that articles was OTTOTOTTOOOTOOTTTOTTTOTOTOOOTOTOOOTTTT hahaha.
Funky/London/UK House
that articles was OTTOTOTTOOOTOOTTTOTTTOTOTOOOTOTOOOTTTT hahaha.
I don't think it reads as tongue in cheek at all. This is six pages of clearly sincere hyperbole. Nothing wrong with that per se.
I think there's a bit of a tendency with FACT to get a bit "everything's connected OMG do you see!! This DJ we like this week is like a fractal vector of cold wave primitive synth shocks transmuted through Wiley's cerebral cortex and beamed straight onto the back of Omar-S's retinas!!!!" It's kinda cute but overdone; ironically it reminds me a bit of k-punk on music.
I'm never sure exactly how this relates to their tendency to overrate liminal figures - like, which is the cause and which is the effect?
OTOH I am downloading the Jam City mix now so undeniably this kind of thing works on some level.
Fact almost seems to have a standard line w/r/t funky, to whit "Oh yeah, funky, we really like the idea of it as the nominal centre of our uk bass raison d'etre, but, well, there's not actually a whole heap that we like, so try this instead." :-/ Or maybe this is just the same guy writing this stuff.
nah, it's quite knowing -- I think it’s pretty aware of its status as part of the cyclical nature of internet hype in a ‘this is the best thing in the world this month’ sense. Like I know kiran, and I know he fucking loves jam city’s music (he‘s not the only one; there was loads of chat surrounding his productions at nail the cross last weekend from various folk), but the ’last ten years’ chat I’m sure is meant to be taken with a slight pinch of salt.
Like who? More cos I’m curious. Re: the drawing links thing, I personally think now more than ever, the boundaries between all forms of dance music are totally blurred, and there are a lot of amazing producers and djs who are defined by the way they draw in all sorts of influences from all over the place, stylistically and geographically. I don’t think that’s really controversial, is it? We’re far from the only people who say that. If it’s said too much, maybe that’s a problem, but there’s loads of people writing this stuff so it’s hard to monitor. it's individual opinions rather than a collective fact one.
Yeah, but when you look at it from a magazine’s perspective, as opposed to a blog, how do you write about funky? You can write about its stylistic developments, which we try to do, but if you focus on that every month it gets tired. You can review its releases, which we try to do, but there’s not that many that people would even click on, and when you’re dealing with an international audience it’s a bit unfair on them to review funky must haves vol. 3 or whatever. so inevitably you have to review the bigger releases -- which right now are from roska, cooly etc, who i guess are the people you mean when you talk about "this instead"?
it's the same reason it's not that easy to write about grime for a magazine -- so many of the scene's major developments are the result of raves and radio sets rather than releases, but you can't cover all those or yr alienating 90% if not more of yr audience.
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four pages not six, you weasel.
[q]Like who? More cos I’m curious. Re: the drawing links thing, I personally think now more than ever, the boundaries between all forms of dance music are totally blurred, and there are a lot of amazing producers and djs who are defined by the way they draw in all sorts of influences from all over the place, stylistically and geographically. I don’t think that’s really controversial, is it?[/q]
No it's not controversial - this was my point, though expressed glibly, like, is it an aesthetic that ends up privileging these kinds of blurred-aesthetic producers and djs, or is it simply that checking for those producers and djs, of which there are currently heaps, creates the mindset? Of course usually that sort of thing is very chicken and egg.
I was thinking of yr Bok Boks, yr Brackles, yr Cooly Gs, yr Actresses, yr Ramadanmans, yr Joy Orbisons, yr Scubas, yr Shackletons, yr T++s, yr Cassys, yr every wonky artist ever pretty much - like, the back catalogue of Fact Podcast artists basically!
Nothing wrong with any of these guys and ladies but there's a definite sense that the "x colliding with y while looking at z" narrative is in the ascendant right now, and that Fact, as a conglomerate of individual writers ('cos it'd be too hard to assert simply at an editorial level), tends to gravitate towards pushing this narrative and artists who fit within it. A lot of it too - and the Jam City article is a really good example of this - is perhaps a result of these artists making such good interview subjects: they usually have interesting and varied record collections and thoughtful opinions about "the state of music".
Re writing about funky for a magazine, I know what you mean - it's not like i'm busting out funky track reviews on pitchfork all the time. I just find it unusual how funky is so consistently pushed as this really positive and exciting thing in general but then not kinda talked about specifically very much. As if - and I don't think this is intentional - the value of the scene to the writer(s) is more structural than anything else, as a kind of alibi for the continued vitality/centrality of "uk bass" dance music.
