thirdform

pass the sick bucket
ok that was a bit harsh thereand i'm editing this post as a result. apologies. I mean I just don't really get the dancefloor as an end into itself which is probably why ive never got deep tech as such. I used to go clubbing week in week out and i always used to really dislike those tunes that sounded good on a system but when you broke them down were basically optimised for that purpose. I'd rather hear someone trying to make a primitive amen rinse out or whatever. for me it isn't even a club vs home listening thing, it's the perfectionist tendancy of so much dance music. this is what i was getting at earlier. most electronic music records sound better than they did in the 90s and 00s. that's not an opinion, that's a fact. the spatial placement of sounds, the dynamic compression, the way the digital kicks can be beefed up to hit on a club system, the glassiness of digital sound synthesis, from a technical perspective this stuff sounds amazing and 4d in a club.

Yet i've never liked a club as a club, it is alienating not because I'm a punk or whatever, simply because it isn't in my cultural DNA. If I don't enjoy the music I literally can't be there. like what am i doing there? i hardly talk to anyone apart from my mates, the drinks are too expensive, as a blind man even going for a fag or to the loo it is all taxing, not to mention bouncers and security. there has to be that force field. and i think 4d and forcefield are not the same.

I listened to that flava d fact mix the other day, i believe you were the one who recommended her. It's alright but it's too calculated. there is no forcefield. the bass is heavy but not in the way that it pounds your chest like it does in jungle with the rushing breaks. seeing industrial and noise aesthetics being repped by fashionista people i really don't think any dark or hard sound is necessarily inherently edgey. It's not about the edginess for me it's about the transcendent or greater than human ambition. now you can say well yeah it's dance music it's just about shaking your butt and sex, but ultimately that is what minimal music was historically long before the 20th century. That doesn't mean it wasn't transcendent. I don't believe they are mutually exclusive.

Again flicking through this flava d mix I'm sure I'd go for it in a club But it's not really small club/backyard material. and I'm not really into airports..
 
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luka

Well-known member
That's not unfair continuum. You're a unique figure and I think you're justified in complaining.

So why do I ignore you? (Not that I'm famous or influential or can help you but just to answer for myself)

Partly probably snobbery. You don't frame your enthusiasms in a literary or intellectual way but neither do you express them in the unmediated voice of pure excitement. Sometimes it can sound very dispassionate and like you are some kind of government surveyor rather than a fan.

That sounds very harsh and there's no reason really for me to dismiss your findings on the basis of your ability to communicate. I'm trying to answer as honestly as I can even if it makes me sound bad. (I am bad)

The second major reason is that you are a real raver and dance music guy and I never have been and at 39 never will be. A lot of what you unearth is specific to its context and doesn't have that extra element that allows it to crossover from dancefloor to home listening.

I'm answering you because you deserve answering in recognition of who you are and what you've done and it's not intended as criticism of you or as insult.

I can't keep up with the volume of what you bring and I can't contextualise it. You were better served by more dancefloor oriented people like Benny B and Silverdollar and sadly they've mostly departed.

I'd be interested in reading your 'story so far' or counter-narrative because I agree we have become far too defeatist and boring and we're due a change of direction.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
but here's the thing. people aren't really going out anymore. everyone's doing shit jobs or unemployed. like that is what my friends say, im not sure what sort of area continuum is in but that's just the way it is for most of us young uns.

I might go to my mates night in sheffield in april but that will literally be the only night I'll be at for the next couple of years, a fiver to get in, cheap drinks but like a 160 crowd with hardly any security. that's all i can tolerate now. big clubs feel like airports. I'm all about populism and hate exclusivity but the government have made clubs into pleasure prisons. what that Achim Szepanski bloke was saying in the 90s has literally become a reality in London. half of the time you're like I'm enjoying myself because I planned my enjoyment to be here, not I'm enjoying myself because this club is free, because half of the time it is like a body camera in your face for 10 hours. And I don't think enjoyment can be planned personally. it's a bit like planning improvisation in music or planning excitement in writing. I don't think one can really do it.

Again apologies for my harsher tone earlier on. I've been a bit all over the place with a crackling ear these past couple of weeks.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
and just to clarify something, i don't really like berghain/berlin techno either, in fact i think most of its crap and boring, even the industrial ostgut stuff that blissblogger was posting on his blog, it has the same problem that i find in UK tech house. it's perfected club music, everything is placed in the right way, everything is optimised in that right way to have the maximum impact on a club system, the sounds are perfectly spaced. nah, i find it hard to be a fan of perfected music. because at least part of being a fan for me is the imperfection in any music, that ability to justify your passion.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
just on the forcefield point a bit more. about that flava d mix. was mucking about in audacity with the pitch and seeing how those basslines can be made to have the effect i desire. i think they really seem to work at that spot between 150-155. the problem is when you run the tunes that fast they seem to get flat and lose their rhythmic flex.

whereas there's no problem with something like this

you can speed it up a bit more, and it still won't sound quite like jungle.

