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Albums of the year 2012
- Thread starter paolo
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I'm interested. Please send me a PM with details.
Somebody needs to write about how the gentrification of East London is effecting the hardcore (nowadays, softcore) continuum. Honestly people in east london clubs look at me funny when I buss a gun finger and scream for a reload of big tracks :/
Done!! #gasleak
jimitheexploder
Well-known member
I dig the enthusiasam for jackin', even if I don't hear it myself but you can't throw Hessle or even Joy O against the wall just because you like it and your trying to find an excuse for doing so outside of just you know liking the sound and being bored of people in clubs in london I mean they've been ace this year:
BIGROOMTECHHOUSEDJTOOLTIP!
Rise Em
Game
Zone
Cactus
Rude ass all hell. Some of the oddest tracks I've heard people really go mad for in clubs this year are those tracks on Hessle.
BIGROOMTECHHOUSEDJTOOLTIP!
Rise Em
Game
Zone
Cactus
Rude ass all hell. Some of the oddest tracks I've heard people really go mad for in clubs this year are those tracks on Hessle.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
as someone who thinks a lot of early hessle audio was awkward, all brain and no brawn/vibe etc, i think this year was one of their very best. objekt, bandshell, elgato, clutch by pearson sound, this was a pretty spotless year for them id say.
havent kept up with footwork much this year. thought bangs and works 2 was quite dull after vol 1, the young smoke album was overrated, and ive lost touch with rashad and spinn who have become ambassadors but meant i dont really know much about anyone else in the scene. the dj diamond album was more interesting than young smoke though and the 2 rashad albums from last year were overrated which is why ive not bothered with teklife vol 1 yet.
havent kept up with footwork much this year. thought bangs and works 2 was quite dull after vol 1, the young smoke album was overrated, and ive lost touch with rashad and spinn who have become ambassadors but meant i dont really know much about anyone else in the scene. the dj diamond album was more interesting than young smoke though and the 2 rashad albums from last year were overrated which is why ive not bothered with teklife vol 1 yet.
jimitheexploder
Well-known member
Tek Life Vol 1 & 2 by Rashad & Spinn are prob the best Juke albums I've heard. Only DJ Diamond comes close from the last few years. Traxman was good but not a patch on those.
i think the co-inciding of *east* london in these two circles (gents/gentrification & the hardcore nuum) is largely a fluke. once you remove the east bit you'll probably find that people who were fashionable/middle class never overlapped with those who originally took a gun finger as a compliment. it's only the rise of old st/hoxton/dalston as middle class/fashionable areas that has made this comparison even possible.
[minor but relevant case in point. first time i saw gunshot-as-bigup in action was someone who went up to within an inch of doc scott's face at metalheadz @ blue note (hoxton square) and mimicked blowing his entire head off as a compliment. Took a little adjusting to that one, at the time...]
Yeah i thought you were a bit harsh on Uk bass as well.. Hyperdub is still sick (the club stuff too like Ossie, Morgan etc), Jam City has his moments, 'Zone/Luv Zombie', and various other occasional good shit, tunes like Highest Order VIP - thats not just stale retro house or electro it incorporates those influences but feels very UK in the same way jackin does - if there were more tunes like that uk bass would be as good as anything else
- but yeah we're probably in agreement really, that scene has felt a lot less exciting since 2010/11 when it peaked for me, and jackin has totally filled that void, especially for me living in Leeds... we're spoilt really by the sheer amount of bangers dropping week after week (a lot better than last year, waiting 2 months for 'cactus' to come out and realising its not even that good)
When I said where do you go raving I meant to jackin, thought you might be in Leeds too, cos it really feels like the perfect place to go out for it, the centre of the scene (though it probably FEELS the same in birmingham or wherever, the raves give you that feeling wherever im sure) - the vibes at Insomnia are incredible, (seeing Tom Zanetti perform 'You Want Me' live and EVERYONE in the place knowing the words was a big moment for me this year) ... there's also Jamie Duggan's weekly night Twilite (a bassline night which has made a comeback since the rise of jackin) which is sick - you should definitely consider coming down for this stuff. I also need more jackin soldiers to go out with tbh (ive got a lot of mates into the sound but its hard to get people out regularly, especially when they hear Insomnia is at Mission which is generally considered quite a shit club, and everyone i know is more content just to sit around blazing now too)
I'm also a massive footwork fan so agreed mostly with what you had to say there - interesting what you say about the UK tempering it instead of roughing it up - but i dont think just because Addison Groove made footcrab at 140 means its automatically less interesting, its just tempo (i dont like that tune anyway though so bad example) - but take something like 'Work Them', amazing tune ill listen to forever, definitely not watering anything down just incorporating some elements.
