Drum'n'bass 98-99

[blissblogger]

Fair's fair, though - I am piling all the recommended videos into a YouTube playlist and will be inflicting them on myself in due course.

I've only got through page 3 of this thread and already alarmed to see there's 61 tracks in the playlist.

Given that in this era, d&B tracks routinely topped 7 minutes, this is going to be quite an endurance test.

 

[blissblogger]

Is it even true that all dance genres had turned to shit by 98?

Taking UK garage out of the equation seems to be a bit of an accountancy trick, in terms of the argument.

Seem to remember tons and tons of good dancey or adjacent-to-dance music coming out that year, even as many genres, it's true, had reached a certain impasse and - apart from UKG and its emerging 2step direction - there wasn't really a NEW thing that seemed to be opening up and pointing to places to go....

But, "apart from UKG" is a bit of a big "apart from", considering how there was unfolding what would prove to be a good 4 year stretch of deliciousness AND constant moving forward (then ultimately branching off into whole other areas of excitement and forward motion with grime and dubstep).

 

[Corpsey]

Not so much with the 'deeper' techy stuff but I wonder if the more jump up end of tech was geared towards the increasingly prominent MCs (Moving fusion's 'Turbulence' for example, was tailor made for MCs), hence being a lot more repetitive, linear, extremely metronomic beats. And that starts making me think that critiquing these tunes without understanding that is like criticising grime instrumentals for being overly repetitive.

OTOH I think there is a push towards more minimal/repetitive tunes that let the listener zone into the 'long dark tunnel', ala. industrial techno. That would apply more to the metalheadz end of the spectrum.

There's often a link made between the music getting more and more moody and punishing and women (in general) leaving to jump ship to garage, but is it also that the jungle scene was getting more and more moody and violent, in spite of the music, and that cleared it out of all but the hardcore people who wanted something more dark and intense than garage.

'Narrow' seems like a good word to describe drum n bass's trajectory around this time. There's always an intensification that accompanies such a narrowing of focus but also of course a claustraphobia and inertia.

Early 2000s it started broadening out again with liquid drum n bass and the increasing use of trancey square wave synths (which i suppose was something you had emerging in general in dance music, e.g. electro/blog house, nu skool breakz). When I got into it it was 2004/5 when Pendulum came out and hooked a lot of new people in (like me), also High Contrast and Hospital Records with the liquid funk stuff that was more approachable, fun and student friendly.

 

[droid]

Its not really fair to conflate this with the sound of the late 90s which still had some stuff going for it, but you can certainly trace the seed of these atrocities to that period. Its particularly stark wrt the aesthetics, the chants, the awful, bland club 18-30 vibes. I think the first time I ever heard anyone sing along to a bassline was to warhead.

 

[thirdform]

Seem to remember tons and tons of good dancey or adjacent-to-dance music coming out that year, even as many genres, it's true, had reached a certain impasse and - apart from UKG and its emerging 2step direction - there wasn't really a NEW thing that seemed to be opening up and pointing to places to go....

go on then, what was good in 98 outside of 2step? Because I can't think of much.

You can't be like seem to remember! you have to actually tell us!

 

[thirdform]

Its not really fair to conflate this with the sound of the late 90s which still had some stuff going for it, but you can certainly trace the seed of these atrocities to that period. Its particularly stark wrt the aesthetics, the chants, the awful, bland club 18-30 vibes. I think the first time I ever heard anyone sing along to a bassline was to warhead.

How is this better than warhead


I mean, I can appreciate it on its own terms but it is the happy hardcore of dnb. There's a reason why this kinda stuff doesn't get played in classics sets, it's just not in tune with the classy vibe of London at all. Which naturally makes the case for critical reappraisal even stronger.

 

[thirdform]

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.

It's funny you (rightly) argue with people like Kirk Degiorgio about this re: techno but have relatively no time for it in jungle.

Why is that? why can't you appreciate the anti-funk?

I have some working theories but I wouldn't want to offer them without you expounding.

