the nuum back lash

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
As if any of this stuff (the music or the criticism) will be (worthy) of any interest in a hundred years' time...

Part of the function of the 'nuum is, tellingly, to insist that the music is strong enough to foster a significant heritage.
 
Last edited:
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
yep, it was bound to happen sooner or later!

i think grime, funky house and bassline have effectively killed off the hardcore continuum as a useful way of seeing what's happening in UK underground music; grime because it owes much more to crunk and dancehall than to rave or even jungle, and funky house and bassline because, well, the hardcore continuum's always had a problem slotting house music in.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

gumdrops

Well-known member
not a bad thing. for the type of music that goes under the 'num', having a 'num' theory in the first place is not necessarily what you want. then again, half the artists dont really give a shit or know about 'the num' in the first place and arent really fixated on the history etc to begin with. there, that was conclusive.
 
Hardly surprising that music would spring out of the theory put upon it though. There are massive parallels with hard house in bassline music, though, that of course inadvertently springing from hardcore itself. didn't even know about this theory until about a year ago though, so what do i know.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
or maybe they hear clearer from a distance. Of cours grime artists dont acknowledge or even know a link to bleep or whatever, but that does not mean it is not there. When i hear grime or dubstep or bassline, i hear similarities with rave, jungle and of course 2step. I even hear soul II soul and maybe even 2 tone (or LKJ for instance). I think you could expand "the nuum" in stead of shrink it.
(funky is still shit though)
I think the issue is that the 'nuum model kind of implies that its hermetically sealed and, erm, continuous. Which was quite a good description of hardcore->darkcore->jungle->drum and bass if not a perfect one, but which then becomes less compelling when it starts jumping and branching - so we view garage as being the descendant of jungle and not part of a 'US->UK garage continuum'.

One obvious approach is to start tracing a whole set of trajectories rather than selecting a special one.

Someone's going to use the word rhizome soon...
 

mms

sometimes
As if any of this stuff (the music or the criticism) will be (worthy) of any interest in a hundred years' time...

Part of the function of the 'nuum is, tellingly, to insist that the music is strong enough to foster a significant heritage.

really?

so you don't like the music you listen to ?
 

bassnation

the abyss
yep, it was bound to happen sooner or later!

i think grime, funky house and bassline have effectively killed off the hardcore continuum as a useful way of seeing what's happening in UK underground music; grime because it owes much more to crunk and dancehall than to rave or even jungle, and funky house and bassline because, well, the hardcore continuum's always had a problem slotting house music in.

why is it then, that grime mcs often namecheck jungle as genre or even specific raves. i don't hear as many shouts to crunk artists (although i appreciate some grime people have worked with lil jon etc).

like anything, theres some truth to it, but it doesn't come close to explaining everything. when people try to do that, it stretches the theory further than it can viably go.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
I think it's a GREAT theory with really useful, broad applications.

I think it SUCKS when people start dissing grime because they don't think it's the Next Big Thing any more and use the 'nuum theory to hype up their reputation as taste-makers.
 

bassnation

the abyss
I think it's a GREAT theory with really useful, broad applications.

I think it SUCKS when people start dissing grime because they don't think it's the Next Big Thing any more and use the 'nuum theory to hype up their reputation as taste-makers.

i suppose it irks the youngsters to have all these old fogies like us going "yeah, well the history of your music goes like this". it used to annoy me when my dad did it, but of course he was into all kinds of scenes and now i know hes got a lot of interesting things to say, but at the time i was so determined that what i was into was utterly revolutionary i didn't want to hear it.
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
why is it then, that grime mcs often namecheck jungle as genre or even specific raves. i don't hear as many shouts to crunk artists (although i appreciate some grime people have worked with lil jon etc).

yeah, there's clearly a lot of enthusiasm for jungle in grime, and it's certainly an influence (quite explicitly in goodz's MCing or in tubby and footsie's productions, say) but i wouldn't say it's the predominant influence on grime, which is where trying to fit grime into the hardcore continuum falls down- it gives the wrong focus.

production-wise, early on in grime people like dizzee and wiley used to talk about their music as a UK version of dirty south hiphop (also. other hiphop scenes were massively important: in 2004-5 grime was very clearly Dipset influenced). fro an MCing perspective, dancehall has been massively influential. seeing grime through the lens of the hardcore continuum is interesting and can be valuable, but it skews things, because it misses out the massive influence of other MC cultures, from a whole different 'continuum'.

interestingly, though, Geeneus DOES see grime and dubstep as part of the whole hardcore continuum: google my Fact interview with him if you're interested.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

bassnation

the abyss
yeah, there's clearly a lot of enthusiasm for jungle in grime, and it's certainly an influence (quite explicitly in goodz's MCing or in tubby and footsie's productions, say) but i wouldn't say it's the predominant influence on grime, which is where trying to fit grime into the hardcore continuum falls down.

early on in grime people like dizzee and wiley used to talk about their music as a UK version of dirty south hiphop (and then in 2004-5 grime was very clearly Dipset influenced); seeing grime through the lens of the hardcore continuum is interesting and and be valuable, but it skews things, because it misses out the massive influence of other MC cultures, from a whole different 'continuum'.

interestingly, though, Geeneus DOES see grime and dubstep as part of the whole hardcore continuum: google my Fact interview with him if you're interested.

thing is, hardcore was a fusion of all kinds of music - hip hop being as much an influence as house music, and in that way grime is similar. but hip hop these days is radically different to how it was in the early nineties and kids today have grown up with this monster, international nuanced genre.

yes, definitely interested in the interview - going to check it right now :)
 

nomos

Administrator
it's convenient shorthand but it misses a lot and it's been lazily overused as the basis for personal moans and grand generalizations
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
interestingly, though, Geeneus DOES see grime and dubstep as part of the whole hardcore continuum: google my Fact interview with him if you're interested.