But yeah i personally wanna see more of a return to 160+ in the UK too, footwork is the way forward but something has to be done with it, and by that i dont just mean fusing it with jungle for the sake of making it more UK sounding. i dunno, im trying to do a lickle something - sorry for the self promo, would really appreciate feedback from anyone tho be as harsh as you like.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
doubt footwork will be anything more than something for producers to dabble in unless there are regular clubs for it and it becomes a scene in itself... then again, maybe you dont need that anymore as everyone does a bit of everything. it can just be another ingredient to put your toe in as and when. though that doesnt seem like a way for something to really takeover and force a full scale change. i think the real change will take a while longer, and will likely come from the uk house/techno stuff being made right now. or afrobeats. thats the main thing people seem to be forgetting about. its got a scene around it already.
SecondLine
Well-known member
I don't get why it seems to be an either/or thing for you guys, except as an expression of fervent nuum-belief - this idea that one of these two sounds is the potential next iteration, the next in line, and outside of that they essentially have no value. In reality they've clearly got v little to do with each other, other than shared ref points.
I went to a Hessle @ Fabric recently and it was pretty static. But that's a ldn thing more than a hessle thing - when I've seen them elsewhere the crowd have been up for it. Big clubbing cities have always been blighted by vain, fickle, un-committed crowds.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
no point in doing the nuum predictions game in my experience. but jackin prob wont catch on in london, its just the new bassline really.
UFO over easy
online mahjong
im genuinely staggered that this is still being talked about in this way. its not as if the arguments involved on either side have become any more nuanced over the past 10 or however many years that people have been bickering about it. i joined this place in 2005 i think and all that's changed are the usernames.
datwun said:
ive been to more than you, and this isn't true, but sorry you had a bad time. the most memorable club moments of my whole life have all been this year, and have all involved a lot of people dancing to fun, interesting and weird music that i never expected could have that kind of communal effect
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rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i dont think anyone will have anything new to say about it until there is something new actually happening. wake me up when that happens, if it does, or if it can, post-internet, and post-internet being more influential than real world musical happenings (if there is indeed still a distinction). see: that if new york can die, so can london thread.
Elijah
Butterz
Love this. One of the highlights of my career that night. Will never forget that.
It's really not an either / or thing. We're talking about both right now. I believe UK Bass definitely has value and will defend it in response to unfair criticism. It doesn't alter the fact that Jackin' is doing something new though which is the key point for me.
That Joy O one's pretty good, I could see that going off. I just really can't vibe on those Hessel tracks - it's funny because "percussive" and "minimal" are both things I like in music, but all this minimal percussive UK bass stuff just leaves me cold - unlike say, Beneath who I rate highly. I just can't find an in to those tracks (love the Missy sample on the Pangae tune doe) and whenever I go to a night playing all of that sort of stuff I spend it massively frustrated at the lack of release. Shame because I used to love Pangaea, Elgato etc.
That Pearson track is literally everything I don't like about UK bass
Teklife vol 1's a lot, trass me.
Oh it's not that the people are the same, but that they're now inhabiting the same space. There's also definitely some dialogue going on in that space as well, like Butterz which is an authentic grime label with releases from some of the old dons, but is really popular among hipsters, or even if you look at grime videos today and see how hipster-influenced street fashion has become (yoots wearing skinny jeans and shit). I'm just saying that the spiritual home of UK dance music (East London) has become gentrified at the same time as UK dance music has gentrified, it would make sense that there's some connection.
Big
That's really it for me, it's just the sheer energy of Jackin, HOW MUCH good stuff which comes out all the time. My jackin folder has 190 tunes, of which 60-80 are easily bangers as big as Night Hunter, or Bax, or Swims or those scene uniting tunes which get put out every few months to MASSIVE FANFARE, whereas with jackin you can just hop on to bigtunesmp3 on any day of the week and expect to have some new fire waiting for you. Also like, if you look at the level of fan engagement with these people: there's this video from insomniteenz, the under 18s party Tom Zanetti runs, and it's just full of all these 16 year olds sing along and going ape shit to his tunes - apocalyptic and scary obviously lol, but I mean, these guys are a palpable presence to young people in Leeds in a way UK bass is not in London. Each of the artists play 4-5 events a night on weekends, and when you look at the videos of them they're just on another level to what you find in London.
This sounds like my utopia
Find me a night in January and I'm there! All my closest friends in London are riding the #jackinwave but it's VERY difficult organising people to take a road trip. It does show you the importance of locality really though, because even though I'm taking part in the scene as a DJ, blogger etc. it's the simple fact that by not living in the right cities, I don't have access to the club scene - and that's only living one train ride away!
