re: 'nuum - I think we may actually be seeing what Barty said needed to happen in the multiculturalism thread in that people seem to be clustered in small groups, focusing on a particular sound and things aren't as broad as they were a few years ago.
I feel like if you stick the radio on now, you're much more likely to hear a whole set of grime or house or whatever than you were from say '09 to '12 and there doesn't seem to be the same crossover between scenes. It feels like grime's very much separate from the jungle/dnb stuff and they're both very much separate from the house and techno crowd, you might get the odd classic thrown in at the end of a slightly looser house set, but they're not actively engaging with each other as far as I can tell.
I guess the key is whether those little clusters are pushing things forward in some way, or simply turning into echo chambers where people have their nostalgia and conservatism reinforced.
new jungle is definitely a nostalgic thing. I'm happy to admit that. some grime beats from boilan etc can be interesting. not really many good mcs though. Spooky is still a good dj when he's not trying to play shite from Hitman. Would still much rather an instrumentals/140 set from Slimzee than any deconstructed club. that's no contention he can still be tekkers.
funky has pretty much become another subset of house now. whatever. I like house but brits are not great at house, the americans always did it way better.
the real experimental algorithmic stuff is like experimental rock now. so geographically diffuse it can't even be called a UK or US scene.
Some new bassline from murlo and em guys is alright.
Actually this is my problem I always gravitated more to jungle than i did grime and it's just not moving forward in any substantial way. people are still using the same breaks and the same samples. you can do more with jungles template than you can do with grimes rhythmically but that isn't really happening, the sort of semi-junglistic footwork was a step forward but then that ended up really folding into itself.
Industrial techno as well has become very continentalised and a lot of it has a trance chug. this wasn't the case between 2009-14.