 

firefinga

Well-known member
Re: "Underground"

Regarding "Underground" - which has got a lot to do with Ethics, with not "Selling out", with not compromising your sound, Underground means sticking together, doing it on your own terms
being "hardcore" "keepin it real" was also part of this, and so was experiencing music together with like-minded individuals - be it at a concert or in a club.

However, those audiences are dwindling and at the same time getting older. Sure, u still got those EDM-events packing stadiums or well-known clubs, but in general the number of played concerts or parties etc are rapidly declining. This feedback-loop is missing more and more, me thinks.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
it's the same with the older bassline it's quite easy to pitch it up a tad because the basslines are more like KMA productions they are spilling over the drum track and trying to escape so there's this weird psychedelic effect. whereas the new basslines are more modulated and complex but they only work at that tempo. it's a bit like with dnb how only a 2step really works at 175 unless you want to go breakcore.

 

luka

Well-known member
Why Puffy was so pivotal was that he really went to war with that notion. Why wouldn't you sell out? Fuck it! Sell everything!
And you can see the impact of that on grime which always had stardom as part of its libidinal drive and why they end up making a faustian pact to catapult dizzee to individual fame at the expense of the genre as a whole
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Regarding "Underground" - which has got a lot to do with Ethics, with not "Selling out", with not compromising your sound, Underground means sticking together, doing it on your own terms
being "hardcore" "keepin it real" was also part of this, and so was experiencing music together with like-minded individuals - be it at a concert or in a club.

However, those audiences are dwindling and at the same time getting older. Sure, u still got those EDM-events packing stadiums or well-known clubs, but in general the number of played concerts or parties etc are rapidly declining. This feedback-loop is missing more and more, me thinks.


I mean I suppose that idea of doing it on my own terms is the idea of underground for me. like i was saying to a mate of mine if i want to make a pop hit with the intention of it charting I'd like to do it in such a way that me and my collaborators had total control over it. but because todays dance music is not really DiY that is very hard if not impossible. red bull and boiler room sweeps anything immediately. otherwise you're a literal nobody. not in terms of the nobody of hardcore techno which has had its own infrastructure to power it away from the mainstream dance music scene, but a literal non-entity, just another bandcamp statistic.
 

continuum

smugpolice
You don't frame your enthusiasms in a literary or intellectual way but neither do you express them in the unmediated voice of pure excitement. Sometimes it can sound very dispassionate and like you are some kind of government surveyor rather than a fan.

lol, maybe I take it more seriously than other people but government surveyor, come on :p

Also, droid/thirdform don't feel bad about being harsh or whatever. This is Dissensus and therefore dissent is expected.
 

luka

Well-known member
Why Puffy was so pivotal was that he really went to war with that notion. Why wouldn't you sell out? Fuck it! Sell everything!
And you can see the impact of that on grime which always had stardom as part of its libidinal drive and why they end up making a faustian pact to catapult dizzee to individual fame at the expense of the genre as a whole

And this is where the mythology of the illuminati emerges as people recogonise quite rightly that these are deals with the devil and that the collective is being sold out for individual fame and what's more they intuit the blood sacrifices which sealed the covenant in the ritual killings of Biggie and Tupac.

They sense the ritual pattern and they see the consequences
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I quite like Bedouin records out of UAE though don't think they release much if any homegrown. more of those dark thugged out military beats.


 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
quite into the new eli keszler as well, percussive ambient with avant-jazz overtones, i hesitate to call it jazz proper.

 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
quite into this chap's 2018 album as well. he must be in his 70s now. those melodies only the ethiopians can do and in anyone elses hands would sound twea.

 

firefinga

Well-known member
And this is where the mythology of the illuminati emerges as people recogonise quite rightly that these are deals with the devil and that the collective is being sold out for individual fame and what's more they intuit the blood sacrifices which sealed the covenant in the ritual killings of Biggie and Tupac.

They sense the ritual pattern and they see the consequences

Sampling Sting/The Police and let a fake-soul diva sing the accompanying melody to it is the expression of this. Puffy's soul is unredeemable.
 
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