Futurism's overrated

[Corpsey]

I always figure that jungle came out of b-boy culture, makes me wonder if hip-hop had some sort of futurist slant that caused the jungle guys to follow suit - but it must have been detroit techno (with its kraftwerk influence)/electro moreso than hip-hop, cybotron and all that

 

[Corpsey]

Futurism in the sci-fi/blade runner sense seems an odd target in 2019, since outside of a few outliers like Keudo it's actually a relic of sorts, innit?

I thought this would be more about the idea of 'pushing things forward'

 

[sadmanbarty]

no, I knew barty's contradictions would come out. u can't post some of the most futuristic cyborg garage and call it the now in contradistinction to grooverider.

If you wanted to make that point you'd have to post something from nicenripe circa 1995.

I’ve taken the year 1997 (it could of been any year) from which I’ve picked music. one pick is explicitly futurist and the other to my knowledge isn’t.

The dem 2 track does nothing to situate itself as futurism. It’s about Now. It’s about us garage and Timbaland abs making something that’ll get played on the pirates and at clubs.

As you’ve acknowledged The nowist music was more innovative. It’s telling that you described the nowist track as cyborg and not the album that literally features an artist called cybotron.


2005- kode9 memories of the future album vs grime

1972- on the corner vs space is the place

Think about that. On the corner was entirely about being hip and now. Bugger all about the future.

 

[luka]

Bartys heart wasn't really in this last night, he just felt obliged to stir something up cos I was complaining about being bored, which is sweet of him, but he's not really my careworker, he's my mate.
But let's say we were to articulate the implicit but unspoken structure of the argument.

The starting point is this previously expressed scorn for the Bladerunner crew, which I share, and encompasses metalheadz, hyperdub, all of post-dubstep etc. Fine, not everyone will agree that this is bad music, corny music, and at that point there is a potential impasse, and the danger of throwing youtubes at each other as though they contained inarguable and eternal truths. So let's not do that.

But let's at least agree that there is a danger there. I think this danger can be summed up by an extract from Neuromancer I quoted to Barty the other day

"The Zionite was smiling, his head bobbing to a rhythm Case couldn't hear. A pair of thin yellow leads ran from his ears to a side pocket in his sleeveless jacket.

'Dub, mon,' Maelcum said.
'You're fucking crazy" Case told him
'Hear okay, mon. Righteous dub.',

That is the genesis of kode 9.

 

[luka]

dance music which fails to foreground the Dance, which becomes an attempt to soundtrack the Jetsons (or Fritz Langs Metropolis' or whatever) which neglects it's social function (as music to dance to, have a night out to, go nuts on drugs to, chase girls/boys to etc)

 

[sadmanbarty]

I’ll be honest, when I made this thread I thought I was being dissengenuous. I though “I love innovation so of course I love futurism”. But having pulled the now vs future thing out my ass, I believe it. Nowism produces innovation, futurism doesn’t.

 

[luka]

Now you can have dance music which does fulfil its social function but has no futurist impulse, there's plenty of examples, deep tech and bassline Spring to mind, which exist in a kind of stasis without that underlying logic of progression, the engineering race. This is the other other danger, so you're having to steer a course between these two things

 

[luka]

Another strand of the argument is that the stock tropes of science fiction are by this point not futuristic but belong to the distant past. So they become retro-futures, not visions of tomorrow at all, but evocations of Barbarella, Battlestar Galactica, or, at the middlebrow end, 2001 a space odyssey and Bladerunner.

So one question might be, how do we imagine a future which is not a sci-if future, space opera or dystopia.

 

[luka]

The other issue you have now, which is inescapable, is that the act of making music , the process, is now inherently nerdy.

 

[luka]

It's some kind of advanced spreadsheet management, so that the days of musicians being cool (vocalists aside) has gone for good.

 

[luka]

futurism as a political platform always ends in genocide.

Sometimes we need to streamline the gene-pool

 

[sadmanbarty]

Outside of music, when was the last new future presented to us in art?

 

[Corpsey]

Another strand of the argument is that the stock tropes of science fiction are by this point not futuristic but belong to the distant past. So they become retro-futures, not visions of tomorrow at all, but evocations of Barbarella, Battlestar Galactica, or, at the middlebrow end, 2001 a space odyssey and Bladerunner.

So one question might be, how do we imagine a future which is not a sci-if future, space opera or dystopia.

Yeah but (practically) NOBODY IS DOING THIS!

Are they?

I think you're picking an argument with a strand of drum n bass that was doing the rounds about 20 years ago

 

[sadmanbarty]

Yeah but (practically) NOBODY IS DOING THIS!

Are they?

I think you're picking an argument with a strand of drum n bass that was doing the rounds about 20 years ago

That’s the whole point of dissensus

 

[droid]

Thing is, the argument is empirically wrong.

Metlaheadz is a good example. Check out the first 23 releases - apart from being mostly unimpeachable they barely fall into the bladerunner aesthetic at all. Wax doctor, Alex Reece, Peshay, Hidden Agenda... a mainly retro jazz influenced sound, and later with Source Direct, J Majik, Photek etc into a more experimental atmospheric vibe.

 

[luka]

Outside of music, when was the last new future presented to us in art?

Early 20th century broadly speaking, at least in terms of a movement.

 

[droid]

And even when the future was explicitly referenced "I bring you the future", "sound of the future"... these were not sci -fi panoramas, they were ruffneck, ramshackle hardcore or jump up. Light years away from cyborgs and spaceships.

 

[luka]

Thing is, the argument is empirically wrong.

Metlaheadz is a good example. Check out the first 23 releases - apart from being mostly unimpeachable they barely fall into the bladerunner aesthetic at all. Wax doctor, Alex Reece, Peshay, Hidden Agenda... a mainly retro jazz influenced sound, and later with Source Direct, J Majik, Photek etc into a more experimental atmospheric vibe.

Let's not get bogged down with facts please

 

[luka]

That goes for you too corpsey

 

[droid]

Which is why Corpsey's point is relevant. Not futurism as an aesthetic, but futurism as a core component of the scene itself. The idea of pushing into uncharted territories via constant innovation and change that permeated throughout the entire scene - and in that sense, Headz, jump up, jazz jungle, tech-step etc can be seen as anti-futurist, an attempt to embrace retro sophistication or to fetishise production - inherently reactionary and conservative moves that shut down the possibility streams, to slow down the future rush.