who's going out on sunday?

[xero]

it's like it needs to be mediated and approved by a middleman like rupture or rephlex b4 it's really properly embraced... anyone know what i mean?

know exactly what you mean, it was going through my mind when I saw Richard D James & Russell Haswell Djing at Herbal a few months back - they were basically playing a mix of hip hop, dancehall, R&B , detroit techno & drum & bass but everything was played on laptops through msp patches making it sound fucked up enough to be palatable to the inevitably rephlex-obsessive crowd who I am sure would not normally spend a night listening to the same kind of tracks un-processed. The strange thing was whilst the original beats would have made people move, the aphexed versions were curiously static leaving most people just standing around watching the spectacularly unspectacular spectacle of two blokes fiddling with their laptops

I ended up at plastic people last night where I suppose parrish is doing the same sort of thing, making disco palatable to techno-bods by eqing it & cutting it up, but at least people were dancing to it

 

[bassnation]

and i mean that with all due respect - i'll agree that the place is too big but i think we're all pretty lucky with the choices we have in london and people spend too much time trying to find something to *not enjoy* than they do throwing themselves into having fun and supporting good things.

i don't accept that in the case of fabric people are just trying to find something to moan about. if a club books good djs and has a responsible attitude to the amount of people they let in, i'll be the first to big it up. god knows there have been many great clubs, both in and out of london over the years, which i've supported.

but i can honestly say in the 15 or so years i've been clubbing, fabric has to be the worst experience. i can't believe the amount of shitty attitude i've experienced there and the wasted nights.

there are a lot of people who see fabric as one of the reasons why the whole (mainstream) dance thing went down the pan. and peoples experiences of the club which are almost uniformly crap, don't square with all the fawning media adulation heaped on it, which begs the overly cynical question of whom is getting paid and just how much.

in my opinion, just cos they've had a few grime nights, it doesn't absolve them from being shite.

 

[redcrescent]

what kevin martin does as the bug - to all intents and purposes making dancehall palatable to an avant/indie audience by a process of sonic *bleaching*... totally apt word that, what with the end result being chemical, brash, caustic and very, very pale

I respect your opinion, but I find The Bug quite good at what he does, to be honest - maybe not everything on Pressure but there's some class remixes and 12"s, and he definitely has the stronger side on the split EP with DJ /rupture.
Funny his take on dancehall should be critisized for being "palatable to an avant/indie audience", when dancehall is booming and invading every other form of MTV pop at the moment. 'Course it's not "authentic", but maybe it will inspire someone who wouldn't normally do so to go check out Jah Shaka, buy a few 7" pre-releases, find out that "dancehall" is in fact more than Sean Paul and delve into the incredible richness of JA music. Nuttin' wrong with that!

 

[mms]

no, it wasn't bad. the crowd was cool and i'm not being unpleasant about anyone there. i had a good time both musically and socially; nice atmosphere and i met several new people who i really enjoyed talking to.
what i'm getting at is that (and this is totally a personal perception, not by any means a concrete fact) among more avant-savvy circles, people tend to *like* dancehall/grime/etc quite a lot and are always interested when it gets played. the thing is that they don't necessarily make much of an effort to hear it on their own.... it's like it needs to be mediated and approved by a middleman like rupture or rephlex b4 it's really properly embraced... anyone know what i mean?
my theory is that this is because street musics like these are dangerously "pop" and thus something many people aren't quite comfortable with (as a side note, take for instance soca being recently "validated" by the damon albarn-funded comp on honest john's or what kevin martin does as the bug - to all intents and purposes making dancehall palatable to an avant/indie audience by a process of sonic *bleaching*... totally apt word that, what with the end result being chemical, brash, caustic and very, very pale). so i'm not dissing anything other than the fact that it's a bit daft!

i think people listen t dancehall at hip hop nights etc and i think that dancehall, the less hardcore end anyway is a part of r and b hip hop clubbing.
i don't think k martin etc bleach it, it's just not dancehall per'se i just think they are doing their own thing with the genre, the bug has infested dancehall.
i think people do buy grime and play it from those kinda areas, they might need some priming as the music is well underground but that's ok.
not everyone can be hip to every thing all the time like,

 

[stelfox]

kevin martin seems like a very nice man and i don't want this to become in any way a personal thing, but for this listener his music sucks. it's not that the bug is inauthentic, it's that *everything* he does follows the same principles of stripping all the pleasure, joy, and fun out of music i happen to really like. it's as though he doesn't understand melody, clarity or anything high-end and doesn't grasp the tension these elements can add to dancehall (cf leny and vendetta for great examples of this). instead he just gives it loads of testosterone-fuelled welly, clunk and murk, which far from being innovative is just pretty retrograde and dull. people say he really loves dancehall, but to me his productions sound clanging and fuzzy, like he's been listening to it with his head in a breadbin.

