bandshell

Grand High Witch
I find the whole "neon synth" thing (for want of a better term) really grating. I enjoyed it when Brackles and co. first appeared but it does my head in now.

I think it might be down the the production as well. All that sort of stuff is very clean and plastic. I prefer grit and lofi textures.
 
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Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I find the whole "neon synth" thing (for want of a better term) really grating. I enjoyed it when Brackles and co. first appeared but it does my head in now.

I agree. It was so tantalizing when people like Joker and Rustie were first using it - it brought really exuberant and shimmery textures to a genre where you rarely used to hear those kinds of sounds. It took a left at the regular aesthetic of dubstep's deep dread and grime's more tweaky, focused aggression and brought in an element of ecstatic joy. I also thought there was a lot that was interesting about that whole synaesthasia narrative too. But now it just seems like it has just become de rigeur for the old man contingent of dubstep to include it in their sound pallete in order to make their tunes sound "refined" or "progressive." What I'm getting at is that what is achieved is the same as what is achieved whenever someone consciously tries to make sophisticated, urbane music: the absolute removal of any kind of joy whatsoever.
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
really? Damu's not old and his music is pretty euphoric and upbeat in a way that joker/rustie never was for me. i mean i like joker and rustie, but they dont make me feel joyful, joker's a grime producer after all, listen to the grimy malevolent underbelly of Digidesign for example.
 

wise

bare BARE BONES
Thing is with that Original Face tune the ideas are headfucky and all over the place... just like grime in it's early days. That tune moves it on from anything after Hyph Mngo but injects a huge amount of energy into the mix which is what young producers like Original Face do best.

The ideas are all over the place? what ideas? where?
Just like Grime in it's early days......Injects a huge amount of energy?????

I didn't get any of this, there didn't seem to be any new ideas, the beats were clunky, the wonky synths were stale and weren't even that wonky, the vocal sounds like it comes from a mainstream sample cd. The synths don't even sound 'neon' in the way the best of this genre can, they just sound cheap and preset, certainly not euphoric.

@Blackdown i'd have to check your tracklists to give you names but this tune just seemed to sum up a lot of my frustration with the times i've listened to your show recently.
You say you still play UK Garage, Grime, & Funky so i'm sure you must but whenever i've downloaded a show I turn it off after about 10 minutes as the tunes sound a lot like this one and I just can't take it.

This may well be a frustration with the scene in general so don't take it too personally. I was just pretty surprised that you would rate a tune like that enough to play it/post it on here.
What I enjoyed about your show in the past was the variety and the consistent quality of the tunes, I picked up a lot of pointers on Dubstep, Grime stuff i'd missed and particularly 2-step from you boys.
I've spent the last year following these pointers deep into proper old UK Garage, amassing a big collection of tunes, which has been amazing as I missed most of it first time around.
Conversely new music seems to have become less and less interesting.
Apart from people like Mala & Kode 9 most of the stuff i've been buying has been Juke or Funky.
But even within Funky there aren't that many tunes that really nail it.
Ossie's great but his recent Sonic Router mix veered a bit too close to Trad House for me which is a shame as he does a great slinky rhythm section.
I don't have a long list of producers that I think are being ignored in favour of this stuff, i'd just rather listen to great old music than new average music.
That Jaques Green track that was posted upthread sounds like fairly mainstream balearic house from a few years back to me.

Maybe this is gradual drift into complete mediocrity is what the scene needs for a new wave of rawness to rear it's head and bite back.
I certainly hope so
 
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muser

Well-known member
I've been a bit tired of hearing sets fall into straight-up house, especially at gigs, everyone loves it though so its not going to stop. it just seems odd because its generally not that reflective of the sound they are making imo. Joy Orbisons set last night for example seemed to consist of around 90% average sounding house.

I think jacques greene's stuff is great tho, polar opposite to the rusty / skwee like squeeky synths.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
jam city, dva, walton, zomby, slackk, grievous angel, lhf.

also funkystepz, ill blu, champion and any other core funky producers.

Risking sounding like a stuck record 'cause I've chatted about this before - but, have you caught many of Brackles' sets on Rinse lately? 'Cause 3/4s of what you mention are pretty much the backbone of his shows, plus loads of similar artists - from both the funky side and the more post-dubstep/bass mucis/whateva kinda side. And it sounds ace, pretty much the opposite of and antidote to a lot of the borderline dullness that's going about at the mo, def one of my favorite current radio shows.
 

mms

sometimes
I've been a bit tired of hearing sets fall into straight-up house, especially at gigs, everyone loves it though so its not going to stop. it just seems odd because its generally not that reflective of the sound they are making imo. Joy Orbisons set last night for example seemed to consist of around 90% average sounding house.

