questions you are dying to ask but are too scared to b/c of music nerd cred?

dsp13

GAMEBWOY
Johan said:
What does it mean that a mix is "VIP"?
It just means it's an exclusive cut of a tune recorded for a particular dj / soundsystem etc... as far as I know half the time they're just done for the cash rather than out of a deep respect but I'm sure some logan sama / stelfox types have more info on this one...
 

henry s

Street Fighting Man
good idea for a thread...reminds me of work or school, when you realize you've been seeing the same person nearly every day for several months, but never been properly introduced, and so much time has lapsed that it's embarassing to ask them for their name (and you both know it), so you just nod to each other and keep going your way...or maybe not...

anyway, can somebody define "systems music" for me?
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
I have difficulty drawing a line between 2-step garage and broken beats -- i.e., there are some tracks that are obviously 2-step, but many others are harder to classify

What exactly is the difference, both technically and genealogically?

i.e., i know that 2-step is descended from todd edwards, etc -- but what's the origin of broken beats?

am i correct to think of broken beats as a global, cosmopolitan movement, whereas 2-step was strictly a london ting?

in fact, i'd like to know more about the people who founded both genres -- if there's such a thing as founding figures in mutational scene-driven music -- and what their previous involvement in dance music had been

(this should probably be it's own thread??? -- i.e., a simple question followed by a series of questions -- but yeah, i'm kinda preoccupied with 2-step and broken beats at the moment)
 
Last edited:

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Pearsall said:
"intelligent dance music"
And it came into parlance due to the mailing list called IDM, so far as I know. I got on that list in 95 and subscribers were already bitching and moaning about what a shit term "IDM" was, not just for the snobbery involved in it but because heaps of what got written about was not primarily intended for dancing and has certainly not been part of a dance music scene.

On the mailing list people didn't seem too clear at first on what IDM was, but as a whole generation of producers came along who were deliberately emulating first Aphex and then Autechre IDM became much more of a genre. It's a weird one in that it is definitely a global scene of sorts now, but not really rooted in any particular location.

Having ditched the mailing list, cos I didn't particularly give a fuck anymore, I found myself still getting lots of value out of the idm-making list. Kinda surprisingly it's not full of people discussing how to rip off Autechre. One of the Shadetek guys was on it (not sure if it's the one who's Sizzle on here?) and Atomly I recognise. I think I saw Secret Agent Gel on here as well.. he's keen on writing that heavy second-gen dubstep among other things.

Ramble on.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
ok here is Question El Stupido Numero Uno:

was the song "Murder She Wrote" a reference to the American TV show????

:eek: :eek: :eek:
 

john eden

male pale and stale
The title may be from the show but it's mainly about a "loose" woman who has an abortion, I think.
 

cooper

Well-known member
dominic said:
I have difficulty drawing a line between 2-step garage and broken beats -- i.e., there are some tracks that are obviously 2-step, but many others are harder to classify

What exactly is the difference, both technically and genealogically?

i.e., i know that 2-step is descended from todd edwards, etc -- but what's the origin of broken beats?

am i correct to think of broken beats as a global, cosmopolitan movement, whereas 2-step was strictly a london ting?

in fact, i'd like to know more about the people who founded both genres -- if there's such a thing as founding figures in mutational scene-driven music -- and what their previous involvement in dance music had been

(this should probably be it's own thread??? -- i.e., a simple question followed by a series of questions -- but yeah, i'm kinda preoccupied with 2-step and broken beats at the moment)

I'll take a stab as best I can - I've made preliminary efforts at digging into it.

When I went to London summer 2003 I went to Co-op at Plastic People (also the home of FWD>>) and was really surprised that there wasn't any connection at all between that crowd and the people that came out for Heartless Crew the next night - Co-op was all like a proper young middle-class fashionista thing; kind of like the crowd I see at art gallery parties in the Mission here in SF.

