFO controlling the frequency of some filter, or so I understand it - that technique does however give the impression of a sine wave forcing its way through you]. Quite how any of that relates to a materalist/fundamentalist split, frankly I've no idea.
well that's just meme, bruno.
nomos
Administrator
I think tartarsky is right about the rhythms. When D&G write about rhythms and vibrations it's about bodies acting on one another in spatial relationships. D&G, in A Thousand Plateaus, at least, de-privilege temporality which, I find, makes that part of their work not very useful for discussing the mechanics of music (since its rhythms and vibrations happen in time). But if you're talking about how types of music operate in the cultural ecology of a city (i.e. spatially), then I think it's more useful. From what I can gather from the interview, this is more what he's talking about.
Other D&G concepts, related to nomadic "the war machine" (weight, speed vectors, catatonia), which have come up in other Kode9 interviews, seem to me better suited to discussions of musical tempos, rhythms, uses of bass, especially when comparing, say, jungle and dubstep. This idea of dubstep internalising jungle's rhythms, while slowing the tempo and shifting the emphasis from breakbeat science to bass science, seems to me to be a case of weight being applied to the "hardcore continuum" to alter its course (slow it down, redraw its paths, deterritorialise its conventions, open up smooth spaces for the invention of new anti-orthodox rhythmachines, etc.) to create new sonic/rhythmic equations and, therefore, new relationships between dancefloor-bodies and music/sound, as well as between people and the city. Still, I think you have to be careful with the war machine metaphor, since it comes out of this post-1968 French intellectual climate which considered the modern state be a condition of "total war" in a very literal sense (as in Virillio, and similarly in Foucault).
On a side note, I think "bass materialism" is partly a play on Georges Bataille's "base materialism." Bataille seems to have been significant to the Ccru experiment (Nick Land did a book on him).
And on the larger question of theorising music in this way (not just here, but in many discussions in various places):
I often don't totally follow the thread when reading Ccru-related stuff (and that may be part of the point sometimes), but I do appreciate the challenge and it's led me to adopt new ways of understanding and talking about music. I appreciate that people are experimenting with other ways of engaging music and its relationship to culture. It's an explicit engagement of music as theory (E.g. If dubstep really is the sound of London, what does that really mean?). Music fans are always theorising on music (how it's made, what it represents, or refers to, etc.) while pretending they're not, as if maintaining an anti-intellectual posture is essential to authentic musical experience. But all that does is deny the thought, experience and cultural connectedness that goes into each track, as if the stuff just emanates naturally from certain guys born in the right part of the right city at the right time.
Two related observations from Kodwo Eshun:
Other D&G concepts, related to nomadic "the war machine" (weight, speed vectors, catatonia), which have come up in other Kode9 interviews, seem to me better suited to discussions of musical tempos, rhythms, uses of bass, especially when comparing, say, jungle and dubstep. This idea of dubstep internalising jungle's rhythms, while slowing the tempo and shifting the emphasis from breakbeat science to bass science, seems to me to be a case of weight being applied to the "hardcore continuum" to alter its course (slow it down, redraw its paths, deterritorialise its conventions, open up smooth spaces for the invention of new anti-orthodox rhythmachines, etc.) to create new sonic/rhythmic equations and, therefore, new relationships between dancefloor-bodies and music/sound, as well as between people and the city. Still, I think you have to be careful with the war machine metaphor, since it comes out of this post-1968 French intellectual climate which considered the modern state be a condition of "total war" in a very literal sense (as in Virillio, and similarly in Foucault).
On a side note, I think "bass materialism" is partly a play on Georges Bataille's "base materialism." Bataille seems to have been significant to the Ccru experiment (Nick Land did a book on him).