I think jacques greene's stuff is great tho, polar opposite to the rusty / skwee like squeeky synths.

its funny isn't it - the concept of house as straight up - the way its coalesced around a series of worn tropes, because initially house being the thing that gave birth to all these different things, it was really open to interpretation, competition and experimentation - i guess like any dance genre at its height.
There is still tons of good dance music around, you know grime's having a good year, funkys sounding fresh but alot of post dubstep does seem to be about just releasing tracks that are genre workouts in a way, outside of dubstep - things that people have done better over the years but without the atatchment to dubstep, its as if people have just gone sideways into music they always really liked but were never really part of as a 'movement' - almost as if its music people have got into thru youtube explorations or something, disappointing that there is not much fertile hybridisation with the lessons learnt from dubstep but obvs there in nightslugs who seem to crush several genres into each track and a few of the better bits from the best labels.

The range of the best of london labels and the trajectories of people loosely or closely associated with dubstep and funky seem to be detaching and moving towards a variety of styles that remind me of how music was just before hardcore started to form more or less, it's an interesting time and i think it's right to just take that as a given and mix it up, but there isn't much in opposition to that idea which is a bit worrying.
 
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Ory

warp drive
stopped listening to brackles sets in 2009, i'll check it some out though.

wasn't it the first brackles/shortstuff 12" that sort of kicked off this shimmery intelligarage thing btw?
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
stopped listening to brackles sets in 2009, i'll check it some out though.

Cool, I can upload a couple of bits if you want.
Brackles and other Blunted Robots stuff were probably an important part of the 2-step garage influence coming back in a couple of years ago yeah, but his own tunes in that style (eg Get A Job) always seemed more fun and less self-consciously intelligent than most. The stuff he's making & playing now seems to have mostly moved on from that sound anyway.

Edit: him & Shortstuff are live on Rinse now, doing a cover for Oneman.
 
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Blackdown

nexKeysound
@Blackdown i'd have to check your tracklists ... whenever i've downloaded a show I turn it off after about 10 minutes as the tunes sound a lot like this one and I just can't take it.

They're all here, be curious as to what you think is your root cause since we try and cluster four or five genres and tempos into one 2 hour flow, so the suggestion that "all that stuff" makes you turn off the show is baffling.

What's frustrating is I agree with your general sentiments ie "gradual drift into complete mediocrity is what the scene needs for a new wave of rawness to rear it's head" except I use this to select the tracks for the show so obviously dont see them as mediocrity. Lol you should hear the ~600 or so that dont make it! I am especially sensitive to this re house. corrupted fkd house especially funky, i'm down with, but trad house is not what i'm going to be caught sleepwalking into, though theyr'e often hair's breadths away from each other.

the damu synths thing i see as entirely different issue, i find it so playful and honestly happy in an unashamed way, like falling in love in a way you just cant hide it to people, so really dont see this as this controlled, sophisticated, urbane expression or whatever people want to write it off as

i also try and play as much percussive dark, non-bro dubstep but seriously, it's getting very hard to find outside of Double Helix, for me. there's a lot of ex-d&b people making beats for youngsta which are familiar and i quite like but few of them move things on for me.

overall though i'm finding it sad there's so much frustration on this thread as i'm enjoying this period of music massively, the controlled zig zagging within these close quarters is just as fruitful as having one confined genre with lots of internal differences (as we saw with early grime and pre 06 dubstep). Maybe people prefer the singularity but it's not proving frustrating for me as a music fan, DJ or label owner, quite the opposite.


This may well be a frustration with the scene in general so don't take it too personally. I was just pretty surprised that you would rate a tune like that enough to play it/post it on here. What I enjoyed about your show in the past was the variety and the consistent quality of the tunes, I picked up a lot of pointers on Dubstep, Grime stuff i'd missed and particularly 2-step from you boys. I've spent the last year following these pointers deep into proper old UK Garage, amassing a big collection of tunes, which has been amazing as I missed most of it first time around.
Conversely new music seems to have become less and less interesting.

I had this experience with 86-95 detroit techno in about 95. i realised it's hard to hold an expanding current genre up to the rates of incredible discovery if you're going back through years if not decades of musical output. time forgot the mediocre stuff and just surfaces classic after classic, which feels nice as a record buyer but isnt how things work in real time.
 

mrfaucet

The Ideas Train
The beat on that original face tune is so lifeless and weak. Its like a muzak version of garage.