 

[thirdform]

 

[thirdform]

Not so much with the 'deeper' techy stuff but I wonder if the more jump up end of tech was geared towards the increasingly prominent MCs (Moving fusion's 'Turbulence' for example, was tailor made for MCs), hence being a lot more repetitive, linear, extremely metronomic beats. And that starts making me think that critiquing these tunes without understanding that is like criticising grime instrumentals for being overly repetitive.

You're bang on the money here, in fact if you listen to terra d instrumentals from 2002 they sound like slowed down dnb, not el-b or whoever.

It reminds me of barty bemoaning that hardcore continuum musics are fads for their target constituencies today. Except this was always the case. The archivist and the obsessive always removes herself from the nuum, to an extent. Including ourselves!

 

[blissblogger]

My tally at the end of 1998
https://simonreynoldsfavesunfaves.blogspot.com/2008/12/faves-and-over-rated-of-1998-from.html

Lion's share of enthusiasm for 2-Step but warm words for Heroin House (Chain Reaction and that kind of thing), gloomcore, neo-electro, "intelligent big beat" (not a wholly serious term, I'm quick to add - deliberately oxymoronic in fact) and disparate bunch of stuff. Even some trance!

Oddly, there's an entry on drum + bass as "Slight (Very Slight) Recovery of the Year" but it seems to be only based around Jonny L's Magnetic, 4 Hero's Two Pages and Goldie's Ring of Saturn

This is how it starts, which is really how I remember the year as a d&B diehard fighting the gloom and then surrendering to it:

For most of '98 I thought it was going to be another crap year for jungle. Some kind of personal nadir took place in the spring--at one of the V Records Night at Twilo, bored almost literally to tears by the two-step trudge being doled out by Trace (former god Trace!) I found myself hoarsely MC-ing over the top: "Stagnant music! Stagnant music! Another acrid bassline".... All night, there didn't seem to be enough killer tunes to go around, so each DJ kept playing "Bambataa" and "Brand New Funk." It seemed like the scene was dying on its feet.

Or rather, entered a kind of living death--basically it has become the new techno. Like "pure" techno, drum & bass has refined itself down to a set of sonic conventions that its practitioners tweak slightly. They talk earnest progressivist bollox about how "anything's possible" and "this music can go anywhere", but in reality they churn out tracks that are all at the same tempo, work with similar kinds of breaks, and use similar warped bass sounds, "sinister" textures, and FX.

I'm afraid listening to this playlist of this thread's recs, I'm not finding much to make me revise that viewpoint.

The beats have this curious quality of restless but lifeless energy. Like if "unflagging" was some kind of supreme aesthetic goal.

The faves / unfaves thing is also the first-time-ever wheeling out of my twin theorems about the relationship between the vibey-ness of a genre and its a/ graphic language and b/ the nomenclative traits

This bygone chaos [i.e hardcore / jungle era]... manifested itself in the art work and logos (the sleeves of Moving Shadow, Reinforced and Suburban Base tracks were so much weirder and wittier than the sombre technoid wankwork you get on your typical d&B cover these day), in the track titles, and above all in the artist names. Compare all the cold, clinical, quasi-scientific, solemnly pseud names used today with the humorous-but-mysterious quality of hardcore and early jungle names....

 

[blissblogger]

Then 1999 was a genuinely depressing and bleak year all around, in my recollection, as it is in the end of year tally.

FAVES / UNFAVES

FAVES AND UNFAVES OF 1999 (originally from Blissout website) Faves of 1999 Because of unusual constraints--the tastes and tolerances o...

simonreynoldsfavesunfaves.blogspot.com

Even the things I'd been excited about the previous year seemed to dead-end or calcify (with the notable exception of 2step).

Drum + bass completely unmentioned here, except for a comp of Bukemy type stuff from mid-decade.

 

[blissblogger]

Why is that? why can't you appreciate the anti-funk?