And on the larger question of theorising music in this way (not just here, but in many discussions in various places):
I often don't totally follow the thread when reading Ccru-related stuff (and that may be part of the point sometimes), but I do appreciate the challenge and it's led me to adopt new ways of understanding and talking about music. I appreciate that people are experimenting with other ways of engaging music and its relationship to culture. It's an explicit engagement of music as theory (E.g. If dubstep really is the sound of London, what does that really mean?). Music fans are always theorising on music (how it's made, what it represents, or refers to, etc.) while pretending they're not, as if maintaining an anti-intellectual posture is essential to authentic musical experience. But all that does is deny the thought, experience and cultural connectedness that goes into each track, as if the stuff just emanates naturally from certain guys born in the right part of the right city at the right time.
Two related observations from Kodwo Eshun:
Last edited:
I'm all for thinking and talking about music's place in culture (and culture's place in music too, of course!), but I do find a lot of the d+g-inspired stuff to be really trying for someone without any background... I mean, no one's building actual machines here, right? I suppose much of it is a little too metaphorical for my tastes... Having said that, I do enjoy a good deal of what I read on, say, k-punk, where some of the ccru-style of writing is made more accessible. But when people go right into the d+g-speak like kode did in the interview, it just turns me right off.
Having said that, I do enjoy a good deal of what I read on, say, k-punk, where some of the ccru-style of writing is made more accessible. But when people go right into the d+g-speak like kode did in the interview, it just turns me right off.
Last edited:
Well...not as in something actually corpoeal like a car engine. For D&G virtual/abstarct machines are still machines - and they do involve bodies linked with signifying regimes so corporeality and embodiment involved.
@ Nomos: I like the Kodwo quotes a lot, music is obviously a number of arguments relating to itself (amongst other things).... but the theoretical terms are music, rather than words. Therefore its obvious that music-as-theory can be readily accepted as a critique of itself, rather than post-theory stuff (ie the CCRU crew) which uses critical theory terminology as musical instrument or as if it were music... (ie a series of riffs and conventions, all those tortuous puns like keyshifts etc etc...). When the 9 goes off on one its a bit like a technical metal guitar solo, too many notes! I agree that it is extremely useful and potentially inspirational all the same tho...
Could you give us an example of what this would mean within the dubstep milieu, with reference to the site-specific sound environment of the club or pirate radio or south london culture or whatever else helps exemplify your meaning?
I have the same question. What kind of example do you have in mind when you speak of applying d&g's concepts to the 'cultural ecology of the city'? Genuinely curious - would like to have a better sense of what is being argued here (and fwiw yeah i've read d&g for nearly fifteen years now, so the terminology is not the issue). Useful how? What does it help to describe or diagnose?
Well not sure about dubstep I'd have to think harder about that but perhaps the assemblages created in the early days of acid house culture - new configurations of embodiment and sexuality brought about by the intersecting dynamics of E and sound systems and black dance music; people of different colour and class all in one place on the dancefloor - that was a new set of abstract machines pregnant with possibility was it not? Its a neat and interesting way of thinking it anyway.
Bodies without organs are in there somewhere but i keep forgetting which way round they go (with or without). I'm not a Deluzian scholar, thats just my limited understanding of what you can think if you bring his philosophical - his conceptual - creations to bear.
FWIW pirate radio was more interesting for grime I think...the extreme decentralisation, disembodiment, voices scattered through the airwaves - there's something to go on there.
Last edited:
Cheers, Logos, thanks for the answer, which made good sense. My question stems from a curiosity as to whether there is something *specific* that a certain critical discourse can explain about these genres within the rave continuum, e.g., either the early acid house configuration you mention, or later exempla (it's the application of these critical discourses to music that I am querying, not the application to economy, psychoanalytic perspectives, etc) -- or if these discourses in fact in some cases *diminish* our ability to explain the phenomenalities under discussion.
An example would be K-Punk's recent glowing review of the Junior Boys gig. According to him, after a few early technical glitches, the JBs show was a stunning performance of all of the things he sees in them, from their canadian highway expanse and 'nomadalgia' to whatever else . . . yet Ben UFO, a classically trained musician and one heck of a fine dubstep and jungle DJ, commented that the drummer played out of time, was detrimental to the performance, etc . . . so one comes away with two quite different accounts, one from the theorist who sees his ideas lovingly set on public display, the other from the trained musical ear and eye who sees shoddy musicianship and traces of machismo -- you can imagine which one I found more convincing
In other words, with particular reference to critical discourses borrowed from recent theories and applied to musical phenomenality, I always ask myself whether kode 9 or ccru or d&g (or whoever) are doing something that can't be done by any other means or if they are simply offering other slightly more fancy ways of saying things that can be articulated in better, more specific terms.
