the (digital) hardcore continuum - no, seriously

[dilbert1]

Empire and Babalon go for a menacing sinister kind of thing but I like the objectively absurd and hilarious stuff, exaggerating the jungle beats and soundclash cliches, its sort of Shlovksyian, defamiliarized. Which means its not very nice to listen to, or suggests only a few listens will suffice to receive the intended effect.

 

[0bleak]

at any rate, my favorite producer was an american
they also did the best album:

 

[catalog]

I 4hink padraig us and thirdform are the ones who put me onto that Carl crack album which is so so good.

 

[dilbert1]

Never heard this, its sounding good. Is breakcore a pale shadow of jungle ok yeah probably, but there was some rationale, some aesthetic cleavage, regardless of whether we agree with it, in order to warrant a departure. And I’m interested in that initial moment. You won’t catch me driving around bumping Kid606 but once again I don’t need to be a convert who “champions” something to research and appreciate and in the right context even recommend something to others. What a ridiculous notion, what sad dogmatism

 

[thirdform]

But this is the part I like! Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not an ideological purist, and I don’t think of politics and aesthetics on the same register. I don’t need to approve of anyone’s thoughts to try and explore and enjoy this music and think about what their vision was, or “champion” something to see value in it.

This isn't about purism thogh. It's hectoring. depressing. Half of the original junglists are anti-vaccers and sympathetic to the tories. So? Their music doesn't lecture to you as if the apolitical music is stupid. It's condescending, way way worse than idm and the term 'intelligent jungle'. But yes, your proximity to punk subculture inhibits you from seeing this.

Now, this does deserve to be called liberal, since its ‘committed art’ and expressing a certain (post-)political petit-bourgeois radlib attitude. Frankly its a politics I particularly despise because of my personal proximity to late punk subculture. But expressing a politics explicitly in art is the gaudy thing, no matter if its bohemian black bloc brain fog or scientific council communism. I don’t go to art for good politics, and bad politics can coincide with great art.

And the shambling incompetence of punk undiscipline is great art? I don't think so! Beethoven's 9th is great art, even if I think it's overrought, overblown, and when he tries to develop melodic orchestral aspects like the scherzo of the 9th, it ends up sounding like nursury rhyme music. But what, pray tell, is great in making a virtue out of incompetence?
The rest of the word vomit about me valourising liberal post-politics I take as baseless slander.

As for the comparison with anime video game jungle, simply lazy smear.

DHR was contemporaneous with jungle/early dnb’s heyday, was nationally distinct, and fused the music they were importing with their own sensibility, birthing a whole new (if regrettable) style of music, breakcore.

No, what was nationally distinct were the various strands of glitch (MoM) german techno (W. Voigt and his Gas/love inc.) projects, force inc. In fact, the most nationally distinct producer from the DHR roster was Patric Cattani, and he never attempted to sound like jungle gotten wrong at all, but created a hyper accelerated and cheeky take on gabber and sample vandalism.

The latter online stuff is a nostalgic-amnesic, internet-enabled recapitulation of ambient jungle, misrecognizing itself as breakcore and misrecognizing jungle as the provenance of mass entertainment and corporate IP.

But that's exactly my point! The dhr boys misrecognised jungle as punk attitude, when it had more to do with the shirts and shoes soul scenes which then moved into house. And come 97, the balance was tilted back in this direction with the advent of distinctive UK garage.

I'm not even a soul or soulful house or rnb purist, I like quite a bit of music one would consider post-punk, noise rock etc. But we have to take the macro view.

 

[thirdform]

Never heard this, its sounding good. Is breakcore a pale shadow of jungle ok yeah probably, but there was some rationale, some aesthetic cleavage, regardless of whether we agree with it, in order to warrant a departure. And I’m interested in that initial moment. You won’t catch me driving around bumping Kid606 but once again I don’t need to be a convert who “champions” something to research and appreciate and in the right context even recommend something to others. What a ridiculous notion, what sad dogmatism

the sad dogmatism is that you wouldn't champion kid 606. He's fun!


Also I don't know why you are taking this as some kind of personal insult.I've merely listed my reasons for not liking Empire and De Babylon, it's not like you couldn't argue that the jungle I like isn't replete with misjudged signifiers of authenticity and sophistication and classiness for ultimately what is music for night clubs to make money. But the important thing as I can defend them, rather than taking it as a challenge to my values.

