Also, 1997
Drum'n'bass 98-99
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Also, 1997
which one of those abominations came out in 1997?
Er, I'm not sure!
blissblogger
Well-known member
Surely it only takes ears to hear how far jungle deteriorated between '94 and '98
This is just a B-side and there's more going on in it
Which dance music genre hadn't deteriorated by 98? 2step doesn't count because it was still embrionic.
off the top of my head and remember I'm only tgaking their most mainstream and populist sound as a reference.
House, swooshing white peoples nostalgic ritzi disco fantasies pretending they're still stuck in the 70s. Especially the French sound which expunged the ruggedness of yer DJ Sneak, Henry Street music disco cuts in favour of a smooth glide.
techno: sub millsian purpose maker clones and boring swedish dj tools. just fast compressed drum workouts with nothing to them. (mills was still great, obvs.)
trance: tepid cuddly fluffy arpeggio shit.
acid: gone down a sinkhole of ketamine abuse and idiotic squat punks. map is the territory, a kind of cleaned up aggression.
gabber: shlocky trance crescendos.
happy hardcore: actually literally dying out, unlike the rest of the genres on this list.
blissblogger
Well-known member
"Everything else was shit too" = not the most persuasive argument for listening to something.
nah nah 98-99 dnb is minimal machine music or nerdy reinforced gear. It is what it is. if you don't rate it, that's fair. It's very much an initiates sound where you have to dig through the crates to find the diamonds. Which is antithetical to both the rockist and poptimist worldview, which need a discourse and myth to propell themselves forward. In a way it's conservative because you're looking for a product which matches expectations. But I mean, there is no harm in formalism, provided you don't make it the be all and end all of your approach to aesthetics.
But I do find it interesting how the decline of dnb can be mapped onto the millennial decline of dance music as a whole. Granted this might be because I like house, techno and acid, but even still...
and further to that I find it interesting how the arguments about later dnb mirror those decried hardcore earlier. but its braindead, it's just not music!
Anyway, I'm being put in a strange position where I'm defending 98-99 dnb more than I want to.
subvert47
I don't fight, I run away
Only if all you care about is the bottom end. Apart from the drumwork, there's hardly anything going on in that track.
Don't get me wrong. I love the stripped back stuff. Like early Full Cycle where all it was was a couple of breaks, a rudimentary bassline and a sample or two. Hugely radical music.
But to say there's more going on in D'Cruze than, for example, this...
Sorry, just no.
subvert47
I don't fight, I run away
I disagree. I think dnb was largely still producing quality music in 1998/99. It was towards the end of 99 and into 2000, concurrent with the rise of Bad Company, that so much of it became tedious banging.
I was tbf going off pirate radio and rave tapes from that era. But if you take a more micro view with records you'd probably be right.
It's a fairly academic debate for me, anyway. I don't hugely rate much of the 97-98 jump up on labels like Joker etc.
maxi
Well-known member
but since jungle was the best music ever, even a significant deterioration can mean that the resulting music can still be very good. the hit rate is much much lower than with jungle but the best of dnb 96-98 still reaches a high peak. plus it does offer something different. the blade runner dystopian aesthetic. If I was in a jungle mood I wouldn't be listening to dillinja 'silver blade'. it serves quite a different purpose by that point.
I actually think 'ark angel 3' from 99 is better than the previous angels by goldie. loads going on in it rhythmically and not typical 2-step dnb. but admittedly, tracks like this are few and far between compared to jungle peak years
I also think a lot of these tracks (like all the ed rush/nico/torque ones) sounds a lot better in the mix. they work best when overlayed with another track because of their minimalism, bringing out all their potential, which isn't so much the case with jungle because the music is too busy for that. but it means that it can be misleading to judge them just based on playing the records alone or youtube.
blissblogger
Well-known member
One thing that's worth talking about is how shit the graphic language of d&b had got by this point - the record sleeves, the labels....
These peripherals always more indicative than you might imagine.
These peripherals always more indicative than you might imagine.
blissblogger
Well-known member
It's a very well recorded track, I'll give it that. Every element of the drums is beautifully clear.
Unfortunately the beat itself I find deadening - the drums are not talking to the other elements of the music in the way that the drums in D'Cruze or Dillinja or even much more run of the mill '93 / '94 tunes routinely did.
And then in "Convoy" and so many of the neurofunk era tunes, there's these sort of abstracty gaseous sounds wafting about and not really adding much to the push 'n 'pull of the music, while gesturing at unease or malaise in a rather hokey way
Funny thing about neurofunk - when I coined it I should have spelled it neuro"funk", because while the intent is there, the actual funk rarely is
It's akin to Electronic Body Music or industrial dance stuff of the '80s. Clumpy. Clobbers your body but doesn't really lift or let loose.
blissblogger
Well-known member
I had a friend who only got into D&B in 1998! Mad for it, she was.
Having given her tapes every year from '93 onwards in hopes of converting, this was rather galling.
She had been a huge Killing Joke fan, I think this goes some way to explaining it maybe.
Having given her tapes every year from '93 onwards in hopes of converting, this was rather galling.
She had been a huge Killing Joke fan, I think this goes some way to explaining it maybe.