For example, when I first read Eshun (the _More Brilliant_ book), I didn't find much that hadn't already seemed fairly obvious to me (though I came to it late, admittedly), and I found his constant stream of neologisms to be extremely annoying -- it left the impression that creating a series of neat-sounding neologisms was an adequate substitute for actual argumentation with theses and evidence. (I suppose I'll get strafed for this last comment, but there it is.) (And yes, I anticipate that the answer will be, "but rave music is also about culture, not just music, so we are justified in applying cultural criticism discourses", to which I say sure, yes, fine, but if the cultural discourse comes unhinged from the actual music, then room for all sorts of nonsense and slippage opens up too.)
An example would be K-Punk's recent glowing review of the Junior Boys gig. According to him, after a few early technical glitches, the JBs show was a stunning performance of all of the things he sees in them, from their canadian highway expanse and 'nomadalgia' to whatever else . . . yet Ben UFO, a classically trained musician and one heck of a fine dubstep and jungle DJ, commented that the drummer played out of time, was detrimental to the performance, etc . . . so one comes away with two quite different accounts, one from the theorist who sees his ideas lovingly set on public display, the other from the trained musical ear and eye who sees shoddy musicianship and traces of machismo -- you can imagine which one I found more convincing
In other words, with particular reference to critical discourses borrowed from recent theories and applied to musical phenomenality, I always ask myself whether kode 9 or ccru or d&g (or whoever) are doing something that can't be done by any other means or if they are simply offering other slightly more fancy ways of saying things that can be articulated in better, more specific terms.
For example, when I first read Eshun (the _More Brilliant_ book), I didn't find much that hadn't already seemed fairly obvious to me (though I came to it late, admittedly), and I found his constant stream of neologisms to be extremely annoying -- it left the impression that creating a series of neat-sounding neologisms was an adequate substitute for actual argumentation with theses and evidence. (I suppose I'll get strafed for this last comment, but there it is.) (And yes, I anticipate that the answer will be, "but rave music is also about culture, not just music, so we are justified in applying cultural criticism discourses", to which I say sure, yes, fine, but if the cultural discourse comes unhinged from the actual music, then room for all sorts of nonsense and slippage opens up too.)
Last edited:
nomos
Administrator
Good discussion here! I had to run out the door before I could post my reply, so I'm coming in a bit late now...
I'm out on a limb here, but Kode9 has talked about the relationship of music to an ecology of fear in the contemporary city, and, like Kodwo, he also emphasises the diasporic aspects of music scenes like dubstep and jungle. So that's what I was meaning to point to with that 'cultural ecology of the city' comment. Honestly, I'm not claiming to have a good handle on what he's on about because it's never really been explained in much detail. It tends to come out in these poetic flourishes. And you sound like you might be better equipped than me to judge whether the uses of D&G hold water.
As for usefulness, I'm really not sure. The more I get to know D&G in detail, and experiment with rigorous applications their concepts to concrete scenarios, the more my fascination with them wanes. In the right situation, they can provide a very useful conceptual starting point, or basic framework (e.g. the rhizomatic and arborescent in discussions of nation, race and transnational cultures, or their Spinozan understanding of affect as a means to bring the body back into cultural studies). In general, I see them offering some poetic and sometimes useful metaphors that I find more attractive than psychoanalytic ones. But for my intents and purposes, they remain metaphors that are only useful insofar as they can offer insight into concrete problems. These specific problematics have to lead the discussion, not the theory. And I'm not convinced that D&G's conceptual framework as a whole is always coherent enough to survive rigorous application. It gets very slippery. For example, I often think of Forward>> events at Plastic People as a case onto which you could map the Body without Organs - creating a field of immanence, etc. But then I can also see how it could be described as a Desiring Machine/Assemblage (as Simon Reynolds does with pirate radio in Energy Flash/Generation Ecstasy). The two are supposed to be opposed concepts but each makes makes a convincing metaphor. To what end, I'm not really sure though. In Ccru usage, maybe this is where "fictions" comes in. And there is something to this concept of creating a field of potentials that is designed more to spawn to thought/forms/machines rather than retrospectively explaining what has passed. But that's asking something very different of the material.
