cheers datwun. volume three and no discernible drop in quality of tuneage i reckon, not many producers that would warrant a similar series of mixes about now (would have said funkystepz a year or two ago maybe).
'jackin' as a genre name that producers are willing to rally around has pretty much died off already though hasn't it? You rarely see it mentioned anywhere. Better to go with the flow iyam, I don't think the quality of output from the best producers has suffered from being subsumed into the wider house n bass/deep vibes that dominate now. It mixes so well with house n bass, garage, even grime anyway (though the vibe is still generally quite distinct from the shapecutting london electro house sound). Someone like Lorenzo is flexible enough to move on from the Jackin tag, and the 2:31 show on rinse has been fantastic and shows how well they fit into the greater house universe.
Unless you were just talking about the raves slowing down, in which case i have no idea. i'd imagine they're still poppin off though
Yeah, Lorenzo`s just in a leauge of his own, he basically single handedly created a new genre, and he`s got an insane work rate with an insane amount of total anthems and bangers within that.
Thing is, I do reckon that the change from jackin to house & bass has bought with it a change in sound, a turn away from cheesiness and vybziness and towards something a more more 'sophisticated' or less differentiated from just straight forward house. On the one hand you're seeing less of the stupid pop vocals/refixes (though the rise of the harder MC driven stuff does compensate for this), less pianos, organs, rave noises, but the thing which really gets me is the change in the basslines away from the bouncy wobbly jackin bass to like, this very heavy, but quite monolythic, non-melodic subbass. Like with the best of the jackin basslines you could always hum them, but now in a lot of the mixes, on the 02:31 show, in Hannah Want's sets etc. a track will drop and it'll just be this block of subbass I find super meh. Same with HW's tracks actually, which apart from the Signs Roller mix (which is absolutely massive) I've really not been feeling any of her output since Dappy/None A Them.
The other thing is a drop in /quantity/. As the scene gets a bit more professional, producers are getting much more precious with there releases. It used to be like, you'd hear a track on soundcloud, and it'd be up on bigtunes within a couple of weeks. Now everything's getting signed and it can be 6 months between first hearing a track and being able to buy it. I reckon they're somewhat shooting themselves in the foot with that one though because it takes away a lot of the energy and buzz, makes the scene feel much slower etc.
I went to 02:31 a couple of times over the summer and it was still brilliant, great crowd, great vibez, great music (though that's because I love all the tracks, honestly the basic standard of DJing on the scene is pretty low).
All the producers deserve the increased attention they're getting, like it's great to see them doing well. But it would just be a shame if they got big by getting rid of everything that made the scene exciting in the first place. If not just because I want my constant stream of nasty silly big bassline bangerz lol
EDIT for what it's worth, the housey sound the jackin producers seem to be turning towards is much less the London shuffle/deep tech thing (which, though I find can get repetetive and definitely don't want to crowd out other, sillier sounds, I've come round to in a bit way, and would actually love to hear Loz etc. give it a go along side jackin), but more the London/Briston 'bass house' thing (My Nu Leng, Foamo, Lucent etc.) Which is that house which kind of uses all sorts of nuum signifyers (syncopated/garagey beats), big sub bass, a certain hardness/ruffness, but to me mostly has a serious vibe deficit, something weirdly unfun about it...
