rolling back to the future garage/post-dubstep/alt-funkstep/intelli-2step etc thread
- Thread starter gumdrops
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- air your grievances here! beardstep feminist sausagefest garage conversion i am a defender of simon reynolds' face i am skrillex insidious gentrification muppet show gallery post joe muggs' post pubstep time travel too many man transvestite vocals well i think it's still interesting wot do u call it uurrrban
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Whats all this about false binaries?
Don't particularly want this discussion to turn nasty, but you really did manage to make what is already boring music sound even more boring than it actually is. What you described sounded EXACTLY like IDM, only thats become such a negative term that you wouldn't dare say it.
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See: false binary.
You bundle all the stuff you don't like as THAT music, the OTHER stuff, the music against which your favourite styles are defined as harder, better, slicker, rougher, realer, more contemporary, more authentic or whatever.
It's a common tactic, and in some senses maybe it's necessary for scene cohesion - it's always nice to have a few diehard muppets defending to the death whichever sound they've latched onto, that passion drives a lot of people to do good things - but as an actual description of music it never stands up to examination.
the reason why current productions and dj sets are so eclecticly all over the place, is propably that in last 20-30 years developments have been so fast that people are still digesting these many genres. + you have the internet overflowing things.
yeah this is propably what happens. recently i'v thought that maybe i should just chill out (in terms of producing so intensively and worrying about current stuff not excatly being my type) and wait till this happens. kind of like waiting for that big wave on where you can surf
Amen, Gremino.
It's a time of flux. Some people, whether it's Butterz, Numbers, MJ Cole, Antisocial, Eglo, Hyperdub or whoever, are embracing the breakdown of genre boundaries, so it's a good time for them. Others prefer to be part of a definable scene, so maybe this is a time for them to regroup and wait for that next wave. Yet others would rather just sit around complaining that it's not like year X or scene Y, and that's cool too if that's what gets their groins moist.
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Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I will always stand by the opinion that the best dance music comes out scenes, I don't care. There isn't one idea in any of these post-dubstep guys tunes that hasn't been pinched from a hardcore scene. You even listed them in your article!
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
So fucking pompous...
Just not true, and again the false binary: hardcore vs non-hardcore. You're so keen to draw that magic line between the good-authentic-cool-hardcore and the false-weak-studenty-impure-non-hardcore, that everything you say is an act of drawing the line, rather than actually referring to the music.
I refute the existence of "post-dubstep" or any such grouping - things are too diverse and in flux for that right now. Like I said in the RBMA article, any of the current micro-genres or odd bits of terminology might or might not amount to something, but we just don't know currently. BUT that aside, if you want to look at artists like Africa Hitech, or Deadboy, or Mizz Beats, or Kavsrave, or Lunice, or Rustie, or Ras G - or indeed Gremino: yes, they certainly do openly borrow openly from "scene music". But they also borrow from all manner of other sources that have nothing to do with this "hardcore" which you cling on to, whether that's smooth jazz, ambient, pop or nerdy electronica. And you know what? It sounds good.
No mate, just ribbing you.
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
I don't have a journalistic leg to stand on or anything like that, but Joe Muggs defended Enter Shikari adopting wobble dubstep to their sound to me once, so I can't appreciate his opinions...
Can we even be really sure that there will be another definable scene? Now that the internet means we are all open to so much music/ideas/philosophies ect.
I don't know if I can imagine there being such a epicenter as there has been in the past whether its detroit, croydon, chicago or whatever. Everything seems so open...
I don't know if I can imagine there being such a epicenter as there has been in the past whether its detroit, croydon, chicago or whatever. Everything seems so open...
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Not got much more that I can add to this debate, but thought this was interesting post that prob contains a good deal of truth.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
My feeling is that this 'flux' music or whatever you want to call it is a lot more homogenous than you're trying to make out. Pretty much all the people you mention have high production values and an air of sophistication about them, with watered down ideas taken from other genres, whether they're using a 2step beat or a funky beat or a wonky hip hop beat or whatever underneath. Lots of boring house and techno elements. They mostly just seem to lack a certain something thats difficult to define, but you could just say vibe I suppose.
Taking a lot of these ideas away from a rooted, 'scene' context and mixing them together can make for nice sounding music, but I rarely get the same buzz I do from say, a proper grime track by Wiley for example.
And I reserve the right to make value judgements comparing hardcore scenes to post-whateva-u-call-it, because sometimes these lines really do exist, whatever you might say, and I have strong opinions about music.
If a lot of this sounds like I'm just repeating what Simon Reynolds says, well, thats because on this issue I pretty much agree with him!
