popular and marginal avant gardes in combination

catalog

Well-known member
Seeing quite a lot of interesting cross-pollination going on atm at some nights i'm going to in manchester, specifically P13 / Faktion / Fiktion and Club CITS. They're great nights, lots of variety of musics, plus diverse DJs and PAs, but just wanted to post about a trend i've noticed in case it's something that's also happening elsewhere.

I've found that there's quite a lot of combinations of different avant gardes going on. so typically, mash ups between (black, popular) acapellas and (white, marginal) noise e.g.

https://soundcloud.com/loftminduk/tell-me-what-u-think-bout-me

i know this sort of thing is not exactly knew - i guess you could trace it back to soulwax sort of stuff and probably before, at the very least. but it feels quite different, principally because some of the beats are so abrasive, so the melody/danceable element is being backgrounded. there's also a subtle subversion going on with a lot of the tracks: so with the popular tunes, they're using distancing techniques (e.g. by using the acapella, or in another case, pitching the vocal right up so a macho mavado sounds like a little girl). and of course live, on a good system, the noise in the background is really full on.

i've more to say on the subject, but just wanted to get the ball rolling in case anyone's interested or has noticed similar. there's another thread to all this: the new crop of post-grime that's using eski type beats (e.g. v1984 "too much") but divorcing/displacing the mc, therefore really transforming the music. and of course a lot of it is not london-produced.

it also hasn't escaped my attention that next summer will be 30 years since the summer of '88 and so i guess i'm wondering, in a more general sense, whether something new could be in the birthing.

Probably not, because the future, as we know, has been slowly cancelled. But it has got me looking slightly up - i've not enjoying going out clubbing for a long time and these nights are amazing in terms of the music. although that could also have something to do with the fact that i'm going to them stone-cold sober.
 

droid

Well-known member
Ive been perusing some of the avant club things coming out over the last couple of years so am not unfamiliar with the trend. Somewhat disappointed by the tune above. Seems to lack rigour and is not dissimilar to people dropping acapellas over breakcore/venetian snares type business from about 15 years ago.
 
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