I think this is its main problem. I can see why this track would get a reaction because of the synths, but the drums are just anonymous.
 

franz

Well-known member
i can't really be prescriptive, because my hold of what's going on is incredibly tenuous right now; but it seems to me that, at least on this side of the nuum's present doings (if you still accept...) now is a time for that more refined side of the sound to shine a bit. i'm thinking of things like Horsepower, Phuturistix, certain Photek projects, maybe Skanna or FBD, Brief Encounters era Krust, arguably the Prototype sound (Cybotron, how 'bout?) etc. etc.
the non-hysterical, non-helium, less related to pop side of the sound that often gets short shrift (implicitly via exclusion if not explicitly) vis the unhinged energy, rudeness or feminine "in-touchnuss" of Hardcore or cartoon garage or what have you...
(maybe these kind of broad strokes will make some folks' head explode, but bear with me since i've never not lived in Canada, and never not had a pretty distant relationship to the nuum as a result).

when i think offhand of who has my attention on this side, i think of Instra:Mental who, if they are pushing the sound at all, seem to be riding the thinnest of razor's edges in relation to certain more classic established genre sounds. when they are great, it's really just a question of being great songwriters, or tunesmiths or woteveryoucallits... it's a musicianship that separates the classic tracks from those which use the tropes in a totally uninspired fashion. (<--i think Blackdown's reminder about history vs. the moment and wheat vs. chaff is applicable here) and there's an underlying ease as well--things feel unforced in a way that makes me think of a producer like Silkie or even Joker for that matter... amidst all this stylistic hyperventilation, as a listener that's the direction in which i start to feel inertia after a while... and along similar lines, i think that's why i've been drawn into certain house sounds as well... as much as Funky is supposed to read as the unbridled sexy side of things right now, i wonder if my ramblings aren't somewhat applicable to what you can hear in a Smoove Kriminal radio set sometimes...
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
its funny isn't it - the concept of house as straight up - the way its coalesced around a series of worn tropes, because initially house being the thing that gave birth to all these different things, it was really open to interpretation, competition and experimentation - i guess like any dance genre at its height.
.......
The range of the best of london labels and the trajectories of people loosely or closely associated with dubstep and funky seem to be detaching and moving towards a variety of styles that remind me of how music was just before hardcore started to form more or less, it's an interesting time

I totally agree both these points, they really chime with how I've been feeling lately but haven't been quite able to formulate into a coherent statement.
Like, I would never want to come across as just one of those 'house is boring' folks. There's been plenty of amazing house music, old and new, but I do feel that some contemporary djs and producers (not all) tend to gravitate towards the blandest and safest interpretation of 'house' possible. It's interesting, from playing on Pirate Revival over the last few months and checking out the other djs on there I've really been getting into classic house from the 80s (Chicago, NY, early UK bits) and that stuff just sounds a million times fresher and more exciting than most of what I hear from, say, the daytime house djs on Rinse (or a lot of them on Deja for that matter).
And yeah, definitely in terms of the vibes of that older stuff (especially like you say the stuff from the later 80s/turn of the 90s) there's a lot that seems to cross over with the best stuff coming from UK Funky and with the best stuff that's descended scene-wise and sometimes music-wise from dubstep (trying to avoid saying 'post-dubstep' cause I know some people don't like that term). It's hard to put my finger on exactly what - it's not specific sounds or beats, more abstract connections like types of textures or types of structures/arrangements to tunes. One older dj on PR the other day was saying some of the new stuff I was playing reminded him of old-school electro, didn't know quite what to make of that.. :)
 

gremino

Moster Sirphine
Maybe this is gradual drift into complete mediocrity is what the scene needs for a new wave of rawness to rear it's head and bite back.
I certainly hope so
yeah, maybe uk bass music just needs to take a breath. besides, isn't new cultures always counter-cultures for existing ones?

mms said:
things that people have done better over the years
this sound resemble broken beat - although i like that music, many tracks were quite bland and tasteful to the detriment of energy.

tho i feel kinda ungrateful saying these things as this sound gives outlet for my music... :eek: :D
 

FairiesWearBoots

Well-known member
thats why I really enjoyed Ben's BR set,

no offence to Ben but I had previously DL'd a couple of his other mixes and they were much more of a housey affair, and whilst the selection & mixing were super tight, they didnt move me like this mix does - he draws for some older dubstep/grime bass flavour that goes so well with the newer stuff and it is RUDE,

I think the post-dubstep thing has opened many producers eyes to earlier house/techno (you can see lots of heads have been listening to guys like Kerri Chandler etc) and whilst it is great stuff, I am not looking for a 2010 equivalent. I like these house flavours but I want it rude and I want DJ's to draw for older tracks - we've had so much good stuff in last 10 years, some of it is criminally overlooked
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
ive been saying that this stuff is boring for ages.

dont mind them drawing/discovering old sources but it sounds like theyre just reviving it half the time, rather than doing anything special with it. maybe thats what happens when you can listen to old music and record new music so easily/quickly.

hopefully that will come later.
 

jimitheexploder

Well-known member
I think the Hessle guys do the techno thing really well and wit ha bit of rudeness. They're way better at playing techno than acctual techno DJs at any rate. Blawan's fact mix had loads of techno in it and it sounds really energetic and has those rude UK vibes running thru all of it. They all bring a raw UK vibe to it all thru their selection and DJing styles.
 

paolo

Mechanical phantoms
The 808 stuff is where it's at. Only really Swamp 81 pushing that vibe in a big way but for me it's the most exciting thing going on in all this post-dubstep mayhem
 
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