Taking a lot of these ideas away from a rooted, 'scene' context and mixing them together can make for nice sounding music, but I rarely get the same buzz I do from say, a proper grime track by Wiley for example.
And I reserve the right to make value judgements comparing hardcore scenes to post-whateva-u-call-it, because sometimes these lines really do exist, whatever you might say, and I have strong opinions about music.
If a lot of this sounds like I'm just repeating what Simon Reynolds says, well, thats because on this issue I pretty much agree with him!
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Also it occurred to me while have a chat about it the other night that I don't really have a problem with 'post-dubstep' as a name for what we're discussing here. Not post-dubstep in the sense of it all sounding notably like dubstep (some of it does, a lot of it doesn't) and def not in the sense of it having replaced dubstep and actual 140bpm stuff being dead or old hat now (which I think why some people are bothered by the term) but post-dubstep in the sense of dubstep being where this music has come from in terms of the people involved and the development of the scene.
Dubstep seems to me to be the starting point for this music in a similar way to how punk was the starting point for post-punk, which then went in all kind of different musical directions. It's striking to me that when I've read interviews with almost any of the producers mentioned in this thread and in discussions of this current music generally (as well as a fair number of the djs, promoters, journalists, bloggers etc closely involved in it) they've talked about dubstep being what they were into prior to what they are doing now.
Even for those who never made dubstep themselves, dubstep was what they followed as fans and punters when they were first getting into club music and what inspired them to start making music themselves (nights at FWD around the mid-00s seem to have been a particularly important formative experience that are mentioned time and time again in interviews with the new producers). It's this shared background that to me groups together a scene that otherwise, as people have been saying, is musically diverse and quite geographically dispersed (though it does still have 'hub points' I reckon).
(There seems to be a sense also, again discussed upthread, that a reaction against wobble/brostep has influenced the development of the music, which again ties it back to dubstep. I kind of agree with this, but don't think anti-brostep is the only thing going on).
Dubstep seems to me to be the starting point for this music in a similar way to how punk was the starting point for post-punk, which then went in all kind of different musical directions. It's striking to me that when I've read interviews with almost any of the producers mentioned in this thread and in discussions of this current music generally (as well as a fair number of the djs, promoters, journalists, bloggers etc closely involved in it) they've talked about dubstep being what they were into prior to what they are doing now.
Even for those who never made dubstep themselves, dubstep was what they followed as fans and punters when they were first getting into club music and what inspired them to start making music themselves (nights at FWD around the mid-00s seem to have been a particularly important formative experience that are mentioned time and time again in interviews with the new producers). It's this shared background that to me groups together a scene that otherwise, as people have been saying, is musically diverse and quite geographically dispersed (though it does still have 'hub points' I reckon).
(There seems to be a sense also, again discussed upthread, that a reaction against wobble/brostep has influenced the development of the music, which again ties it back to dubstep. I kind of agree with this, but don't think anti-brostep is the only thing going on).
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Yeah, post-dubstep is as good a term as any I suppose, seeing as most of the producers discussed in this thread have come out of dubstep. It doesn't half get peoples' backs up though doesn't it?
Well that's a far clearer explanation - but why would you want "the same buzz"? Different sounds = different buzzes. Nothing wrong with that. If you like raw music, buy raw music and go to club nights that only play raw music.
Disagree it's about production value though - I'd say, for example, that Terror Danjah or Geenues are every bit as sophisticated producers as Kavsrave or Ras G... but in this hardcore/non-hardcore binary worldview, TD has to be defined as "raw" (and real/authentic/hardcore/blahblahblah). You couldn't have a higher production value than DJ Krust - is he non-hardcore? Because as soon as you start believing in this binary thing, the question has to arise - where do you draw the line? What side of this magical line between hardcore and non-hardcore, scene and non-scene does someone like, for example, Silkie come? He has high production values, jazz influences, variable tempos etc... very much in this supposed "post-dubstep" sound area that you describe - but he's rooted in grime, he's got the ties to DMZ and Rinse etc, and, crucially, his tracks are fucking heavy... would you say he is "in" or "out" of the hardcore?
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Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Agreed!
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Well it all depends on how you use these high production values. Terror Danjah's stuff still has that road vibe about it because thats the scene he's come out of, the street vibe is embedded in it still. It is still Grime through and through (at least his older stuff anyway). Someone like Kavsrave or Joy Orbison doesn't really have this behind them and to me, the music is less powerful as a result.
Leaving aside the fact that you sidestepped my question about Silkie and dropped in Joy Orbison instead, for some reason....... I'm with Kodwo Eshun on the use of "street" as a description of music or culture.
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