No it's not controversial - this was my point, though expressed glibly, like, is it an aesthetic that ends up privileging these kinds of blurred-aesthetic producers and djs, or is it simply that checking for those producers and djs, of which there are currently heaps, creates the mindset? Of course usually that sort of thing is very chicken and egg.
I was thinking of yr Bok Boks, yr Brackles, yr Cooly Gs, yr Actresses, yr Ramadanmans, yr Joy Orbisons, yr Scubas, yr Shackletons, yr T++s, yr Cassys, yr every wonky artist ever pretty much - like, the back catalogue of Fact Podcast artists basically!
Nothing wrong with any of these guys and ladies but there's a definite sense that the "x colliding with y while looking at z" narrative is in the ascendant right now, and that Fact, as a conglomerate of individual writers ('cos it'd be too hard to assert simply at an editorial level), tends to gravitate towards pushing this narrative and artists who fit within it. A lot of it too - and the Jam City article is a really good example of this - is perhaps a result of these artists making such good interview subjects: they usually have interesting and varied record collections and thoughtful opinions about "the state of music".
Re writing about funky for a magazine, I know what you mean - it's not like i'm busting out funky track reviews on pitchfork all the time. I just find it unusual how funky is so consistently pushed as this really positive and exciting thing in general but then not kinda talked about specifically very much. As if - and I don't think this is intentional - the value of the scene to the writer(s) is more structural than anything else, as a kind of alibi for the continued vitality/centrality of "uk bass" dance music.
I think if anything you're underselling the extent to which fact is very good at consistently pushing obscure web only dj mixes, digging up limited release obscurities, chronicling "road to damascus" moments in club sets (though, ha, i sort of think of this as a post-Blackdown tendency! Not the first to do it perhaps, but the most successful in convincing people that that one DJ playing that one track on that one night at that one club is in fact a worldchanging (and needless to say game-changing) event).
The bigger issue that you allude to - and not one I expect fact to solve - is that the entire structure of funky (and to a lesser extent grime) as a scene doesn't tend to lend itself towards the kind of quasi-indie artifact fetishism that does characterise, um, "post-dubstep" and its fellow travellers. You don't get that many trainspotters in funky, for example (aside from me), and posting a dj set on a myspace page feels qualitatively and quantitatively different in "event" terms to having your mix hosted on lower end spasms. i.e. it's the "would the readers even click on the link" factor which is the biggest issue here I think.
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Excuse me talking like a stuck record, but..
Tim, we've had this conversation a few times before, and I can def appreciate where you're coming from, but when you say that:
there's just so many names there (and we could easily both think of more still) that it becomes hard to see it just as the constructed narrative of journalists/other writers with a particular agenda to push, it seems that it must be an objective trend in the music itself. The size of it by this stage also means, I think, that you can't really conceptualise it just in term of individual artists who want to distance themselves from a scene and draw on different influences to create a sort of personal, auteurist project. That may be how it started, at least for some, and obv there are still artists who see themselves in those terms (e.g. Cooly G, and of course it's her perogarative to do so if that's what she wants), but by now I think it would be more accurate to see 'post-garage'/ 'uk bass' or whatever as its own scene, with its own conventions, structures, sense of progression. I'd prefer to see it not as individuals here and there taking themselves off into some isolated ivory tower, but as a whole of bunch of people from different (but related) musical backgrounds coming together and trading off each other - and that goes for audience as well as producers, definitely.
Tim, we've had this conversation a few times before, and I can def appreciate where you're coming from, but when you say that:
there's just so many names there (and we could easily both think of more still) that it becomes hard to see it just as the constructed narrative of journalists/other writers with a particular agenda to push, it seems that it must be an objective trend in the music itself. The size of it by this stage also means, I think, that you can't really conceptualise it just in term of individual artists who want to distance themselves from a scene and draw on different influences to create a sort of personal, auteurist project. That may be how it started, at least for some, and obv there are still artists who see themselves in those terms (e.g. Cooly G, and of course it's her perogarative to do so if that's what she wants), but by now I think it would be more accurate to see 'post-garage'/ 'uk bass' or whatever as its own scene, with its own conventions, structures, sense of progression. I'd prefer to see it not as individuals here and there taking themselves off into some isolated ivory tower, but as a whole of bunch of people from different (but related) musical backgrounds coming together and trading off each other - and that goes for audience as well as producers, definitely.
