Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
And also it's not like many (if any) of the people he cherry-picked from here have the pretensions or attendant responsibilities of being professional music journalists. If he is citing anonymous quotes from internet message boards, that's not exactly the level of professionalism you expect from someone like him.

Speaking from my own perspective here, but perhaps on behalf of others who are pointing out this weakness in Reynold's writing, it's not that I'm trying to be over-protective of a genre of music I'm personally invested in somehow, or that I'm trying to out-cred him in my experience or knowledge of the subject, it's actually that I respect his opinion on things generally and think that occasionally he might have something interesting to say on the subject if he bothered to say it.

I'm willing to accept that he treats his blog as an outlet for personal conjecture and musings and that it shouldn't be taken seriously for that reason. That's the nature of internet self-publishing, so whatever. However, that didn't stop him from his article in the Guardian on the pretty much empirically false relationship between "wonky" music and ketamine. If you want to say that kind of thing is acceptable, then obviously the integrity or relevance of music journalism isn't much of an issue for you.
 

Tim F

Well-known member
if you'd bothered to read up thread you'd see that, that blog post is a microcosm of the issue here ie it cherrypicks the bits that suit his argument.

Astonished and appalled that someone would use this argumentative tactic.

What next, cherrypicking pieces of music that suit his argument too?
 

Tim F

Well-known member
The context of all of this is people, especially on this board, saying he was totally out of it for having certain opinions. It seems a legitimate (though mildly petty) move to point to "anonymous" arguments on this board that appear to take the same line. OTOH getting a seemingly supportive quote from andy or mms is not nearly the vindictive moneyshot that one from Blackdown or Mos Dan would have been.

One problem I have with it is that it validates an "even a stopped clock..." Cassandra approach to critiquing developments in dance music: if you keep on predicting the death (or lapse into disinterest) of particular sub-genres then sooner or later you will be right, often even for the right reasons (it's usually the case that at least some of the early strengths of a style later get transformed into weaknesses) but that hardly means you called it at the right time.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
take CrowleyHead -- he's not heard every guitar solo ever, but he knows he's got zero interest in guitar solos, and he's certain that nothing interesting or entertaining could be uttered on the subject of guitar solos

and that's his right

It's not that, I like guitar solos... It's just, if you're you know 'Simon Reynolds', there should be plenty to talk about on music right now. Even besides dubstep. Instead, he's spent the past month collecting his and his friends favorite guitar solos and providing in-depth insight into them. For a guy who's big into post-punk anti-guitar, it's like discovering one of those "BEHIND THE SCENES: THE MAKING OF LED ZEPPELIN IV" DVDs or something. I don't want to read that, and if that's the only thing that's interesting you in music right now (other than making this big statement on music because you spent time with one obnoxious label), then maybe I don't need to care about you.

It's like Paul Morley's opinions on Giggs or whatever; inessential if it doesn't affect you.
 

luka

Well-known member
simon reynolds is old enough to be able to fade into the background and talk about guitar solos though isn't he? the problem is that no one has taken his place. tim finney i think has the talent but not the motivation, i think he has a job which is both more intresting and bettr paid than music journalism so that will never happen. otherwise is just boosterism and amateur hour which is a shame. if i thought i was good enough then id be obliged to do it myself.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
The thing is with stuff, where are all the classic records, the ones that people in 10 years time are still going to be talking about? The ones that changed the game, brought something new, or even just defined their genre in a special way? Its just all so wishy-washy. Could anyone really hold something like Hyp Mngo up to a 'I Luv U' or a 'Terminator' or a 'Destiny'? That might not seem fair, but its impossible to avoid comparing post-dubstep to these old classics and find them lacking, especially since they are recycling so many ideas from the past.

As for Reynolds, lets not forget the bloke has been writing a book over the last few years and his blog is subtitled 'a public notepad for not fully baked thoughts'. I'd imagine that a lot of the issues discussed in this thread will be dealt with more thoroughly in there.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
What was 'game changing' about Hyph Mango, though? I know it was massively popular but did it inspire other producers/spawn imitators?


when I first heard this I loved it, and it seemed to represent a new trend in production for creating tunes that stitched together disparate ('nuum and other) influences as glaringly as sets by DJs like Bok-Bok, Ben UFO, Brackles etc. were doing at the time. I got a bit over-excited about this and predicted a sort of hardcore mk. 2 in which producers/DJs would be able to mix whatever they wanted in mixes/tunes to create hybrid forms... perhaps using the cliches (which as Reynolds said are often the most potent parts of dance genres - saw this in a quote on tumblr the other day from 'Energy Flash') of those genres, with an eye to functionality as well as experimentalism. It seemed like a good way to go for dubstep, away from the ultra-aggy grind-wobble on one side and the 'deep' dub-techno stuff on the other.

I must say that now I don't know if this eclecticism has produced much in the way of amazing records, or mixes... Saying that I think a lot of producers and DJs from the 'post-dubstep' scene are getting better and better with each release.

Fuck it - I've probably said all of the above already earlier in this thread.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
you chose the one tune that should be considered as a game changer... hyph mngo

i can also see tracks like foot crab, croydon house and work them,Wut, IRL being revered in the future
but i also view future garage/uk reworked house shit as a scene overloaded with decent qulaity tunes and which very very rarely goes above or below the level of decent

FWIW, this is exactly my opinion as well. Also a lot of that future garage/UK reworked house bag just doesn't really have that certain aesthetic quality that ties all the other London pirate radio genres together - that certain unique quality I can't be bothered to define right now (no less because others have already done a better job of it) that has always made listening to dubstep from grime, or funky from dubstep, or funky from grime, seem so intuitive.