I'm happy enough to read Ccru-related work that approaches things in these ways, they've made real contributions, but I think they've always achieved a hegemonic status (along with Reynolds) in these post-rave discourses. It's partly because they're almost the only ones trying to engage certain aspects of these musics and scenes. But there's also a shock-and-awe quality to this sort of Deleuzian writing that can shut down discourse as well. So tate, I'm in agreement there. I think the question is: what are they trying to do with their writing v. what do we (whoever) want from it.
Writing in a bit of a hurry here, so apologies if anything isn't clear.
tate said:
I'm out on a limb here, but Kode9 has talked about the relationship of music to an ecology of fear in the contemporary city, and, like Kodwo, he also emphasises the diasporic aspects of music scenes like dubstep and jungle. So that's what I was meaning to point to with that 'cultural ecology of the city' comment. Honestly, I'm not claiming to have a good handle on what he's on about because it's never really been explained in much detail. It tends to come out in these poetic flourishes. And you sound like you might be better equipped than me to judge whether the uses of D&G hold water.
As for usefulness, I'm really not sure. The more I get to know D&G in detail, and experiment with rigorous applications their concepts to concrete scenarios, the more my fascination with them wanes. In the right situation, they can provide a very useful conceptual starting point, or basic framework (e.g. the rhizomatic and arborescent in discussions of nation, race and transnational cultures, or their Spinozan understanding of affect as a means to bring the body back into cultural studies). In general, I see them offering some poetic and sometimes useful metaphors that I find more attractive than psychoanalytic ones. But for my intents and purposes, they remain metaphors that are only useful insofar as they can offer insight into concrete problems. These specific problematics have to lead the discussion, not the theory. And I'm not convinced that D&G's conceptual framework as a whole is always coherent enough to survive rigorous application. It gets very slippery. For example, I often think of Forward>> events at Plastic People as a case onto which you could map the Body without Organs - creating a field of immanence, etc. But then I can also see how it could be described as a Desiring Machine/Assemblage (as Simon Reynolds does with pirate radio in Energy Flash/Generation Ecstasy). The two are supposed to be opposed concepts but each makes makes a convincing metaphor. To what end, I'm not really sure though. In Ccru usage, maybe this is where "fictions" comes in. And there is something to this concept of creating a field of potentials that is designed more to spawn to thought/forms/machines rather than retrospectively explaining what has passed. But that's asking something very different of the material.
I'm happy enough to read Ccru-related work that approaches things in these ways, they've made real contributions, but I think they've always achieved a hegemonic status (along with Reynolds) in these post-rave discourses. It's partly because they're almost the only ones trying to engage certain aspects of these musics and scenes. But there's also a shock-and-awe quality to this sort of Deleuzian writing that can shut down discourse as well. So tate, I'm in agreement there. I think the question is: what are they trying to do with their writing v. what do we (whoever) want from it.
I found the Eshun book quite a while after it came out as well and I've had a mixed response to it. Again, I love that someone is doing this sort of writing at all and that he's adamant that music be taken seriously as cultural theory in and of itself. Also his framing of music's relationship to the African diaspora and his problematisation of politics of authenticity in 'black' music and discussions about it. But, in this sense, isn't it largely just a sexier version of what Paul Gilroy has done in more depth in the Black Atlantic? There's also a technological determinism in there that I don't find convincing.tate said:
Writing in a bit of a hurry here, so apologies if anything isn't clear.
Last edited: