to be fair mu have probably signed more stuff from footwork producers than they have uk people doing footwork inspired stuff.
Dubstep
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
I'm glad Mu did that, and I'm glad Hyperdub even bother to sign ANY legit Funky producers, but it's also not enough; everyone should be conveying some interest in these genres if they're going to put out an artist who's borrowing from their elements but doesn't give back.
I feel like there's so much of an emphasis on taking "THE MEN WHO TAMED THE SAVAGE GENRES" artists and putting them on pedestals... But nowhere near as much emphasis on the genres themselves. Juke is ridiculously lucky it's been hanging on this long, but then again, it's a more deeply rooted culture than say Funky got to be.
Now returning to dubstep specifically, you know what the problem is? Dubstep is not taking new elements and fitting them 'into' dubstep. Allow me to make an example... "Paris" by Jay-Z and Kanye is obviously borrowing from dubstep, but it is a rap record, and not a dubstep record. But it has succeeded so well because it doesn't force rap into the context of dubstep, it places dubstep as a situation in rap. It's why that record is immensely popular all over the world, and nobody gives a damn about any of these forced rapper spitting over dubstep collabos that have been foisted time and time again.
What has happened with these producers is that maybe dubstep was never 'theirs' to begin with like the first wave or two. So when they discover new sounds, they just gravitate torwards it rather than try to pull these foreign ideas into dubstep. Remember in '07-'09 or so when it was so fruitful to try and slip all kinds of weird 'errors' into dubstep to give it color or character? No, now the producer takes all the structure of the other record, and just changes the BPM and says "Oh yeah... It's close to the tempo of all these other 'dubstep' records I've been dropping. We're good." But NO, that is not the case.
The number one problem it seems is that people have this attitude "I don't like pigeon holes... I make music!" Bullshit. People need to make clean breaks from genres if they don't want to be in it any longer. If you've gone out of your way to duplicate a scene, and work yourself in that scene, you have a responsibility to at least live with that scene. I may find a majority of his catelog past a certain point boring, but Mala's doing that much with the banal 'cuban music dubstep' thing. He isn't just making cuban music and then throwing some cheap dubstep paramaters and saying "Oh look guys, it's for the clubs." Not everything's going to work for people, but at least someone's trying to put some new life into the genre, rather than switching from either the extremes of orthodoxy with "WE NEED TO SOUND LIKE IT WAS MADE FOR A '06 YOUNGSTA SET!!!" or hopelessly following whatever your musical tastes have brought you outside of your genre, and then forgetting about things like everything you've done before.
SecondLine
Well-known member
maybe all of those people don't want to make dubstep any more. Why should they make dubstep? Especially if they have no ownership over it.
Nightcrawler is sickBigup! Pls just give this mix one listen: http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/wen-whats-all-commotion-about.html?m=1
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
this would be amazing
i dont think saying 'where is the new person/thing to reproduce 06 era dubstep coming from?!', its just too calculated. if you want that sound, its still around; if you want that aesthetic/mood, then trying to be all calculated about it isnt going to work imo. thats how you lead to a lot of horrible music that ticks all the boxes but is depressingly dull cos you can see exactly what theyre trying to do. that whole narrow 'stay in the nuum' mentality isnt going to lead anywhere exciting or new. its like dubstep people in 05 or so saying how they werent going to make the same mistakes as jungle/D&B did, and being all 100% positive they could stop that happening. as if!
anyway, i like genre music. but genre music doesnt make for as good copy as the IDM type guys like machine drum or distal. i find their music not nearly as satisfying as the stuff theyre attempting to make bigger than the genres they take from (distals album is good but you can sort of see the joins) and machine drum i just find incredibly boring and dreary but thats just me. so more genre music please. im a bit tired of so many producers patting themselves and the scene on the back for not fitting into pigeon holes when their music might actually be better if it did do just that.
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Nice.
I think it is important if you are going to make genre music that you have your own sound and express yourself rather than just re-appropriating others ideas though.
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100%
lol @ "trap" (wtff)
jeezy got mixtapes called trap or die trapping aint dead and people are posting songs by 15 year old kids from chicago. smh
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Ah! But then you actually commit to something, and then you have that following you wherever you go! Best to stick with vague names that allow you to fuck around and make 3rd rate tunes in every genre that SEEMS anthemic...
The problem isn't a producer's 'ownership' of a genre, but rather their responsibilities if they've gone out of their way to make a serious presence for themselves in a genre, only to leave it behind and say "Nyah, don't feel like it no more" if they don't become the big superstar DJ of that scene. I mean, how many ex-D&B producers can keep coming out of the woodwork, making 'exotic' post-dubstep tempo records and say "*kicks back in chair* Well... I just felt like my talents were being wasted in Drum & Bass... I never really saw myself as a DRUM & BASS artist." It reeks of a lack of self-composure and discipline, that they can't use their old parameters as a sort of testing tool, but now just something to avoid entirely.
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Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Haha!
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
It'd make a good movie wouldn't it?
"Ryan Gosling stars as a star-eyed young liberal man who is introduced to the sounds of Chicago's 'Juke'. Enraptured, he attempts to win the trust of the dancers and producers who come from a world he will never truly understand, while struggling as greedy corporate types threaten to ruin the musical utopia he discovered."
I imagine a teary-eyed scene where Gosling is begging a mock DJ-Nate type teen prodigy to stop making commercial rap records that help him make money in his city, and return to juke where he knows 'his heart was in all along'.
I think I got an Oscar winner folks.
"Ryan Gosling stars as a star-eyed young liberal man who is introduced to the sounds of Chicago's 'Juke'. Enraptured, he attempts to win the trust of the dancers and producers who come from a world he will never truly understand, while struggling as greedy corporate types threaten to ruin the musical utopia he discovered."
I imagine a teary-eyed scene where Gosling is begging a mock DJ-Nate type teen prodigy to stop making commercial rap records that help him make money in his city, and return to juke where he knows 'his heart was in all along'.
I think I got an Oscar winner folks.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
LMAO Crowley
SecondLine
Well-known member
"Once you achieve some undefined level of success you are morally obliged to keep making the same kind of music forever otherwise you lack discipline"
that's bullshit crowley
surely it's better to try something new than to continue making intensely derivative re-runs of your own or someone else's music ad nauseam
had to screencap this in case it actually gets made
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
I agree though, that's the other extreme of the see-saw for me! But what I'm getting at, someone has to constantly EXPAND the definitions. You can make a genre really really fucking huge. Like, nobody thinks all techno sounds alike right? Granted, there are weird sort of definitions of what techno is, but you can really make it fit your needs, likewise with house. So, why couldn't people in dubstep keep thinking about expanding dubstep, instead of getting worried about "Oh, am I going to be the 'dubstep' guy for the rest of my life? Will people just say 'Oh, there goes so-and-so, the dubstep guy. Look at him go.'."
I'm saying you should not fall into the pit of orthodoxy for orthodoxy's sake, because we all know fucking nothing goes on in that mindstate, but we shouldn't feel a need to distance and isolate ourselves from the scene we created. I'm one to talk, I haven't even paid attention to anything remotely dubstep related in maybe half a year, but I'm not going to let it go just because there's this big "PROBLEM" of a different genre called dubstep. Just like if I was really into house, I'm not going to say "Well, I can't pretend I'm in house when everyone thinks you need to sound like David Guetta all the fucking time".
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
hip hop is a good example of a genre that is impossibly diverse but still very much a genre music, to the point where a lot of people still talk about it being too hegemonious
Put this in the grime thread also.
Braindead Ent. present: Footsie & DJ Tubby - The Grey Area EP.
2 x Vinyl. 6 instrumentals. Out now in HMV, Juno, Red-Eye, Chemical etc etc etc:
http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=725650
http://www.juno.co.uk/products/457060-01.htm
http://www.chemical-records.co.uk/sc/servlet/Info?Track=BD09
Braindead Ent. present: Footsie & DJ Tubby - The Grey Area EP.
2 x Vinyl. 6 instrumentals. Out now in HMV, Juno, Red-Eye, Chemical etc etc etc:
http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=725650
http://www.juno.co.uk/products/457060-01.htm
http://www.chemical-records.co.uk/sc/servlet/Info?Track=BD09
