Underwater Dancehall
- Thread starter gek-opel
- Start date
i'm sick of events where everyone is disconnected from everyone else, lost in their own minds, locked into a lonely and miserable machine-beat.
i want SEX on the dancefloor! i want fluids exchanged! i want bodies rubbing against eachother! and smiles! SMILES!
no more "dark" and "futuristic" "post-apocalyptic" robo-cop music for me!
heh... sorry for rant and strong words... all respect to dubstep producers and djs worldwide. god knows how much i've loved and played dubstep over the last few years...
just how i feel right now.
extreme and subject to change as the views expressed above are, i do think they are important to express.
just how i feel right now.
extreme and subject to change as the views expressed above are, i do think they are important to express.
thats quite a long way from the original statement though no? spiritual bankrupsy? repression? against expression?
huh?
alienation, conformity, trapped in a grid, how are these things "a long way from" repression, inexpression and spiritual bankrupsy?
no i was saying that your final statement, regarding what you want from music and a club, is a long way from the original, more extreme claims. but its a bit by the by i suppose
more to the point, what music precisely are you talking about? are you saying that futurism is inherently tied to these attributes you identify? can you explain in more detail how you get to the conclusions that you do (repression etc), and from where, and what precisely they mean?
what i said i want from music is exactly why I'm sick of dubstep at the moment - because it doesn't have any of those things: sex, communication, sense of bringing people together -- and instead my experience at dubstep parties is that it keeps people apart.
and not just dubstep. also techno. and futuristic breaks and drum'n'bass and all that shit.
for the good part of the last 10 years of life i have, just like most people here, been immersed in this "cold", "dark", "futuristic", "machine" thing. as a listener, as a dj, as a promoter -- i tirelessly advocated this stuff as "the way forward", because it is "challenging", and promises "new forms". but now i realize that none of those are the real reasons why i felt an affinity with this aesthetic.
the real reason is that in my frustration i found a sadistic comfort in having my head slammed into a wall repeatedly by brutal inhuman sounds. the real reason is in my loneliness i found some kind of sick vindication in burying myself in isolation, in bleak, dark music. which instills a sense of dysfunctional solace.
there is a difference between kraftwerk and Skream. kraftwerk's songs are very human. emotional. they express the aching inability of expression, the awkwardness of human interaction in this modern age, and the frustrated desire to communicate, to connect -- at the heart of the kraftwerkian project there is tenderness and frail, fragile humanity; a sense of loss and longing, and sadness in response to our alienated condition.
whereas dubstep (at least the boring kind, maybe not the good Burial kind) and many modern forms of techno and related musics, embodies the alienation itself without any other layer of meaning. it becomes a celebration of loneliness; a cold, inhuman celebration of conditioning, subjugation, brainwashing, and slavery. and it becomes not a critique of power, the industrial-milliatary complex, and the state apparatus, but a mirror image of it. endlessly fetishizing pollution, cruelty, quasi-fascist conformity and alienation.
Pauline Oliveros said something about rigid machine syncopation is not about opening the mind to other possibilities but it's about locking your mind inside of itself. i don't completely agree because i believe that computer music CAN have soul -- but i think there is truth in what she says. i think it's a matter of degrees, and balance. I'm not turning into one of these ignorant and ridiculous "drum-machines-have-no-soul" type of idiots. but at the same time, i can not ignore very real feelings that i get from "dark, cold, and futuristic machine music".
maybe i've simply had too much of a good thing and it's turned bad on me, maybe I'm just simply growing up/getting older, how ever you wanna put it. but these days i would MUCH rather dance all night to reggae or soul or cumbia or salsa or bhangra or rai or african music, and have a GOOD time and feel LIBERATED by the groove rather than being PUNISHED by dungeonesque alienated machine music, which just endlessly reinforce the same solipsistic, closed-system repressive patterns that i know all too well.
damn am i ever spending too much time on this forum...
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nomadologist
Guest
i feel you, zhao. this shit is not remotely danceable. it sounds like it would seem like really awesome "club" music to someone who hasn't left their apartment in 18 years...
UFO over easy
online mahjong
will. not. rise. to. bait.
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nomadologist
Guest
but seriously, how does one dance to this? do you stomp back and forth? i just don't get it.
and the emceeing is embarrassingly bad
and the emceeing is embarrassingly bad
ChineseArithmetic
It is what it is
It's funny, I've been thinking about starting a thread on here about how my listening has moved almost exlusively to electronic music and a bit of hip-hop and away from 'real' music and the reasons I think are behind it, to see if anyone could relate.
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nomadologist
Guest
i guess if you really like songs that go "duh duh DUH duh duh DUH duh duh DUH" it's awesome
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nomadologist
Guest
do it, gek is going to get mad that we hijacked his thread with this dubstep bashing
i would actually love to hear some die-hard devotees defend "cold dark futuristic machine" music against my multiple claims and accusations.
i don't envy who ever will rise to the occasion... you will be up against one of your own
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nomadologist
Guest
weirdly enough for me it's not even the aesthetic that's the problem, it's the execution of the concepts
that's just not fair. some of them go "duh duh DUH duh duh WUMP duh duh DUH"
yeah do it. would be interesting. I would even move some of my comments from this thread to yours. it'll be so awesome, like some primordial battle between the forces of MU and the Illuminati
(maybe i should change my screen name to Simon Moon?)"Spongebob" is the darkest, most necrotic tune ever. Look into it's eyes and it has no soul. And it's the biggest tune in dubstep this year. That's just wrong. Don't get me wrong I love anger, Ghetto is amazing, but it's about a certain kind of anger.
This is why Dusk and I have really been focusing on melody, rhythm, vocals, texture and, hopefully, emotion this year. Dubstep was supposed to be slightly edgy or moody 2step - it can yet be more than this - just not some adolescent teenage fit.
This is why Dusk and I have really been focusing on melody, rhythm, vocals, texture and, hopefully, emotion this year. Dubstep was supposed to be slightly edgy or moody 2step - it can yet be more than this - just not some adolescent teenage fit.
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nomadologist
Guest
the lack of female involvement in this music also disturbs me somewhat
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nomadologist
Guest
true dat