1990s hypes revisited - loose series installment 03 - "Illbient"

firefinga

Well-known member
Me thinks, this was somehow the geographically distant cousin of trip hop, a bit rouger maybe. Very 1990s til early 00s and US-East coast-y. Main label Wordsound. I quite liked this stuff.

 

luka

Well-known member
this series is basically recapitulating the semi-hip 40 year old sells cd collection thread.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
this series is basically recapitulating the semi-hip 40 year old sells cd collection thread.

It's more recapitulating the hypes in my 90s music mags I am currently rereading - possibly a lot overlapping, though
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Wordsound was an odd one. Many jewels buried in some quite boring hip hop. The scrappiness was cool. Sensational and the Crooklyn Dub comps. That weird early Bug LP and the Scorn one.
 

version

Well-known member
Me thinks, this was somehow the geographically distant cousin of trip hop, a bit rouger maybe. Very 1990s til early 00s and US-East coast-y. Main label Wordsound. I quite liked this stuff.

Isn't it basically to trip hop what horrorcore was to hip hop?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Isn't it basically to trip hop what horrorcore was to hip hop?

It was a bit more sophisticated than that (horrorcore is good though). The Wordsound stuff did leak into the Wu-Tang mythology (Skiz was down to do one of those 33 1/3 books on 36 Chambers) but also afrofuturist Egyptology / Sun Ra type stuff and Rasta.

That film they did is an underrated b-movie cult classic.

At the other end you had stuff like DJ Spooky and that other label I forget the name of that was a bit more arty/academic.
 

Numbers

Well-known member
At the other end you had stuff like DJ Spooky and that other label I forget the name of that was a bit more arty/academic.

Asphodel? I was fond of DJ Spooky when I was a student, but due to limited finances only ever listened to the below album. I have no idea what he produced afterwards, but I heard it wasn't spectacular.

 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Eden will be thrilled to know that i once went to an Ozric Tentacles gig :D (hey, we all make mistakes!) but that i know nothing about this genre. simon reynolds made it sound like the most bourgeois take on sample collage hip hop imaginable.

Will listen later, if i don't like dj shadow endtroducing will i like this?
 

Leo

Well-known member
these 90s hypes threads are a bit of a drag because they make me realize how much time and money i wasted on some shit music! well, as has been discussed, i guess it was fun at the time but really finding it hard to even listen to some of these YT vids, i owned a few dj spooky albums but now the prospect of listening again makes me cringe.

ps -- please don't extend this series to accommodate a "witch house revisited" thread.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Eden will be thrilled to know that i once went to an Ozric Tentacles gig :D (hey, we all make mistakes!) but that i know nothing about this genre. simon reynolds made it sound like the most bourgeois take on sample collage hip hop imaginable.

Will listen later, if i don't like dj shadow endtroducing will i like this?

Ha! That's awesome confessional. I think I saw them once, by accident, at an all-nighter.

You might like some of it but it depends on why you don't like Entroducing. It's not really sample collage... the 2nd Crooklyn Dub Consortium comp is worth a look. Also a few Sensational tracks just because.

Everybody involved would have benefited from releasing less stuff, for definite.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Ha! That's awesome confessional. I think I saw them once, by accident, at an all-nighter.

You might like some of it but it depends on why you don't like Entroducing. It's not really sample collage... the 2nd Crooklyn Dub Consortium comp is worth a look. Also a few Sensational tracks just because.

Everybody involved would have benefited from releasing less stuff, for definite.

I'm just glad i got sick of prog rock come 2nd year of uni and hence funk and swing was restored and i never went down the predictable shpongle route, thank god. I don't think I'd be able to handle that looking back.

You know I didn't mind endtroducing wen i first heard it i was like yeah this isn't mindblowing but it's nice chill music but then it became so tokenised.

actually this is a problem of mine now, i can't approach music with a dumb teenagers naivete and I'm now realising that actually, i would like that feeling and I'm not sure how to code the algorithmic john peel.
 

Leo

Well-known member
actually this is a problem of mine now, i can't approach music with a dumb teenagers naivete and I'm now realising that actually, i would like that feeling and I'm not sure how to code the algorithmic john peel.

loss of innocence, life is cruel.
 

Numbers

Well-known member
these 90s hypes threads are a bit of a drag because they make me realize how much time and money i wasted on some shit music! well, as has been discussed, i guess it was fun at the time but really finding it hard to even listen to some of these YT vids, i owned a few dj spooky albums but now the prospect of listening again makes me cringe.

The fate of fashion. These threads are pretty much the sonic equivalent of looking at Rod Steward in leopard print.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
Literally all of these hypes have been awful, and I feel slightly righteous that I hated them at their peak too.

Edit: I guess I don't dislike 'Easy Listening' but had no interest in the 90s Revival beyond the fact that it opened up a lot of great old music, but it was layered with that horrible kitsch 90s irony which I hated then, rather than the stuff they were "reviving" in a most despicable way. Like, The Divine Comedy - I hated that group, but probably loved the records they were referencing...
 
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blissblogger

Well-known member
look what popped into my inbox this very morning - news of some more spooky shite - with a premiere at Francois Kevorkian's Deep Space club


"Deep Space is proud to welcome back DJ Spooky Wed. 6/13 along with François K. Spooky is giving us a preview of his new album which reinvents dancehall into a bass loving, anthemic, highly dance-worthy version of what he calls Phantom Dancehall. It's music that only the original Renaissance man of our Brooklyn electronic music scene could create."


the album is actually on VP Records would you believe, you would think they would have a filter for this kind of thing

VP Records http://www.vpreggae.com/dj-spooky-presents-phantom-dancehall-lp/

Listen on SoundCloud https://m.soundcloud.com/Phantom-DanceHall


this was the illbient M/O - take something that was perfectly good in its own right (and weird in its own right) and then do a slightly wonky take on it
 
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