I

I can appreciate the anti-funk (gloomcore for starters but other things)

I just think it's funny that neuro claims Da Funk but rarely has it

It's the misnomer aspect

Also often there's a kind of irritating fussiness to the beats, a sort of quasi-breaksiness... but the net effect is more or less the same as four-to-the-floor

Fastplod as I think K-punk put it

This Dope Skillz is the first in this selection where I've felt like the skittery breaks scything around the bang-bang-bang-bang keep something of the classic peak-era vibe

 

[thirdform]

I can appreciate the anti-funk (gloomcore for starters but other things)

I just think it's funny that neuro claims Da Funk but rarely has it

It's the misnomer aspect

Also often there's a kind of irritating fussiness to the beats, a sort of quasi-breaksiness... but the net effect is more or less the same as four-to-the-floor

Fastplod as I think K-punk put it

This Dope Skillz is the first in this selection where I've felt like the skittery breaks scything around the bang-bang-bang-bang keep something of the classic peak-era vibe

It's a 2step beat though? Just a much colder version. the only reason why you don't want to call it by its proper name and still insist on neuro shmuro is because you feel called out by that Paradox track title: All you 2step bastards leave our planet!

 

[thirdform]

but warm words for Heroin House (Chain Reaction and that kind of thing),

Mostly explored territory by '98 though.

gloomcore,

See above, the best gloomcore was released on Cold Rush. Good records came out in 98 for sure but it had hit its peak.

intelligent big beat" (not a wholly serious term, I'm quick to add - deliberately oxymoronic in fact) and disparate bunch of stuff. Even some trance!

Big Beat was without doubt one of the worst genres to be invented, worse than turkish reggaeton and that's saying something.

and trance was hypermelodramatic inane cuddly shit. I'll grant you that one, even though like big beat its fucking garbage.

 

[version]

What were Warp and the "IDM" lot doing in '98? Autechre had LP5 and EP7 around that time.

 

[thirdform]

What were Warp and the "IDM" lot doing in '98? Autechre had LP5 and EP7 around that time.

doesn't count, simon hates it.

 

[thirdform]

pretty good years for breakcore as well.

 

[thirdform]

it's just not comparable though.

everything was peaking from 91-96, 97 at a push.

techno - from the lush detroit/idmy stuff to the brain frying hard acid and brutalisms, proto-gabber, Jay Denham, Neil Landstrumm, to the weird insectoid funk of Cristian Vogel, to the kitchen sink chaos of Subhead.
house - from bleep and hardcore adjacent things to david morales type def mix vocal belters to cajmere, green velvet, and early productions from people like losoul, not to mention the lewd ruff to disc stuff from Paul Johnson, DJ Deon, DJ Funk, to the aquatic Mood 2 Swing Dubs, the muscular hypnotics of 95 north, jazz 'n' groove, cheesy italo screamers, etc...
trance - quite good for a while, helicopters flying over your head in outer space, longform jams which went on forever and ever.
Ambient - the more IDM end of it was good, not to mention ambient house and the jazzy vibes of people like 808 state. Thomas Coner, Tetzu inau, James Plotkin, Biosphere...
Electro - aux 88 and UR bits, early dmx crew, Drexciya, bunker, electronome, I-F, etc etc.
Rhythmic noise: pan sonic, Sahko and mika vainio affiliated projects, winterkalte, the early imminent stuff.
Plunderphonics, John Oswald, Ground Zero/Otomu Yoshide, Optical*8.

obviously hardcore and jungle, but we already have 19 years of thread material extolling its virtues.

 

[thirdform]

So much so that you can ignore people like Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky etc.

In fact if Big Beat were to be invented in '92 I know simon would hate it. He likes it because it fulfills a void, which is proof of my point. So why can't the fussy technical dnb for us serve as the same?

 

[blissblogger]

And then, like a breath of fresh air, Source Direct arrive in the playlist - and suddenly it's like Jack DeJohnette has taken over the kit, shoving Les Binks off the drum stool