Ambient jungle = best dance music ever
- Thread starter michael
- Start date
0bleak
Well-known member
now I'm thinking of
of course - but there are things that make you want to dance
blissblogger
Well-known member
It certainly is
blissblogger
Well-known member
Respectfully, bollocks
It's like dancing inside a dream
Like dancing inside a painting
(I was going to say that "One and Only" is the Sistine Chapel of d&B just in terms of the scale and grandeur, but keeping it ambient-aligned, probably should say Monet's Water Lilies or Matisse's "Swimming Pool")
Hip cafes often have great music playing them in them. For sure that tends not to be Merzbow or No U Turn, as people are in there to relax, chat, read, do a bit of work. But the equation of pleasant-to-listen to with soporific or non-innovative is facile.
At any rate I doubt people picture hip cafes when they listen to this stuff - any more than when you listen to a '70s rock band you necessarily visualize the Marquee or Dingwalls. As the titles suggests - usually they reference the aquatic, the cosmic, the aerial, etc - the music invites Bachelard-style reveries of spaces and places.... forms of movement like ascension, floating, cruising, gliding etc etc.
The genius of it is that is contemplative but it's still physical and impactful. Ambient jungle is made to be played on big systems just like any jungle. The bass sounds like thunder.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
This is an interesting area cos I think the music of yesteryear which sounded like "the future" now sounds like an outdated (or at least clichéd) notion of the future. The Blade Runner aesthetic, or the metal machine music.
I disagree with you (or we just hear different things) on the "cafe/lounge" thing, the best of this stuff to me sounds if not otherworldly than transcendent, athearial...
I don't think it's the best dance music ever made (as if anyone could say anything is because it makes them dance but) -- I'd go with 2-step/garage and disco/boogie personally.
0bleak
Well-known member
I didn't say it was soporfic or non-innovative though.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
You said it lulls you to sleep
Some ppl on here (including me, I guess) prefer music that doesn't sound *entirely" electronic and uses samples (jungle, garage, hip hop, juke) but at least 2 thirds of the forum are autechre superfans so I don't think it's a majority by any means
Some ppl on here (including me, I guess) prefer music that doesn't sound *entirely" electronic and uses samples (jungle, garage, hip hop, juke) but at least 2 thirds of the forum are autechre superfans so I don't think it's a majority by any means
0bleak
Well-known member
I wonder if, for some people, once a sound becomes imprinted as being "future", it always stays with them as such.
Like, how many decades old is acid now, but for me, acid still sounds futuristic.
0bleak
Well-known member
"the music invites Bachelard-style reveries of spaces and places, and forms of movement like ascension, floating, cruising etc etc."
it sounds more like describing a ballet than something that makes you want to tear up the floor which kind of amuses me because I think something was said by simon about ebm keeping your feet stuck to the floor (don't remember the exact words I read) which I find equally bollocks
At most, that good looking tune makes me want to sort of sway (while keeping my feet on the floor - the amount of bass isn't, in itself, enough to give "lift"), while the versions of the tunes make me want really want to dance
it sounds more like describing a ballet than something that makes you want to tear up the floor which kind of amuses me because I think something was said by simon about ebm keeping your feet stuck to the floor (don't remember the exact words I read) which I find equally bollocks
At most, that good looking tune makes me want to sort of sway (while keeping my feet on the floor - the amount of bass isn't, in itself, enough to give "lift"), while the versions of the tunes make me want really want to dance
I think there's a potent future-nostalgia synthesis when a vision that grabbed you recedes into the past. Hangs over you like a dream. I still get a pang of excitement looking at a still from Alien or clips of the Terminator. I'm aware they're old, but they don't feel any less futuristic to me. The imagination factor's key. We've drones zipping all over the place, laser weapons, touchscreen phones, but they don't feel like "The Future" the way some tune or film from '98 does. They don't have the pull.
Part of it's down to contemporary depictions not feeling that distinct from the present. You look at some SF and the decor isn't far off a rich person's minimalist townhouse. The current vision's a dematerialised future. A sterile future. The older visions could be tactile and rugged. That's partly why they stick.
dilbert1
Well-known member
0bleak
Well-known member
Autechre, for the most part, is more of an avantgarde take on dance music (especially after the first few albums which even then weren't really "dance music" for the most part) rather than proper dance music, as far as as I am concerned.
I'm more focused on the collision of "proper" dance music with electronic sounds, and that seems to be where people don't like it, or are dismissive of it - that has been my bugbear for decades.
It's interesting because something a lot of people on this board, IIRC, are or were fans of footwork/juke - music that sounds like dry old school drum machine sounds, just at a faster tempo, and repetitive vocal samples - things that became outdated by the mid-80s, but once sounded like "the future".
OTOH, I think some people fetishize it and elevate it as having "soul" or something like that since it's made by black people.