 

[mms]

know exactly what you mean, it was going through my mind when I saw Richard D James & Russell Haswell Djing at Herbal a few months back - they were basically playing a mix of hip hop, dancehall, R&B , detroit techno & drum & bass but everything was played on laptops through msp patches making it sound fucked up enough to be palatable to the inevitably rephlex-obsessive crowd who I am sure would not normally spend a night listening to the same kind of tracks un-processed. The strange thing was whilst the original beats would have made people move, the aphexed versions were curiously static leaving most people just standing around watching the spectacularly unspectacular spectacle of two blokes fiddling with their laptops

nah people who listen to aphex are well up on d and b and techno, hip hop for sure, dancehall too.
check out the planet mu board etc .
this technique is just what russell haswell does. he does it everytime he djs and it's really effective sometimes.
aphex usually plays that kinda music pretty straight. when he djs, but haswell is just mr noise.
his label or music has been doing interesting things with noise for years, way b4 mego etc .
he put out that gescom mini disc and that which is meant to be listened to at random. blah

people always watch afx when he's djing cos he's charasmatic .

 

[redcrescent]

I love Lenky and Vendetta, too, but I guess you either buy into The Bug or you don't, with little middle ground. And yes, he takes what are essentially feel-good party/bashment vibes into rougher, darker, more claustrophobic regions, with results you can or cannot appreciate. If you value crisp production, handclaps and a riddim you can hum, you obviously won't.
I find it sits quite well alongside dubstep/grime on one hand, ragga jungle and mashed up breakcore of the Soundmurderer/Enduser/DJ Rupture variety on the other, but that's just me.
Testosterone-fuelled? Plenty of that in the dancehall!

 

[stelfox]

well yeah but what i like about dancehall is the interplay between the sounds and the lyrics - the intricacy of the rhythm and the coarseness of the words etc... guess it is a case of liking the bug or not and it probably doesn't help that i hated techno animal, too.

 

[redcrescent]

I dunno any of the Techno Animal stuff. Kevin Martin seems to be quite a busy guy, though:
From the IPECAC site...
"Kevin Martin then:
Formed & disbanded God (working with John Zorn, Bill Laswell, AMM), joined & left Sonic Boom's EAR project (alongside ex-members of Spacemen 3 & Kevin Shields), recorded & produced Ice (which featured El-P, Anti Pop Consortium, Blixa Bargeld & DJ Vadim), & founded the Pathological label (releasing albums by Lydia Lunch, Casper/Peter Brotzmann, Zeni Geva & Ox Bow).
Kevin Martin now:
Releasing a ragga/dub album as The Bug (via Kid 606’s Tigerbeat6 in the USA & for Aphex Twin's Rephlex label in the UK), recording new Techno Animal material, & remixed DJ Vadim, Palace Brothers (Will Oldham), Sensational & Adrian Sherwood."

I've yet to hear the IPECAC album by The Curse of the Golden Vampire, with Justin Broadrick, another industrial/noise musician turned hardcore ragga producer who has put out original material and remixes as Tech Level 2.

... but I realize most people won't give two figs about this.

 

[xero]

nah people who listen to aphex are well up on d and b and techno, hip hop for sure, dancehall too.
check out the planet mu board etc .
this technique is just what russell haswell does. he does it everytime he djs and it's really effective sometimes.
aphex usually plays that kinda music pretty straight. when he djs, but haswell is just mr noise.
his label or music has been doing interesting things with noise for years, way b4 mego etc .
he put out that gescom mini disc and that which is meant to be listened to at random. blah

people always watch afx when he's djing cos he's charasmatic .

I just think some of the music James has produced, especially recently, is kind of parasitic on those genres whilst also attempting to take the piss out of them to a certain extent but without particularly adding anything interesting to them musically & this particular set epitomised that

 

[stelfox]

I just think some of the music James has produced, especially recently, is kind of parasitic on those genres whilst also attempting to take the piss out of them to a certain extent but without particularly adding anything interesting to them musically & this particular set epitomised that

absolutely straight on the nose...

 

[bassnation]

kevin martin seems like a very nice man and i don't want this to become in any way a personal thing, but for this listener his music sucks. it's not that the bug is inauthentic, it's that *everything* he does follows the same principles of stripping all the pleasure, joy, and fun out of music i happen to really like. it's as though he doesn't understand melody, clarity or anything high-end and doesn't grasp the tension these elements can add to dancehall (cf leny and vendetta for great examples of this). instead he just gives it loads of testosterone-fuelled welly, clunk and murk, which far from being innovative is just pretty retrograde and dull. people say he really loves dancehall, but to me his productions sound clanging and fuzzy, like he's been listening to it with his head in a breadbin.

interesting you should say that - when i first bought that bug lp, i loved it but curiously went off it very quickly indeed. i think you are bang on the money about the distortion and fuzz - although its kevin martin's trademark it doesn't make for good extended listening. even with people like daddy freddy on board it doesn't have the swing that "normal" dancehall has.