2-step and broken beat both were heavily influenced by ex-junglists. Reynolds' "Feminine Pressure" Wire piece is probably the best historical document of the early days of 2-step: http://members.aol.com/blissout/2step.htm - he describes the junglists who broke to go into 2-step as people like Potential Bad Boy/Chris Mack, Foul Play/Steve Gurley - the producers who were more scene participants than auteurs. Broken Beat was largely founded by 4 Hero, who were well into the "serious artist" phase of their career by that time and were focusing their efforts on making albums like "Two Pages." Broken Beat seemed to be about Artists from the very start - I think I hardly know of any BB djs from London who are not primarily producers, whereas garage had people like EZ, Heartless Crew, etc. who were great entertainers but not producers. Cartesian split between the genres maybe? On the surface BB is very danceable - it's swingy, ~130bpm, organic textures... but once you start to get into it it seems that there's a lot of talk about "breaking free from old musical structures" by which they seem to mean verse-chorus-verse, but they would like to place themselves within that Roy Ayers jazzfunk continuum. You hear the term "future jazz" thrown around.

As far as I can tell, the history of broken beat in other countries is related to that of acid jazz - apparently there was a large US-hosted acid jazz email list where a lot of the development of the new sound was chronicled in the late 90s. The sound got picked up pretty fast by established names in the US - King Britt and Carl Craig particularly. Oddly enough, a lot of the American artists came from Detroit - Jeremy Ellis/Ayro, Tintonton Duvante, Recloose. There is also an outpost in Japan called the "Kyoto Jazz Massive." Not having followed it in those days I can't really say what the history is - but I do need to pick my friend DJ 99's brain about it sometime. In London you used to hear it referred to as "West London" more that "broken beat," but the sound is so international now I can't imagine that's still the case.

Also, one of the guys from Jazzanova was pretty fucking rude to me one time, bunch of easy-listening Sunday brunch wankers.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
cooper said:
I'll take a stab as best I can - I've made preliminary efforts at digging into it.

pretty good stab

and yeah, it's interesting how people like king britt and carl craig picked up the sound -- maybe b/c king britt and 4hero had previous ties??? plus, the whole phillly soul angle

and many detroit people as well -- john beltran

i think a lot of these people would say that broken beat has been around since the late 80s, though in name only since 97/98

anyway, what you say chimes with what i know -- thanks for taking a stab!!!
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
henry s said:
anyway, can somebody define "systems music" for me?

My understanding is that this means 'music that is composed (or composes itself)' according to some sort of system. To borrow a Stockhausen metaphor, it's a bit like building a clockwork mechanism and then letting it go; what happens is the music. The composer comes up with some sort of 'system' (this might be technological, or intellectual) for generating music, sets the system going, and the music creates itself with little or no subsequent intervention from the composer.

Key examples:

Steve Reich, Pendulum Music, four microphones swing like pendulums over their speakers, making waves of feedback

Reich: Come Out and It's Gonna Rain: Identical tape loops are played simultaneously, but variations in machine mean that the loops slowly move in an out of phase. The idea was explored further in written-down instrumental music like Piano Phase

Philip Glass: Music in Similar Motion: A melodic idea is repeated over and over, and at every few repetitions it adds or substracts a note

Gyorgy Ligeti: Poeme Symphonique: 100 metronomes tick at slightly different speeds until the springs run down and they eventually stop

William Basinski: The Disintegration Loops. Musical loops are created on tape; the tape degenerates as it is played and looped; this degeneration is recorded and is the music.

Alvin Lucier: I am Sitting in a Room: Lucier records himself speaking a prewritten text (explaining what he is doing), the recording is played back, whilst the reverberation is re-recorded and re-played back, etc. etc. The original spoken word gets obliterated by increasing amounts of echo

Plus loads more besides.
 

Eric

Mr Moraigero
cooper said:
an outpost in Japan called the "Kyoto Jazz Massive."

For what it's worth this is just a group, maybe not an 'outpost'. As far as I know (though I haven't paid much attention to what they've been doing for some years now) they were more of an acid jazz collective than anything to do with broken beat. That may have changed at some point though.
 
Top