Those tracks you mentioned are all great and I think will be remembered as high points of this period. I have two main grievances with the music being made now: there is a lot of overwrought shit being made in some hysterical reaction to brostep of affected sophistication that just isn't viable as club music at all (if even it has any artistic merits beyond this fact alone), and a lot of shit being made that is pretty much just house, which is a disappointment because my interests in this scene began because I was looking for things that sounded much different to your traditional club fare.
 
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wise

bare BARE BONES
<a href="" title="tumblr_lk3roofSt11qbiogvo1_500 by DJLDJL, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5027/5645995731_977a9a6802.jpg" width="354" height="500" alt="tumblr_lk3roofSt11qbiogvo1_500"></a>

Well I went to this and I did have a good night, really enjoyed Joy Orbison's set but on the whole it confirmed all my upthread views on this stuff.
MC at the end "Swamp81 - this is the future!" it sounded very much like the past to me...
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
this is true but the funny thing about dance journalism today, and online discussions of dance music too, is that it hardly ever registers the social dimension. there is almost no on-the-scene reportage, descriptions of crowd behavior, dance styles, rituals, vibes etc.

discussion is almost entirely at the level of tracks, auteurs, production, genre formation, genre history, etc... the talk is largely divorced from how the music is actually used in practice, in real social space

so people are in fact judging music just by the waveforms, constantly

i quoted this cos i want to remember it

but it also tempts me to unleash the can of worms that is the social make-up of creators/audience for 'post-dubstep' - isn't it overwhelmingly pasty middle class students like ''Corpsey'' making/DJing/dancing to this stuff? Or is that an ignorant view to take?

I'm sure many would say it is (or should be) completely irrelevant, but when I think of the genres that get revered on here (Grime/Jungle/Juke/Hip-Hop etc.), most of them are the product of working-class culture, and largely created by black britons/americans.

I dunno if this has been discussed in this thread before... I'm sure some of you will have something interesting to say about it. If not, something provocative which will start a nasty forum fight will suffice.
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I think this got discussed near the start of the thread when bun-u said it was all made by 'posh boys'. he got shot down for it, but I think theres definitely a ring of truth to it.
 

wise

bare BARE BONES
I think Hyph Mngo influenced an awful lot of synthy post dubstep, though Girl Unit with that vocal style that everyone seems to use now influenced a lot more
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think this got discussed near the start of the thread when bun-u said it was all made by 'posh boys'. he got shot down for it, but I think theres definitely a ring of truth to it.

I'm sure its important both from the point of view of the music itself and in considering people's reactions to it. I know it should really be 'just about the tunes' but music isn't created or received/appreciated in a vacuum.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
LONGEST DEBATE ABOUT NOTHING EVEEEERRRRR....

It's in a permanent state of flux because there isn't really one style whatsoever. It's not a genre. It's a convoluted mess of people trying different things and not one is quite getting it right. Obviously there's a lot of imitators of the more adventurous producers (for example, Instra:Mental and Addison have biters by now, correct?) and that helps turn this into a bloated sort of group... but there's already so much being lumped together that doesn't sound like each other.

This wasn't an issue with Dubstep when it was say, Generation Bass, and everyone was like "There's infinite room for possibilities, to free us from boredom!!!" Now though, because it's post-dubstep/future-garage Wot U Call It land, it's 'aimless'. Two extremes.

People should critique the movement a little less and try to isolate where the schools of thought are going. At the very least, Swamp '81 appear to be focusing in on a specific sound... Night Slugs too, though I personally feel it's less successful.

Oh, and "Hyph Mngo" totally makes sense as a 'ground zero' for this movement. It's fairly useless as a dubstep single, but generic house DJs or whomever can use it to play in clubs and look semi-adventurous. Juuuuust that middle ground. It's kind of like "Midnight Request Line" in that respect.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
i sometimes wonder if it's possible for a discussions of a dance genre to exist without these weird rather cynical and spiteful accusations of authenticity based around race and class to exist, as if thats consistent with anyone's actual experience of dancing to music. As if you know that they're posh, and if you could credibly make these characterisations, if you'd not seen their faces.

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ah yeah that can of worms has already been metaphorically swallowed and vomited up on about page 3 of this thread
 

franz

Well-known member
this discussion is happening within the context of a recent London, things to remember:

ASBO is a little over 10 years old
CCTV per person in London is off the chain
Grime raves were criminalized to a degree (was having trouble finding the specifics of all that the police did to stifle them on the nets just now, but you would know better than i do anyhow)
incredible gentrifying pressure on East London with the Olympics coming

this is all to say, when thinking about the social aspects encircling the music--and their potential stuffiness/pastiness/richness or lack of liberatory qualities as against older iterations of rave culture...

people are less allowed and eventually less inclined to take the freedom which we figure they once took...

Benjamin and a bunch of other folks have dredged up this line from an interesting journalist named Karl Kraus, talking about "cultural running room"... and at the moment, not just in London (although intensely so, in the same way that it has been intensely so here in Vancouver over the last decade), but globally in the neo-liberal bastions... there is a pretty gross deficit. culture is lost at the expense of safety and condos. youth expression is contained and commercialized.

and if post-wotyoucall it is being maligned against funky/uk house well, socially they hardly seem to shake out any better in this conversation... (dress codes, the smallness of the scene, etc.)
 

wise

bare BARE BONES
off topic but does anyone know the name of Joy Orbisons last tune from the Swamp81 night yesterday?
It started off at a grimey half step but then doubled up to proper tempo, sounded quite different to everything else played that night, I think the vocal was from a Busta Rhymes tune.
Anyone know it?
 
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