for what its worth, the only song i still listen to from the lp is the wayne lonesome tune "fuck y'self" for its sheer jungle-style nastiness. some of the techno animal stuff is quality too, but thats not really on a dancehall tip (although you can hear a lot of dub and reggae techniques going on even if its applied to slow-mo sheet metal tekno)

 

[matt b]

having seen mr martin play live/ dj last christmas, i have to say he absolutely ruled- 'flat beat' w/ dancehall accapella's into his brutal own productions etc- it works!

i get the sense that there is a search for an authenticity here that may not exist- i'm sure the east-end grime mc's think that grime nights in croydon are 'mediated' etc. does it really matter? couldn't dj/rupture be liked because a) he's a wicked dj and b) he plays a lot of styles that people are already aware of/ike, but bangs them all together ?



ps 'people always watch afx when he's djing cos he's charasmatic' no he's not! he's 'FAMOUS'

 

[stelfox]

i love rupture - i think he's one of the most interesting djs going and when east london grime boys only hold their raves in romford and places like that nowdays, i think that's a tricky hypothesis.

 

[redcrescent]

Incidentially, did anyone go to that Streetmusic Arabe thing at London's QEH recently? DJ /rupture/Nettle, Nass el Ghiwane, Clotaire K... I'd have liked to hear it (especially Nass e. G. and Rupture's DJ set).

@ matt b
The Bug is pretty awesome live (especially through a brutally good sound system like the one at Vienna's Flex club). Saw him with Tikiman/Paul St. Hilaire, so there was plenty of sweet crooning atop the sonic mayhem. And yes, dropping Mr. Oizo's "Flat Beat" early on in the set was certainly a moment to remember...

Oh, while on the topic of Vienna and dancehall-inspired electronica: Has anyone heard Stereotyp's My Sound album on G-Stone, Kruder & Dorfmeister's label? Some OK tracks on that (and Tikiman's on it, too!). Stereotyp has also been working with Al-Haca Soundsystem, with whom he's recently released Phase Three, with guest vocals from people like Lady Saw, Daddy Freddy... Here's a streamed studio mix so you can get an idea.
Warning: Dancehall purists abstain. You probably won't like this at all - but go ahead and prove me wrong!

 

[mms]

I just think some of the music James has produced, especially recently, is kind of parasitic on those genres whilst also attempting to take the piss out of them to a certain extent but without particularly adding anything interesting to them musically & this particular set epitomised that

i don't see that at all sorry.

and the whole arguement of purisim of "i love the music i love and can't believe someone who claims they love it would do this with it"
thing is frankly a rubbish arguement , not appreciating that some artists by default nature react with a form of music rather than add or subtract something to it is a common dead end.

 

[Kuma]

Oh, while on the topic of Vienna and dancehall-inspired electronica: Has anyone heard Stereotyp's My Sound album on G-Stone, Kruder & Dorfmeister's label? Some OK tracks on that (and Tikiman's on it, too!). Stereotyp has also been working with Al-Haca Soundsystem, with whom he's recently released Phase Three, with guest vocals from people like Lady Saw, Daddy Freddy... Here's a streamed studio mix so you can get an idea.
Warning: Dancehall purists abstain. You probably won't like this at all - but go ahead and prove me wrong!

Love it, Stereotyp can do no wrong for me as of late. Somne kinda half assed stuff on the album but when he's on, he's kills it.

Then again, I like to have my cake and eat it too, I love throwing on a a Lenky or Scatta production as much as I like one of the euro hybrids ala the Bug or Stereotyp. There's something to be said for traditionalism but at the same time, if you think it's runnin', it's runnin', no matter what.

 

[redcrescent]

There's something to be said for traditionalism but at the same time, but at the same time, if you think it's runnin', it's runnin', no matter what.

Damn right. You might be surprised what people in the dancehall are up for!

 

[mms]

Oh, while on the topic of Vienna and dancehall-inspired electronica: Has anyone heard Stereotyp's My Sound album on G-Stone, Kruder & Dorfmeister's label? Some OK tracks on that (and Tikiman's on it, too!). Stereotyp has also been working with Al-Haca Soundsystem, with whom he's recently released Phase Three, with guest vocals from people like Lady Saw, Daddy Freddy... Here's a streamed studio mix so you can get an idea.
Warning: Dancehall purists abstain. You probably won't like this at all - but go ahead and prove me wrong!

hmm cos dancehall's "pure " innit,... ha ha

 

[redcrescent]

hmm cos dancehall's "pure " innit,... ha ha

'Course not! But there's people who don't like when it strays too far from the template or gets too harsh (i.e. The Bug). They're probably not going to like Stereotyp's stuff, but telling them you think they probably won't might just rile them enough to want to check it out, y'know what I mean?