The tyranny of 130
- Thread starter droid
- Start date
oh yeah? the people ive met from that crew are a sound bunch, before white hotel and partisan came around the musical landscape in manchester was pretty terrible tbf so im thankful for their existence despite living 100 miles away
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Oh shit yeah! Traxx was amazing. Also caught hieroglyphic being at some unannounced gig around that time. I wasn't in mcr that long tho.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Its a fair cop guv. I totally am. But I also know there was a time even post millenium when fabric was actually good. Plastic People was great. Corsica. The end. And on and on. Not gonna get into the semantics of the word underground as I think we may have covered that before. But yeah I'm stuck in the past which is funny cos I never went clubbing proper until 2000 when I moved to Birmingham and I was raving to techstep, jump up etc lol. I didn't know any better!
actually this is the problem you share with corpse. you start off with bang bang bang moronic music which is excellent, but instead of going full avant-yob or intelligent moron, you go beatnik. it's a very english way of church confession. it's not good.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Blame gilles peterson
was it the one that inspired this?
'The DJ’s predictably-eclectic set was met with disdain by “a contingent of beaked-up kids couldn’t handle his cosmicness,” who proceeded to use their cell phones to show him messages reading “you are the worst DJ ever.” '
i was at that one and he turned off the music to tell em to fuck off irrc, id never heard him play before so it didnt seem that out of place amongst playing tunes backwards for ages and intentional mix clangs and only found out what had been going on with the phone messages afterwards
https://www.factmag.com/2014/07/31/...ed-up-haters-with-the-worst-dj-ever-cassette/
'The DJ’s predictably-eclectic set was met with disdain by “a contingent of beaked-up kids couldn’t handle his cosmicness,” who proceeded to use their cell phones to show him messages reading “you are the worst DJ ever.” '
i was at that one and he turned off the music to tell em to fuck off irrc, id never heard him play before so it didnt seem that out of place amongst playing tunes backwards for ages and intentional mix clangs and only found out what had been going on with the phone messages afterwards
https://www.factmag.com/2014/07/31/...ed-up-haters-with-the-worst-dj-ever-cassette/
droid
Well-known member
My argument is that the total domination of 4 to the floor at (more or less) the same tempo across multiple genres: house, techno and its derivatives, plus EDM, pop and various global sounds is regressive and stifling.
I kinda shoehorned this in, so apologies if I wasn't clear. When I mention the avant garde in roots and reggae I mean both the sonic quality of the music itself - arguably the first time in human history that we've had this occurrence of incredibly heavy bass led music, often accompanied by deeply intricate and psychedelic rhythm and percussion. On a phenomenological level it is very strange music, especially when played through a soundsystem.
The comparison of diversity is demonstrably false I think. The 70's alone brought at least a dozen or more rhythmic templates in reggae. Dancehall expanded both the timbral and rhythmic palette, and ragga blew the doors off in terms of radical shifts in the use of timbre, harmony and rhythm. The tempo range from (say) 1970 - 2010 in Jamaican music varies from about 60bpm to 150bpm.
Compare this to the lineage of house and techno. Disco probably started out in the low teens, let's say 115bpm, and gradually travelled to the mid 120s to settle about 128-130 in the 90s, and it hasn't shifted since. Techno started at about 130, accelerated during the innovation stage up to as high as 150 but typically sits in the low 140s.
So you have two main strains of genre both with the basically the same drum pattern and both sitting between 128-138bpm - for about 25 years, and another umbrella genre with a range of about 90bpm that features countless variations in rhythm, some of which have even spawned entire genres.
yeah but roots, 80s dancehall, 90s ragga, these are all different things. bythat logic i could include breakcore, experimental gabba, techno-y dubstep, footwork, downbeat electric ladyland type beats, hell even through in alec empires weird ambient bits and so on and so on. could even add 80s soul to that. see what i mean? if we take it as a techno continuum it could be just as all encompassing as a reggae continuum.
your first point was better before you added the reggae dance bit in imo.
your first point was better before you added the reggae dance bit in imo.
droid
Well-known member
Im just responding to Jorge's argument, but even if you draw the reggae line at the point of radical departure into the modern dancehall sound (say) 1988, you still see a massive range of rhythm and tempo in Jamaican music, far greater fundamental diversity than house and techno combined.
no but they are not totally separate from house either.
even navigator says jungle comes from house and he ain't wrong.
I mean i can't work out whether your argument is:
people should stop making music at 130, in which case i agree, it's a stranglehold.
people should stop djing at 130, in which case i also agree. but there are many nights in london where djs will spin all kinds of shit at all kind of tempos, the industrial dj into coil showing off all their records is a huge thing now. but it's still vibeless. because its an insiders sound.
so whats the argument here exactly?
people should stop making music at 130, in which case i agree, it's a stranglehold.
people should stop djing at 130, in which case i also agree. but there are many nights in london where djs will spin all kinds of shit at all kind of tempos, the industrial dj into coil showing off all their records is a huge thing now. but it's still vibeless. because its an insiders sound.
so whats the argument here exactly?
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Oh wow, I never got the name of the place. Was invited by some guy. Also got pretty fkn wasted. But he definitely played all of that and more. I remember the 70s miles stuff the best. There were def some people who didn't get it as per, lbut didn't notice the phone thing. Kids eh..