Yes, and the thing is, the nuum isn't supposed to be exclusive - it's not meant to exclude hiphop from grime (or jungle... or garage... or house... or techno...) - quite the reverse! (Though I tend to see the whole nuum as essentially the story of how reggae got rooted in this country and mutated.)

The nuum-like evolution of the scenes from reggae and soul into everything else is easy to see and things like bassline house fit into that sequence. But using nuum theory to privelege bassline over grime is a misapplication of the theory...
 
Last edited:

bassnation

the abyss
Yes, and the thing is, the nuum isn't supposed to be exclusive - it's not meant to exclude hiphop from grime (or jungle... or garage... or house... or techno...) - quite the reverse! (Though I tend to see the whole nuum as essentially the story of how reggae got rooted in this country and mutated.)

The nuum-like evolution of the scenes from reggae and soul into everything else is easy to see and things like bassline house fit into that sequence. But using nuum theory to privelege bassline over grime is a misapplication of the theory, it's forcing the (fucking cunt) hipster's sneering dismissal of grime as being no longer "valuable / hot" into the theory...

... and yeah, there are plenty of people doing that. Plenty of people on this board who say "oh noone, literally noone, cares about grime any more". It's just hipster drivel.

And what makes it worse is certain critics who stopped listening to grime a few years ago and then rhetorically took their ball home with them, saying that because they were no longer listening to it, it was no longer any good. It's toss. grime in 2006 is not d&b in 1998.

Anyway they can all fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

i must have missed that - i know woebot and reynolds seem to get bored of it, but when i read this board its mostly enthusiasm - tempered with moans that the scene hasn't exploded but also wanting it to remain underground at the same time. personally speaking, i am still hearing loads of grime which excites me. i find it quite ravey - the bokbok blogariddims was amazing.

however, its kind of laughable, not to mention somewhat embaressing to see hipsters scramble to jump on board the bassline thing. theres a real feeling of desperation, they might have missed the boat - quick, lets fit it into the theory so its all complete, everything in its place.

i like bassline, but its neither new, nor innovative - not that theres anything wrong with that. its speed garage frozen in time, when the north decided they liked garage as it was then rather than the way it went with 2-step. god, you remember, dj richard on ukdance about six years ago uploading sets and sets of the stuff. its good house music with a uk twist - but how fucking late is that, that they only just noticed it? tsk. this is why its best not to write off apparently commercial dance scenes, or even underground ones like grime. and also why does everything have to be binary and in opposition?

i guess polemic isn't interesting when theres harmony, male vs female, class vs class, black vs white. usually hipsters getting involved means a lot of heat and light until it fails to deliver the revolution they wanted, or they get bored, or something new comes along. i still love reading it, but this cycle is predictable to say the least.
 

Clubberlang

Well-known member
It was always a stupid myopic way of looking at (UK dance) music and only got stupider post-jungle as people tried to stuff an increasingly diverse array of genres in to no avail. It would be nice if people would shut up about it, but I doubt we've heard the last of nuum talk (as that annoying FACT article demonstrates.)
 
i like bassline, but its neither new, nor innovative - not that theres anything wrong with that. its speed garage frozen in time, when the north decided they liked garage as it was then rather than the way it went with 2-step.

Theory doesn't completely work, especially as a lot of the places Niche is big in were Hard House strongholds, really. Lisa Lashes and all them lot used to do a lot of business oop north, it was probably a good job I was doing so many tablets at the time.
Can't deny garage isn't an influence but it's not the only one.
 

Ach!

Turd on the Run
I don't consider it to be completely irrelevent. Each 'continuum scene' (scenes that I would argue are, at least initially, centred around a multicultural London working class audience) has had a large social relation to the last one - by this I'm talking about the audience, and the fact that influential DJs, producers, MCs, radio stations etc involved in the 'next new thing' were involved in the scene that came before it. People seem to accept this as far as hardcore >> jungle >> dnb goes, but the same is true for jungle >> ukg. There were a huge amount of people not only involved in the jungle scene, but also in hardcore (Timmi Magic, Ramsey & Fen, Madness KMA, Chris Mac, Steve Gurley, Grant Nelson - all pioneers in ukg, all heavily involved in the jungle and hardcore scenes preceeding).
The same is the case with grime: old crews like OO Squad (have tapes of them on Heat from 2001 all MCing over 'normal' ukg), Jammer ('been in this since 92'), Riko (spitting on jungle on stations such as Rude FM and Rinse), Wiley/Target/Geeneus involved in jungle and ukg, Terror Danjah (dnb dj). There are actual links to be traced, it's not just looking at the actual sound and making tenuous associations, it's relevant on a social level, relevant because of the people involved.
 
Last edited:
Top