Mercury Shortlist 2006

[mms]

And the whole white geek trying to be black gag has been done to death. It was played out by the time the Ali G film was released. I'm interested in innovations in hip hop and R'n'B. Not in tired parodies of it's lyrical content.

i don 't think that's what they do at all, this is a pretty sneary read of them, esp as lots of their other influences are clearly dance music from europe and the uk.

basically if you are a white guy who likes hiphop,wouldn't dare or even think of trying to pretend to do it for real as it would be laughable, expressing your love for hip hop by doing some lyrics that use its tropes in an honest manner is better than ignoring it or pretending you are it to me. if you are into innovations in hip hop and r and b then i also imagine they are too, but they aren't hiphop and r and b and you don't have to like them either.

adding a guitar to the mix isnt the one but strong songwriting and decent voices might be a better idea, dance music has always been better suited to pop than rock,there are some bands that do that well.
the klaxons aren't the one though - they're a silly cover band of old rave tunes , just an indie covers band.

Dance music is in a worse state of irrelevance and stagnation than Indie. At least schoolkids listen to rock music. Mainstream dance music is strictly for other 30s.

the second part isn't true, look at dubstep, minimal clubs, d and b etc and the first part is generally because unless kids have access to pirates, or stay up late for specialist shows on the radio which are limited, they have limited access to dance music as they're usually unable to go to the places it is played at.
that's pretty much always been the way unless kids go to under 18s raves.

but i would say that the spotlight is no longer on non guitar music at all, so no one in the press can actually pick out whether it is vibrant or not as its almost totally dismissed.

 

[swears]

Dance music is in a worse state of irrelevance and stagnation than Indie. At least schoolkids listen to rock music. Mainstream dance music is strictly for other 30s.

Me and my mates (early twenties) fuckin' love dance music. There are lot's of wicked things happening. Just because it doesn't get the coverage doesn't mean it isn't there.
Okay, so we're not seeing the explosion of ideas you had in the nineties...but if you think that level of freshness isn't going to come back, then it won't. (Self fulfilling prophesy).
Besides, you need a wide range of ages to make a scene fresh you need the ver kidz to bring new outlooks, and the "over 30's" to bring a little bit of history and depth to it.
Even if we had some kind of dance music version of Britpop, whereby musicians nicked the most interesting elements of the last twenty years of club tracks in order to get hits.....that would at least be a start.​

 

[don_quixote]

hot chips music sounds like young marble giants to me. i'm sure woebot made a comparison along these lines as well.

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

Me and my mates (early twenties) fuckin' love dance music. There are lot's of wicked things happening.​

OK, what kind of things are you into - anything you can tell us about beyond what we already know?​

 

[swears]

OK, what kind of things are you into - anything you can tell us about beyond what we already know?

Hmmmm....Probably nothing you haven't heard of...minimal dancefloor stuff like Kompact, noisy electro from Ed Banger records (that Justice tune is getting pretty big), Warp have got a couple of interesting new acts in Chok Rock and Jackson, loving the more clubby dubstep stuff like Benga and Skream. Lots of cool 8-bit sounds like Team Doyobi...Listening a lot to Annie Mac and Mary Anne Hobbes at the mo, pretty good for filtering out good new stuff.

I wish I could tell you about some completely original new scene, but if everybody just keeps on obsessing over indie, that's never going to happen.

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

Hmmmm....Probably nothing you haven't heard of...minimal dancefloor stuff like Kompact, noisy electro from Ed Banger records (that Justice tune is getting pretty big), Warp have got a couple of interesting new acts in Chok Rock and Jackson, loving the more clubby dubstep stuff like Benga and Skream. Lots of cool 8-bit sounds like Team Doyobi...Listening a lot to Annie Mac and Mary Anne Hobbes at the mo, pretty good for filtering out good new stuff.

I wish I could tell you about some completely original new scene, but if everybody just keeps on obsessing over indie, that's never going to happen.

Well I guess I'm aware of most of that - but I'm such a fogey with dance music these days. I havent bought any 12s for about 3 years because

- all my money gets spent on studio equipment

- moved away from croydon (right through the 90s croydon had a ridiculous number of record shops, dozen or so in the town centre & probably another 6-8 in the surrounding area. Thats a big reason why so many scenes start up there).