It's not just the tempo, but just generally that most jUKe has more quantised rhythms, goes a bit less crazy with the vocal loops, is less out there, easier than the Chi-town originals. Not all the time, Sully did big things with it, Kuedo, Om Unit as well, and then people like Lenkems and Serantis on a kind of mutant-bass bangface tip. But generally when you consider the relation of UKG to garage house, or UK funky to funky house, the UK's always made things darker, weirder, it's always made the rhythm section more syncopated etc. and that didn't seem to be the case with Addison Groove and the juke influenced 'bass'.
I like that a lot! Really feeling the LTJ Bukem ('Music', right?) sample! Nice grimey bass too. But yeah, I'd love to see a real UK take on footwork, or even a whole new UK genre which takes footwork as a starting point but then runs away from it.
Jambie from this forum is involved in running We Buy Gold - the UK's first exclusively Juke and Footwork night. Lots of unreleased exclusive shit from the Chicago guys, but they also make a big effort to play out UK stuff, and their hirings include a lot of the big UK producers. It's a good start!
It's either or because they're happening the same time but I massively prefer one to the other. The main thing is, I really don't enjoy dancing to UK bass, I really don't like the scene's aesthetics and I want things to be different. I advocate for jackin (which includes playing it out on the radio, at club nights, introducing other DJ friends to it, as well as this stuff here and on my blog) cause I want to hear it. I'm critical of UK bass because I don't want to hear it.
Leeds is a big clubbing city and their clubnights look bouncy as fuck
You're probably right, although I would say the sound is a bit more palatable to London ears than bassline. Also, whenever I play it out it always gets a great response, people "get" it very very quickly.
My argument is that footwork and jackin are the musics I find most exciting at the moment and they happen to be some of the most locally grounded, whereas UK bass has got less and less exciting for me the further away it's got from a recognisably London sound. To be honest though what makes me like jackin over uk bass is its vibe (ravey, silly, weird, dark/light) and it's sound (I just love that bass sound).
I'm glad it's been a good year for you! Honestly, I know all the Hessel guys are safe as fuck and you all really believe in what you're pushing. Just as a dancefloor experience it's really not for me and I think the scene as a whole's gone too much in that esoteric direction.
UFO over easy
online mahjong
house and techno is the shared reference point for all of this, which might make comparisons seem interesting or worthwhile but in reality its too broad for that. some of my favourite music comes from that world, and also some of the stuff i dislike the most.
all the house that comes from the 'established' scene that ive seen you post has been glossy, formulaic, grooveless tech-house, which is the stuff that actively put me off exploring house music in more detail up until 4 or 5 years ago. it's what jackin' producers are looking towards too, so that goes some way to making sense of our personal responses to that music i guess, and to your bemusement at how the rhythms of something like 'cactus' can function on a dancefloor despite it just being a swung 4x4 pattern and being held down by a giant off-beat hi-hat
re: scenius etc... the best thing about the situation us lot have found ourselves in is that there is still huge interaction between musicians, DJs and labels, it's just that it's not confined either to those within local proximity of each other or to those within a narrow stylistic range. ive worried about this same issue too but really one of the best things about the past couple of years to me has been this freedom to form relationships with people whose music i feel an affinity with regardless of where they're from
all the house that comes from the 'established' scene that ive seen you post has been glossy, formulaic, grooveless tech-house, which is the stuff that actively put me off exploring house music in more detail up until 4 or 5 years ago. it's what jackin' producers are looking towards too, so that goes some way to making sense of our personal responses to that music i guess, and to your bemusement at how the rhythms of something like 'cactus' can function on a dancefloor despite it just being a swung 4x4 pattern and being held down by a giant off-beat hi-hat
re: scenius etc... the best thing about the situation us lot have found ourselves in is that there is still huge interaction between musicians, DJs and labels, it's just that it's not confined either to those within local proximity of each other or to those within a narrow stylistic range. ive worried about this same issue too but really one of the best things about the past couple of years to me has been this freedom to form relationships with people whose music i feel an affinity with regardless of where they're from
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Elijah
Butterz
How you come to that conclusion?
The hipster thing is weird man. If I was white people would probably call me a hipster too.
wise
bare BARE BONES
There are plenty of black hipsters in East London, you don't dress self conciously enough to fit into that bracket IMHO
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i would actually disagree with this - i think its gone more dancefloor. if you look at what someone like untold is making or releasing these days for example, its much more for the floor than it used to be. eg - motion the dance.
