Skream's new vid

[massrock]

I think I've just repeated what a couple of other people said, which is nice, we agree.

Hmm, not sure how 'recession' / hard-times should translate into easy musical values. I'm not sure that's such a simple equation at all. I mean people want to party as always but ther's more than one way to party.

 

[massrock]

Re: Magnetic Man, wasn't Arthur Smith involved in some of the Daniel Beddingfield stuff? Or was that just remixes? I've got a 12" with Sounds Of Da Future mixes of Gotta Get Thru This. Those first few Magnetic Man tracks sounded really good at the time, quite startling.

 

[massrock]

What I find most depressing is that the tune was posted (and people had the opportunity to discuss it) months back in the Dubstep thread, yet it's some (much-derided) viral marketing horseshit that actually triggers most discussion about it.

Did some people express immediate dislike for it and Martin Blackdown said it went off every time they played it, or was that something else?

 

[massrock]

Blatant street teaming isn't quite the same as proper viral marketing. You have to respect a good piece of viral marketing. Maybe the McGuffin here is how embarrassing the video / making-of is. Clever!

 

[Sick Boy]

I can't accept this notion that has gained popularity ever since CD sales started to bottom out that since an artist has been making great music for so long with little financial reward he therefore somehow "deserves" the money made from a pandering, disingenuous tune cynically made in order to earn a better living. On the one hand we can bemoan the state of mainstream music as being held to a horribly low standard, and then on the other we can applaud when an otherwise more ambitious artist contributes to it in order to get a paycheque?

If this tune didn't have "Skream" written on the tin, then if it wasn't held in contempt by everybody here, it would've been invariably ignored. This "don't hate my hustle" rhetoric that is germinating in virtually every music culture is just plain ridiculous. We are talking about art here, for god's sake! Anyone who has ever got into art for the money has been sorely, sorely mislead.

 

[massrock]

Can you really say that the tune is disingenuous and cynical? What if he just enjoyed making it? There's any number of aims you can have as an artist and you don't have to stick with one. It's probably more that this has been picked by record company people as a single.

It is an achievement to make something with wide appeal. I agree it's not always a noble one but it's also a challenge and I think obviously something that people like to try and do sometimes, especially where they have reached a point where they feel it might be expected of them. It's craftsmanship I suppose.

And is it really the 'standards' of mainstream music that are low or is it more a case of values? I mean the standards by some measures are very high, that is the music and production achieves what it sets out to. And then you can have music of lower 'standards' in that sense that has 'higher' values. Like say Ancient Memories Remix. It's not going to win A Song for Europe.

I am playing devil's advocate to an extent here. But entryism (and it probably isn't even as cynical as that) is not always a bad thing. This was the big triumph of pop in the 80s wasn't it? Of course since then much actual big selling pop went and tipped over into almost complete marketing lead cynicism, which I think in large part is what has lead to the terrible devaluation of the idea of music and what it can be in terms of the mainstream.

 

[Sick Boy]

And is it really the 'standards' of mainstream music that are low or is it more a case of values? I mean the standards by some measures are very high, that is the music and production achieves what it sets out to. And then you can have music of lower 'standards' in that sense that has 'higher' values. Like say Ancient Memories Remix. It's not going to win A Song for Europe.

Yes, it is a case of values. In the same way that discussing politics, ethics or language is a case of values. But isn't the whole reason that we even bother spending the energy on debating any of these issues despite an apparent lack of metaphysical a priori objectivity to refer to is because we feel that political/ethical/aesthetic/linguistic standards are for something? If you submit to a disimpassioned all-permitting subjectivity and throw all criticism to the wind, we may as well close the 'Music' forum here, or at the very least we shouldn't have banned the original poster for advertising this video. After all, he would be participating in the only real discussion we could have about art and music anymore.

That Skream may have achieved excellence within the frame of what he set out to do doesn't necessitate that I agree with or endorse his intentions. And the possibility that Skream himself felt he made a work of value also has absolutely no bearing on whether I should feel the same way.