- just got bored really. Wasnt really hearing anything new & found it hard to get enthusiastic about a record when I had 30-odd very similar ones at home.

I hardly ever go out to clubs because one way or another my mates have all grown out of it.

I havent made any dance music, except for library music companies, for a few years because a label project I was involved with hit the skids & I took some time out to have a rethink (might get back into this again soon though, watch out for blog & myspace action in my signature...).

Really sympathized with this from the rave revival thread...

It's sad...dance music was such an important thing to me, growing up.
Now I'm starting to think that it's not such a big deal after all, just a series of musical fads nobody really gives a flying fuck about anymore. All the modernism, all that musical progress, now just debris for the indie band vultures to pick over to give them some ironic edge over all the other arrogant pricks in suit jackets and jeans.....so depressing..

... I went through that process a few years ago. Part of it is an ageing thing, you can't be as passionate about music in your late 20s as you were at 18 just cos there's more stuff to fill your life with as you get older. But when that natural withdrawel coincides with the wider decline of a scene, it's a real crash

 

[tox]

I often think that people complaining about dance music dying are just growing out of it, or are further from the "scene" than they used to be, for whatever reason. There are plenty of parties every week, playing a whole range of dance music, some retro/old-skool and some on the cutting edge. Take for example Booka Shade and MANDY playing a UK tour last month, or the 45000-odd people who area going to Global Gathering this weekend. I imagine that me, and other people my age (20), are as excited about dance music now, as the now 30 year olds were in the mid 90s (when dance music still took a side seat in the mainstream charts to britpop, remember).

While this might refute the claim that dance music is dead or just for the 30somethings, it doesn't exactly solve the problem as the whether its thriving sonically. However if you keep an ear to the ground there's plenty of exciting things happening. The student d'n'b fans are slowly becoming hip to dubstep (a good or bad thing depending who you are!) and broken beat has grown massively from its west london roots and become an international monster. Bugged Out, Kill The DJ, Trash, Fabric, these are all highly respected brands and names amongst my age group, all connected directly to dance music.

Moving futher afield than the UK, techno is still evolving. There's a return to happy dancefloor stuff which some people say is bringing techno's disco heritage to the fore. I'm talking about labels like Get Physical Music and Soma. On the flipside there's plenty of minimal out there pushing the boundaries - M_nus, Kompakt and Bpitch Control being the obvious labels to check.

I feel a little silly writing this stuff down as: a, i'm not an expert in this at all. I'm sure others could give a better run down of reasons why dance music is still thriving. b, it all just seems a little obvious to me, but if this stuff hasnt been heard then its faily clear why one might think dance music's dead.

 

[gek-opel]

I think all in all dance music is about as fucked as most other genres at the present time... lots of retroism/postmodernism, chronic lack of new ideas, a few trailblazers in certain areas, enough good new stuff to just about maintain ones interest, but it is certainly no golden era... what is interesting in this thread is that on the one hand the popularity of indie is viewed with hatred, on the other with a kind of jealousy that implies that popularity (if transferred) would somehow "improve" dance music in some way... doesn't anyone remember the late 90s....?

 

[Slothrop]

what is interesting in this thread is that on the one hand the popularity of indie is viewed with hatred, on the other with a kind of jealousy that implies that popularity (if transferred) would somehow "improve" dance music in some way... doesn't anyone remember the late 90s....?

Yeah. Plus, broadsheet journos going on about how great Bloc Party are is a bit tedious, but it's nowhere near as tedious as dance fans whingeing about broadsheet journos going on about how great Bloc Party are...

 

[swears]

what is interesting in this thread is that on the one hand the popularity of indie is viewed with hatred, on the other with a kind of jealousy that implies that popularity (if transferred) would somehow "improve" dance music in some way... doesn't anyone remember the late 90s....?

Okay, there was a lot of shitty, careerist trance/hard house etc....
But there was that nice middle ground between the underground and the complete cheese: Daft Punk, Chemicals, Basement Jaxx, Les Rythym Digital, Armand Van Helden, lots of stuff that had a bounce to it, rather than just chugachugachuga-oom-pah-pah teutonic trance.