Another producer I like who misrecognised/misappropriated jungle was uwe schmidt/Atom TM. And again, he did it in a techno/acid context, so of course that would appeal to me.

Was it ultimately a lost future? Yes. Did it lead to some negative developments such as drill and bass? Sure. But the music stands up.

 

[thirdform]

Empire and Babalon go for a menacing sinister kind of thing

But when producers make techstep this is somehow negative and gauche? Isn't this just 90s amentalism nostalgia? I'm sick to death of jungle signifiers being conflated with amens. Yeah the drumfunk of people like Paradox, dgohn, and Macc is probably too sparce and self-referential for people who aren't committed, but they at least attempt to use different drum breaks.

but I like the objectively absurd and hilarious stuff, exaggerating the jungle beats and soundclash cliches, its sort of Shlovksyian, defamiliarized. Which means its not very nice to listen to, or suggests only a few listens will suffice to receive the intended effect.

Why does it have to be nice to listen to? and why can't one repeat the intended effect?

I precisely like the absurd end of breakcore because it takes jungle signifiers to a frighteningly logical conclusion. the zone of fruitless intensification is a plateau we can reach, non-stop robobumming as @luka and @sadmanbarty said

This from biochip c is fantastic, it's like 93 darkside on crystal meth.

 

[0bleak]

Never heard this, its sounding good.

If you like that davros album, check out his abelcain self-titled album from a few years earlier that I uploaded on my channel
That one isn't completely breakcore - also bits of hardcore techno.
I played those to death back in the day... eventually brought him out to play seattle many years ago.

 

[thirdform]

Let's just have this classic for the 100th time, not many UK hardcore/jungle producers could produce with this range of emotion..

Nah it's just a different type of emotional resonance

 

[dilbert1]

It's hectoring. depressing.

Its the second, pessimistic half of the 90s, its German, and its not dance music.

And the shambling incompetence of punk undiscipline is great art? I don't think so!

Ok great art, perhaps no. Perhaps my old man might say Burroughs did cut-ups to compensate for his incompetence as a real author, or kids sample records because they’re incompetent musicians, and we can disagree whether Burroughs or 90s hip-hop is “great art,” I don’t have a strong opinion there. But this Bomb20 for instance is significant because its symptomatic of broader social and cultural trends, reflective of this content through the formal means it employs. Its idiotic extremeness tells a story of a time and place. Perhaps not the music Y2K needed, but the “music” it deserved.

The rest of the word vomit about me valourising liberal post-politics I take as baseless slander

Third, this is a civil exchange, I don’t know how you got me accusing you of any such valorization, like really I am offended you would think I’d do that, we’ve had exchanges and I respect your Marxist bent and know you’re not a liberal. I was agreeing(!) with your characterization of the political impulse behind the music as base anarcho-liberal confusion. But that’s largely where the left were at in the 80s and 90s! So the project is expressing something historically real, in a distorted way, in a way it doesn’t know its doing because its so caught up in imagining itself as fighting the good fight, because its a cipher of its moment, not that moment’s overcoming. In content its basically like Rage Against the Machine or Dystopia, but a lot more interesting in its formal qualities. RAtM and Dystopia are stupid but they’re history and that history is our (leftists’) stupid, embarrassing, painful history!

But that's exactly my point! The dhr boys misrecognised jungle as punk attitude, when it had more to do with the shirts and shoes soul scenes which then moved into house.

Yeah they junked all that and made something new. The internet jungle imitates, reenacts, repeats real jungle in a confused and deficient way. The DHR boys have a different, more intentional and heretical logic of confusion. Equally as bastard? Maybe, but the only nostalgia you can accuse DHR of is not in artistic form but for New Left-era armed struggle and guerrilla warfare.

 

[dilbert1]

Why does it have to be nice to listen to? and why can't one repeat the intended effect?

It is excruciating talking with you sometimes. Where did I say it has to be nice to listen to? Why are you asking me that? Noisy breakcore is enjoyable but eats up listener stamina more quickly than jungle. See version’s fatigue at Scud. I don’t know man sometimes your responses are so oblique and divorced from anything I’ve argued it feels like you are arguing against someone else or some imagined position on your mental battlefield. I’ve expressed this before but I won’t be discouraged to keep interacting with you

 

[thirdform]

Its the second, pessimistic half of the 90s, its German, and its not dance music.

