James Blake

[Tentative Andy]

I'm not saying that The Genre Formerly Known As Dubstep is like that at the moment, but it's a tendancy that people are quite reasonable to be worried about, particularly when a lot of the talk around it comes out of a distaste for 'stupid wobble' and a reverence for the 'proper musicality' of classic garage. (Also, I think 'intelligent drum and bass' and the whole jazzy fusiony breakbeaty 'thinking of putting a band together to do some of this stuff live' scene from the mid 90s is probably a better analogy than IDM?)

Yeah, as general points I pretty much agree with all of this - but equally it heartens me that there are many people like here like you, me and others who are prepared to fight the resurgence of this ideology every inch of the way (acknowledging right away that this is a ludicrously over-dramatic way to express it!).

However, when it comes to JB in particular, I've got to come out and say that I'm a big fan of quite a large part of his output. Like a lot of people here, I'm really keen on Air & Lack Thereof and the Untold remix, and personally I think the Harmonimix of A Milli works very well. I'll have to track down more of his vocal remixes - think I've heard the Destiny's Child one but can't remember much about it.
I think this centrality of sung vocals and vocal manipulation in his work is both an endearing trait in itself and an important part of what seperates him from more traditional dubstep (not saying this as a diss to trad dubstep, obv, but I do reckon it's important from the pov of those like me who are looking for a 'something new' in his work).
There are some other tunes by him that, whilst well put together, don't really grab me in terms of having many striking ideas in them - I'm not very keen on Sparing The Horses, for example. But as others have pointed out, he's young and still developing, so there's plenty of scope for his potential to become more fully realised.

 

[benjybars]

really suprised this is a 9 page thread so quickly.

his tunes are wicked

 

[Benny Bunter]

he's alright i suppose, doesn't blow my mind in any way though, and i have no interest in hearing it in a club. i feel equally ambivalent about desto, fantastic mr fox and some other artists people like blackdown and oneman are playing/hyping. common denominator probably being that none of them care about quantization much, and reference things a bit too far outside dance music/the nuum for me to be comfortable with.

This is exactly how I feel atm.

 

[alex]

I'm not very keen on Sparing The Horses

see of all his tunes i like that 1the most

 

[shiels]

Re: Joker coasting..

i said that about 2 months ago on here and got shot down
dubstep forum for clever people this .

I think his collabs have been his strongest points lately, Re-up (ok it's not new) is some crazy balance between emotive delicacy and sheer WEIGHT and this.. <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object> is just pure WTF, that drop..

 

[mms]

Re: Joker coasting..



I think his collabs have been his strongest points lately, Re-up (ok it's not new) is some crazy balance between emotive delicacy and sheer WEIGHT and this.. <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object> is just pure WTF, that drop..

yeah i'm in agreeance.

 

[tom lea]

i sort of missed this, but if we're talking about joker coasting then i think it's been true for a while. tron is just more joker by numbers. but i guess he might be saving a lot of good stuff for the album.

 

[benjybars]

really, REALLY felling that untitled TC collab ^^^

absolute banger in the best possible way. kind of reminds me of Poison Dart in that respect.

 

[IanTheM]

i sort of missed this, but if we're talking about joker coasting then i think it's been true for a while. tron is just more joker by numbers. but i guess he might be saving a lot of good stuff for the album.

It's sad that his personal artistic development is being so disregarded. He's just being eaten up by the "nuum" philosophy as opposed to being seen as someone who writes brilliant melodies. I'll bet you anything he'd get pissed if you told him hes just been coasting lately.

 

[shiels]

i said that about 2 months ago on here and got shot down
dubstep forum for clever people this .

really, REALLY felling that untitled TC collab ^^^

absolute banger in the best possible way. kind of reminds me of Poison Dart in that respect.

I get you.. menacingly positive bass. i welled up and just burst out laughing when i heard that drop in a club, no joke... i think you can hear that they loved making that, cockiness just hangin clean out of it!

 

[tom lea]

It's sad that his personal artistic development is being so disregarded. He's just being eaten up by the "nuum" philosophy as opposed to being seen as someone who writes brilliant melodies. I'll bet you anything he'd get pissed if you told him hes just been coasting lately.

i dont care about the nuum, as far as i'm concerned joker made some really amazing stuff early on, and recently he seems to be content (with his non-collaborative stuff anyway) to not really move past those same sounds, pulling them in different shapes maybe but not doing that in the interesting way that zomby or untold do that. stash, tron, that heavy remix, that tectonic 12", i think those tunes are quite boring.

obviously a part of that is that he got a lot of remix commissions in a small period of time, and that would force anyone to spread themselves a bit thin. he might be saving some really intresting stuff for the album like i said - wasnt he trying to get vocalists on it? i'd rather hear that than tron.

as for the last comment, i think a lot of people would be pissed if they saw what ppl said on a forum about them. i think joker's good, i just havent found a lot of the recent stuff as interesting, or exciting, or danceable as the early singles, all of which i snapped up.