 

[Tentative Andy]

Yeah, I kind of agree with Massrock here - as much as I'm usually amongst the first to start making dubious claims about the ideological context of a tune, in this case I think too may people are acting like they know with absolute certainty the contents of what goes on in Skream's head.
I think it's clear from things that he's made in the past (and also iirc things that he's said in interviews and so forth) that he loves a lot of music in the jungle/hardcore tradition, and making this tune seems like his attempt to pay tribute to that tradition in a more explicit way than usual.
Yes, maybe he also had an inkling that it would be the sort of thing that would sell - it certainly seems that his record company did - but again, I don't think you can say with any certainty that it was the only motive. There's simply not enough evidence to claim that the tune is 'disingenuous' or whatever. (Disingenuous how, anyway? Does he really secretly hate all breakbeat music or something?).

 

[routes]

 

[Sick Boy]

It is an achievement to make something with wide appeal. I agree it's not always a noble one but it's also a challenge and I think obviously something that people like to try and do sometimes, especially where they have reached a point where they feel it might be expected of them. It's craftsmanship I suppose.

I should also point out that all you have really said here is that it is a challenge to make a song with wide appeal. It is also a challenge to make a song with depth, timelessness, originality, or soul. It is also a challenge for me to leave my house completely naked, balance with one foot on a single stilt on the middle of the freeway, juggle machetes and defecate on the windshieds of passing cars. As you mentioned, it's not always a noble pursuit.

Your second point adds a bit more to this point, but when you pursue it you are basically engaging in the kind of debates I think are necessary. Making these kinds of tunes is a challenge an artist should take on because it is expected by whom exactly? If you follow this line of questioning, you'll find we end up talking about a lot more things than Skream's ability to pay his rent.

 

[Tentative Andy]

Let's be honest with ourselves though, if a tune has to have 'depth, timelessness, originality or soul' to be valid, a good 60 - 70% of the music we regularly discuss here would be right out of the window already. Eff that.

Edit: ok, that was a bit flippant. But I do genuinely find depth and timelessness in particular to be real turn-offs when used to assess the value of a piece of music. They are not objective aesthetic values imo, they are particular subjective projects that some people pursue but some (most) others don't. That's not to say that there aren't or can't be an objective aesthetic values, it's just my view that if there are, they have to be ones that are a good deal more abstract than that. Originality and soul perhaps have more of a foothold, but again imo are prob best understood as metaphors for something less individualistic.

 

[Sick Boy]

Yeah, I kind of agree with Massrock here - as much as I'm usually amongst the first to start making dubious claims about the ideological context of a tune, in this case I think too may people are acting like they know with absolute certainty the contents of what goes on in Skream's head.
I think it's clear from things that he's made in the past (and also iirc things that he's said in interviews and so forth) that he loves a lot of music in the jungle/hardcore tradition, and making this tune seems like his attempt to pay tribute to that tradition in a more explicit way than usual.
Yes, maybe he also had an inkling that it would be the sort of thing that would sell - it certainly seems that his record company did - but again, I don't think you can say with any certainty that it was the only motive. There's simply not enough evidence to claim that the tune is 'disingenuous' or whatever. (Disingenuous how, anyway? Does he really secretly hate all breakbeat music or something?).

I will concede to this. It is only a guess based on the evidence that this is not the kind of music we have ever come to expect from him before, and that it is also a kind of music condusive to making a lot of money, and that dubstep isn't a particularly lucrative genre to operate in, and that Skream has a much greater chance now to put commercial tunes in the hands of people who will play them now, and that this will result in him making money his other works can't provide him.

However, if I'm wrong about his intentions it is still my position that this track isn't very good at all and that there is no good argument for why he would "deserve" the success it might entail purely based on the merits of previous, (and in my opinion) much better work. It's not "Midnight Request Line" that is a chart-entry, and it won't ever be if artists feel like in order to make status quo money they need to re-enforce the status quo as it currently stands. This criticism stands fully apart from the contents of Skream's head.

 

[Sick Boy]

Let's be honest with ourselves though, if a tune has to have 'depth, timelessness, originality or soul' to be valid, a good 60 - 70% of the music we regularly discuss here would be right out of the window already. Eff that.