I like pessimism, and I like german. But dance music that isn't dance music? This is probably my stumbling block. Why not just go into full out musique concrete territory.

Third, this is a civil exchange, I don’t know how you got me accusing you of any such valorization, like really I am offended you would think I’d do that, we’ve had exchanges and I respect your Marxist bent and know you’re not a liberal. I was agreeing(!) with your characterization of the political impulse behind the music as base anarcho-liberal confusion. But that’s largely where the left were at in the 80s and 90s! So the project is expressing something historically real, in a distorted way, in a way it doesn’t know its doing because its so caught up in imagining itself as fighting the good fight, because its a cipher of its moment, not that moment’s overcoming. In content its basically like Rage Against the Machine or Dystopia, but a lot more interesting in its formal qualities. RAtM and Dystopia are stupid but they’re history and that history is our (leftists’) stupid, embarrassing, painful history!

firstly I agree to remove my sour tone. Secondly I'm not a leftist though, so it's not my history. The left wants to defend capitalism (socialist phraseology included) and thus has more in common with Rousseau's social contract theory and the general will. I'm not of that tradition and there is no reason why I need to pay lipservice to it. The accelerationists were onto something, in that capitalism is infinitely malleable, due to it being social relations of force, and hence all that is solid does ultimately melt into air. People ignore just how much constant revolution of the productive forces is the sine-qua-non of capitalism, obvious stuff I'm sure you know but my fatty liver disease is acting up so I'm being slow. Where the left accelerationists make the error is to presume conscious intervension, which merely validates overconsumption, and ultimately, the holocaust. In this sense, although Camatte gave up on the proletarian revolution in the '70s, what he did keep from his Marxist days was that the communist revolution is inherently decelerationist process.

There's also an additional, racialised aspect to this, which I don't want to dwell on so much, but as someone from a muslim background it is impossible in some senses to see myself as part of any leftist movement in Britain. Certainly I could become a labour party bureaucrat or an anarcho-hack, but it would mean I would have to deny my experiences and the experiences of those around me, in order to be accepted by the UK left's parochialism. So even from a cultural standpoint punk rock has been walled off to me, what I took from punk was the idea to kill rock and roll, but actually it turns out that isn't a punk attitude at all!

Yeah they junked all that and made something new. The internet jungle imitates, reenacts, repeats real jungle in a confused and deficient way. The DHR boys have a different, more intentional and heretical logic of confusion. Equally as bastard? Maybe, but the only nostalgia you can accuse DHR of is not in artistic form but for New Left-era armed struggle and guerrilla warfare.

Ok, fair enough, I take your point. But then I would argue that someone like Cattani truly created something new.

 

[dilbert1]

This from biochip c is fantastic, it's like 93 darkside on crystal meth.

Like this is excellent, amazing stuff. Incredible honestly. And i can see why you’re like, “if this is there why bother with that?” Its just apples and oranges to me. I like this tune because its a fantastic beat, its phenomenal music, not dully pragmatic but ornate and highly functional. Physical response is the principal response.

Bomb20? They don’t know their way around the kit. Nothing they’ve made will ever bring people together at a rave. No social utility can be rescued from their music or its image, its supposed to be corrosive to social bonds, an opportunity to differentiate oneself from one’s fellow man, a fantastical identification with social refuse. But rather than write a manifesto or commit a ‘beautiful’ direct action OR start another anti-social rock band, they turned to the tools of jungle. The outcome was awful, but delectably so, its failure opens a space for consideration.

 

[thirdform]

It is excruciating talking with you sometimes. Where did I say it has to be nice to listen to? Why are you asking me that? Noisy breakcore is enjoyable but eats up listener stamina more quickly than jungle. See version’s fatigue at Scud. I don’t know man sometimes your responses are so oblique and divorced from anything I’ve argued it feels like you are arguing against someone else or some imagined position on your mental battlefield. I’ve expressed this before but I won’t be discouraged to keep interacting with you

It is excruciating talking with you sometimes. Where did I say it has to be nice to listen to? Why are you asking me that? Noisy breakcore is enjoyable but eats up listener stamina more quickly than jungle. See version’s fatigue at Scud. I don’t know man sometimes your responses are so oblique and divorced from anything I’ve argued it feels like you are arguing against someone else or some imagined position on your mental battlefield. I’ve expressed this before but I won’t be discouraged to keep interacting with you

I don't understand @version - he's boomkatcore supreme. Scud is quite easy to listen to, someone like Masayuki Takayanagi and his noise jazz (which doesn't even really sound like jazz anymore) is far more intense, I can only take him in 40 minute bursts and then I want to listen to no more music for a while.