 

[Blackdown]

He's just being eaten up by the "nuum" philosophy.

Lol what does that even mean?

Basically Joker went on Generation Bass, blew up massively so got hundreds of DJ gig invitations and faced with huge crowds of people, made crowd pleasers. Personally I prefer Digidesign, Do It and his early, more detailed Terrorrhythm era stuff but when you're on the same bill as DJ WobbleBosh and his banger collective by way of a dayjob, i'm sure it has an effect.

 

[alex]

i dont care about the nuum

this should be etched on every single UK Dance music 12" from now on, CD's, even a watermark on the .jpeg image on .mp3's

 

[Numbers]

Personally I prefer Digidesign, Do It and his early, more detailed Terrorrhythm era stuff but when you're on the same bill as DJ WobbleBosh and his banger collective by way of a dayjob, i'm sure it has an effect.

Might be. Listening to JV Anderson and then to Tron... dunno, it's quite a sad evolution (in a mere three yrs). Don't like that unnamed track either.

 

[baboon2004]

Anyone seen Joker live lately, as am seeing him on Friday? Any good? I guess I'm asking - will he play his old stuff too?

 

[IanTheM]

Lol what does that even mean?

Basically Joker went on Generation Bass, blew up massively so got hundreds of DJ gig invitations and faced with huge crowds of people, made crowd pleasers. Personally I prefer Digidesign, Do It and his early, more detailed Terrorrhythm era stuff but when you're on the same bill as DJ WobbleBosh and his banger collective by way of a dayjob, i'm sure it has an effect.

It's not so much believing in the specific theory that all uk bass music is connected, just I guess the approach to the music as a product. Maybe it ends up being true for most dance music though, the times just move on. There's a good chance that in 2 years you'll never feel the need to play a Joy Orbison track again, same thing happened to all that Purple Sound hype. I think I was complaining about it before though, people rate tunes for the wrong reasons because of how it fits into the meta-vision of the music/genre instead of emotional connections, or how good a tune is. I'd just assumed this is what was coming up when they were ragging on Joker's latest output.

 

[FairiesWearBoots]

hmm I think he is stuck in a bit of a groove with the synths etc, but fuck me they do work in the dance, I walked into DMZ 4th just as he dropped Purple City and the bass was just WOW, a moment for sure and so I'll always be fond of that sound

 

[alex]

Yea purple city is an amazing track.

 

[mos dan]

Lol what does that even mean?

Basically Joker went on Generation Bass, blew up massively so got hundreds of DJ gig invitations and faced with huge crowds of people, made crowd pleasers. Personally I prefer Digidesign, Do It and his early, more detailed Terrorrhythm era stuff but when you're on the same bill as DJ WobbleBosh and his banger collective by way of a dayjob, i'm sure it has an effect.

i agree broadly, but he was playing sets like that two years ago at fwd though - he's always mixed in a-melodic macho crap with the good (mostly his) stuff. which would imply he's always quite liked that side of dubstep, rather than merely playing it to cater to a wobble-hungry audience.

also if his mentor/label boss is plastician, that half-explains the drive to the middle-ground/range, arguably

 

[Tentative Andy]

Hmmmm, not sure how worthwhile it is to get dragged into this debate again, but it is interesting...
I guess I can agree with the the general claim that the rate of innovation in Joker's releases has gradually slowed down over the course of his career. I hope I wasn't one of the people MMS is accusing of 'shouting him down' the last time we had this discussion; all I aimed to do was disagree with the point he was making (god forbid....).
More specifically, I was disagreeing with the claim that he and a few others were making that all of Joker's most interesting work was done and dusted by the end of 2008. As people have been saying here, at the very least Purple City/Re-Up is both a brilliant release in itself and far from identical to what Joker had put out prior to it, and that was released in mid 2009 iirc. But I guess that's also evidence for the claim being made that his most interesting output in 2009/10 has been in form of collaborations, with Ginz, TC, Terror Danjah, Jakes etc.

But I accept my view on this is prob coloured in that I just happen to like the basic 'Joker by numbers' sound - it's distinctive and enjoyable, addictive even from my pov. It's like, I can see that Stash and Tron, for example, might not be the most innovative things he's done, but they're still great fun to listen to. I can take the point, too, that he's gradually moved towards using more 'crowd-pleasing' sounds and structures, but again I find his more crowd-orientated material to be much, much better than the average standard wobble tune that I hear. In a way I think it's healthy that someone in the dubstep/post-dubstep scene is prepared to stick in there and produce dancefloor tracks of a good quality, even if it means that we as fans potentially miss out on some home-listening material (though obv I can't pre-judge his album, if he is working with vocalists then that's potentially a big look, imo).