Also, the main problem is that people see indie almost as a won revolution. "Yeah! Proper music in the charts! Just like the sixties/punk/britpop!" It's being sold as an alternative to celeb/chav culture, when it's just as shallow.

 

[Raw Patrick]

I love Bpitch and Get Physical and stuff like that but there aren't any British equivalents releasing solid LPs that could get a Mercury nod. Even Border Community have only released the (underwhelming) Holden LP. Was that even on the long list? (I guess I should know as I posted it...) In a fair world Optimo (or insert yr fave here) should've got a place bcz of their mixes.

(Gek, are you also the similarly named person that posts at ILM as well, it seems obv. that you are but I been wrong before?)

 

[tox]

I love Bpitch and Get Physical and stuff like that but there aren't any British equivalents releasing solid LPs that could get a Mercury nod. Even Border Community have only released the (underwhelming) Holden LP. Was that even on the long list? (I guess I should know as I posted it...) In a fair world Optimo (or insert yr fave here) should've got a place bcz of their mixes.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, it would have been nice to see Alex Smoke from Scotland's Soma Records get to the final 12, given that his name was mentioned in the list of nominees.

If artists could get a nomination for their mixes I'm sure Ewan Pearson, Justice and Erol Alkan would be right up there at the top of the list. They're doing as much to promote British music, particularly abroad, as anyone in a band.

Regardless, my post wasn't so much trying to argue that there should be dance music on the mercury list, it was more a reaction to this whole "dance music is dead" type moaning which was starting up. It comes across like the "exams were harder in my day" comments people make at results time. "ooooh things were so much better when I was young" bullshit.

 

[Raw Patrick]

I guess i should hear the Alex Smoke LP. Keep forgetting about it...

Justice are French though.

 

[the undisputed truth]

How much has indy profitted from garage dying ?

In the 'so solid' hey day and before the violence escalated there weren't that many indy guitar pop bands getting a shine on, at least not from my perspective here in NZ.

Then when the press turned sour and the coke snorting clubberati left the scene en masse it killed of the soulful r'n'b type garage and vitually the careers of mystique, shola ama, sunship, wookie, craig david, MJ cole et al.

So it (garage) went underground and morphed into grime, the harder, battle edged vocal style and dubstep, the darker, minimal instrumental counterpart yet the soulful funk of sexy garage and party vibes of garage MC's still hasn't returned and neither it seems have the champers swilling beautiful people from what i can gather.

I felt there was still much to explore before it got built up and torn down with dizzees mercury being a sort of post apologetic token gesture. So maybe in looking for something to champion and fill the void of what was uniquely UK urban music it was decided to put the spotlight back on the main staple of indy guitar dime a dozen bands like coldplay (boring ass bunch of fucks they are) and all the garage heads got straight jobs or changed names and started making funky house.

Post 9/11 with the US and the rave act, gigs not getting permits and shut down one would almost think it was orchestrated as some sort of big brother thing with memos from on high to not publicise large inner city gatherings of youth drug culture and rebel music but promote, limpwristed, safe, angsty guitar pop. I mean pete doherty is hardly a threat to anyone is he ?... not like megaman was.

Can't have the masses, dancing. Pied piper steez.

 

[C/Dizzle]

How much has indy profitted from garage dying ?

In the 'so solid' hey day and before the violence escalated there weren't that many indy guitar pop bands getting a shine on

I think that's a moot point TBH, you could say the same with any two scenes that
vaguely follow one another - what matters more is their individual developments...

 

[tryptych]

So the Monkey's got it. Everyone's already saying its unusual it went to the biggest selling band on the shortlist...

 

[wonk_vitesse]

However much people moan about all the new-indie stuff, have you noticed that nearly all the boy/girl suger pap bands have disappeared. Surely that has to be a good thing ?

Given the Mercury Award went to M-People one year I hardly thing think this years is a bad choice.

 

[boomnoise]

it really doesn't seem like a year since we were sat here discussing however it was that won it last year.

 

[boomnoise]

it really doesn't seem like a year since we were sat here discussing whoever it was that won it last year.

 

[swears]

It's meant to be the kiss of death commercially, anyway isn't? Mind you, Suede and Primal Scream went on to have other big selling albums, so maybe it doesn't apply to indie bands.