 

[thirdform]

Bomb20? They don’t know their way around the kit. Nothing they’ve made will ever bring people together at a rave. No social utility can be rescued from their music or its image, its supposed to be corrosive to social bonds, an opportunity to differentiate oneself from one’s fellow man, a fantastical identification with social refuse. But rather than write a manifesto or commit a ‘beautiful’ direct action OR start another anti-social rock band, they turned to the tools of jungle. The outcome was awful, but delectably so, its failure opens a space for consideration.

I'm more offended that Bomb20 ribbed on Alec for NFTs rather than the Anti-German ideology he has been propounding since the 90s. I mean, come on, it's so easy to laugh at an aging punk for getting into nfts. Even DBridge flirted with the idea and everyone cussed him out for it.

 

[thirdform]

anyway some more misappropriated breakbeat hardcore/jungle.

Thomas Heckmann in 92, absolutely mindmelting, wish more tunes like this were made, like taking acid in a cathedral. So dark

Played by Doc Scott on an Edge tape, otherwise can't think any other of the UK jocks picking it up.


Atom TM/Atom Heart, making a kind of acidic take on 93 style basement records jungle techno.


circuit bent analogue boxes twisting, red hot coiled wires and a great vertiginous effect like the rhythm track is going to come loose from the sequences.

 

[thirdform]

jungle tune from mannheim, one of the best darkside tunes and it's not even from the UK, hammered by Ratty. One to double up!

 

[dilbert1]

I'm not a leftist though, so it's not my history. The left wants to defend capitalism (socialist phraseology included) and thus has more in common with Rousseau's social contract theory and the general will. I'm not of that tradition and there is no reason why I need to pay lipservice to it.

There's also an additional, racialised aspect to this, which I don't want to dwell on so much, but as someone from a muslim background it is impossible in some senses to see myself as part of any leftist movement in Britain. Certainly I could become a labour party bureaucrat or an anarcho-hack, but it would mean I would have to deny my experiences and the experiences of those around me, in order to be accepted by the UK left's parochialism. So even from a cultural standpoint punk rock has been walled off to me, what I took from punk was the idea to kill rock and roll, but actually it turns out that isn't a punk attitude at all!

Have you read this piece by GM Tamas? https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5852/2748 If you have, know that I have too, so your point about the Rousseauian, non- or anti- Marxist nature of the left is well taken. There I didn’t mean the left as a sociological phenomenon, but as a historical category which yes, in its tradition is bourgeois, but that Marx took up and aimed to transcend as bourgeois. The left as constituted has almost always fallen below Marxism, and I hate the inevitably pro-capitalist romantic anti-capitalism as much as the next guy, but Marxism is (or more accurately was) the highest expression of the left historically, it was its culmination, synthesis and potential overcoming. Finding a social niche to ‘express your politics’ in concert with other people is politically meaningless. Your thought is better off for having been quarantined from punk’s appeal. To be a leftist is nothing, to be a Marxist is everything. Good for you, I’m glad you don’t see yourself as part of any leftist movement in Britain or elsewhere because they’re all awful, the left is dead (there is no left, just ‘leftists’) and is, for all intents and purposes, the right.

Some more food for thought if you care to read this some time!

The Platypus Affiliated Society – Rousseau, Kant and Hegel

platypus1917.org

 

[dilbert1]

I'm more offended that Bomb20 ribbed on Alec for NFTs rather than the Anti-German ideology he has been propounding since the 90s. I mean, come on, it's so easy to laugh at an aging punk for getting into nfts. Even DBridge flirted with the idea and everyone cussed him out for it.

Great point, goes to show how (not) “political” their mindset really is

 

[thirdform]

another one from atom tm, caustic ebm textures and voices meat breakbeats. if this was what punk music was, then I'd be the biggest punk going.