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
This, however, is spot on I think. I often find myself, without really meaning to, treating a mix like a sort of surrogate album, assessing it as a conceptual whole where the exact structure of which tune goes where plus the larger ebbs and flows are of crucial importance (and I find myself doing this not just with recorded mixes done for cd or download, but recordings of radio sets, club sets etc). It's a tricky issue because obviously there is a real art to putting a good mix together, it's something people put a lot of effort into, and there's also that point you were mentioning in relation to Blackdown that the structure of a mix plus which tunes are selected or not selected can play an important part in how a scene develops. But I guess the problem lies in treating each mix as an isolated, self-contained object, rather than something that takes its meaning from a wider context of other mixes, productions etc.
Moving past the fact that using one data point as a rule as well as using a proper noun as a plural ( "you know, yr Sun Ra's" er NO! Sun Ra was an exception not a rule!) is wildly frustrating, isn't this just the mechanics of journalism, as the angle isn't just 'any producer within a scene' but 'newsflash: look how this music transcends these scenes.' And why is there so much of this about? because the internet is lowering the barrier to access?
isn't this exactly what Simon's always talking about with his CENTRIPETAL versus CENTRIFUGAL ideas, that nuum scenes are mostly collections of ideas not auturs, so that you can more easily write about the scene in general than many, delocalised contributors who have less of an individual 'story' for the press individually.
oh and what a dj/track/night it was!!!
seriously though, it probably was more valid in dubstep n grime when there was only one dubstep club for 5 years (FWD) and only one grime club that mattered (Sidewinder).
Actually Andy I agree with you to a large extent, hence using the phrase "liminal" - as in, on the border or threshold - rather than, I dunno, auteurist.
e.g. Night Slugs = liminal but not auteurist.
I don't think you could say it's a "scene" though - you could get from each of the artists in my list to any of the others in about three steps, sure, but it's more like overlapping circles of awareness of influence. You could definitely call it a sensibility.
And I never said that any of this is just in the imagination of fact's writers. I think I was asking a slightly more limited and ultimately throwaway question upthread about what the writers clicked with first.
e.g. Night Slugs = liminal but not auteurist.
I don't think you could say it's a "scene" though - you could get from each of the artists in my list to any of the others in about three steps, sure, but it's more like overlapping circles of awareness of influence. You could definitely call it a sensibility.
And I never said that any of this is just in the imagination of fact's writers. I think I was asking a slightly more limited and ultimately throwaway question upthread about what the writers clicked with first.
Sure, but you don't think the tendency is particularly strong within the kind of journalism that fact exemplifies?
It's a very UK thing as well I suspect. Compare/contrast with the way in which european house and techno producers are written about by and large. One of the reasons so many artists had to start chanting "we were never minimal" is that journalists were so eager to write about the artists qua scene-standard-bearers.
Also, to be mildly snarky, when you've now got so many producers "transcending" the same music (namely: dubstep, basic channel, detroit, deep house) why is that more exciting?
Yes but Simon also talked about nuum scenes as collections of tracks - you could never say he shied away from trying to promote individual moments of scenius-glory. No-one (except me) is gonna do long profiles on Scotty D, say, but I'd like to think "The Sound" might get a track review somewhere.
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Oh yeah, there have certainly been a lot of writers and commentators who were vocally wanting/waiting for something like this to develop, I wouldn't dispute that. I reckon the best way to think about it is as one of those cases where there was a really nice symmetry between what journos/heads were looking for and what people out there were actually making/playing/listening to/dancing to (maybe a similar thing has happend with UKF itself?). Which does leave it in a bit of a 'chicken and egg' scenario, as you say. In some cases, there might also have been an acutal influence of the ideas of writers/critics on producers, though only in a few cases I'd say, and probably somewhat indirectly.
I like the idea of 'overlapping circles of awareness of influence' too btw, reckon a person could draw some very nice post-garage Venn diagrams if they were so inclined.
jackmaster
time, space, transmat
The label i run with a couple of mates is about to release a new record with a wicked Roska mix. You can check it out and pre order here:
http://wireblock.com/
http://wireblock.com/
slackk
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eh? MJ Cole was making UKG-artcore-ish DNB. Seiji was making dark funky dnb.. Mack 10 and Marcus Nasty were 2 of the the top Grime DJs etc.
imo the fact that upheavals are so welcomed is great. but is switching to a slightly different quantize template really an upheaval? LDN has been at teh same bpm for at least 10 or 12 years