I think you'd have a hard time convincing quite a few people of that.

 

[bobbin]

Can you really say that the tune is disingenuous and cynical? What if he just enjoyed making it? There's any number of aims you can have as an artist and you don't have to stick with one.

in this case I think too may people are acting like they know with absolute certainty the contents of what goes on in Skream's head.

agree! what bits and bobs i've picked up suggests he doesn't have what some of you would consider 'good' taste in music. it seems his taste is very catholic i don't see any reason to think he's being cynical rather than sincere as ever.

plus it's hardly the first time he's done a record i personally think is horrible, i mean what about that la roux mix!

it might be hard to square with him making music in the past that people consider perfectly tasteful, but there are quite a lot of great musicians out there who've got indiscriminate taste themselves!

Re: Magnetic Man, wasn't Arthur Smith involved in some of the Daniel Beddingfield stuff? Or was that just remixes? I've got a 12" with Sounds Of Da Future mixes of Gotta Get Thru This.

arthur smith was the engineer i believe. one of bedingfield's selling points as i remember was that he produced gotta get thru this in his bedroom, but in reality the version that came out was re-engineered. conversely arthur also did the grain records on fat cat, predated the notion of techno or idm kids picking up on garage by some margin. interesting bloke really!

 

[Tentative Andy]

what bits and bobs i've picked up suggests he doesn't have what some of you would consider 'good' taste in music.

This is an important point I reckon. Prob applies to quite a few producers too.

 

[massrock]

What are these qualities though? Where do you want to locate them and how do you define them? Where is the actual criticism? Doesn't it just come down you don't find much of interest in this track? Or what 'should' it have that it doesn't, what shouldn't it have that it does? And why? Really... Is it just snobbery. The tune is for the record really a bit of fluff for me. It might matter so much if it somehow represented the whole of music but it in no way does.

And for that matter should we (or rather musicians and people who like music) submit to all-permissive acceptance of critical approaches? I think not. It just doesn't work that way. Certainly not if they want actually make anything, it's bollocks isn't it. I'm sure it's fine to think about these things, but it's not really all there is or even anything like what comes first when making or responding to music. And we're talking about music for dancing to here.

As for 'challenges', to me it's not whether it's something an artist should or shouldn't do, but simply that it might be something they do or feel they want to do. Art isn't about should or shouldn't. If you're on the side of the artist, which I am, then those seem like really miserly concerns.

Yeah, lots more to pick apart. Not got time right now.

 

[massrock]

This track probably moves large rooms full of people. Are they having a substandard experience? Is it an existential lie that there isn't a 20 minute polyrhythmic percussion breakdown in the middle with Guatamalan schoolchildren chanting marxist slogans through vocoders over it? I'm prepared to accept that is the case actually.

 

[Sick Boy]

What are these qualities though? Where do you want to locate them and how do you define them? Where is the actual criticism? Doesn't it just come down you don't find much of interest in this track? Or what 'should' it have that it doesn't, what shouldn't it have that it does? And why? Really... Is it just snobbery?

... are all very good questions to ask when you have decided that:

should we (or rather musicians and people who like music) submit to all-permissive acceptance of critical approaches? I think not.

All I am saying is that congratulating Skream on making a commercially successful tune purely on the grounds that it is commercially successful and therefore personally beneficial to him is never going to begin to answer any of those questions you suggested. At that point we aren't really talking about art or music anymore. We're just describing an event.

 

[owengriffiths]

arthur smith was the engineer i believe. one of bedingfield's selling points as i remember was that he produced gotta get thru this in his bedroom, but in reality the version that came out was re-engineered. conversely arthur also did the grain records on fat cat, predated the notion of techno or idm kids picking up on garage by some margin. interesting bloke really!

The bedroom original of gotta get thru this was great though. It was like a R&B devil mix. It was on one of the Pure Garage Cd's. Then they ruined things by bringing out a cheesy verison for the charts.

 

[massrock]

The Sounds Of Da Future mixes are alright, similar sort of template to Ramp and Red with a bit of the vocal.