if New York can die so can London

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gumdrops

Well-known member
funky and wobble arguably have more in common than post dubstep and funky, tho even then its like hardcore rave vs 2step. actually 'funky going wobble' sounds a bit like bassline. i think i said this years back in the wobble thread but i generally like(d) wobble more than dubstep lol.

i actually do mind a bit being called a sub finney/post reynolds bot (or whatever it was) btw. i consider most of my critical/music-tribe lines to come much more from hip-hop more than reynolds or finney (who i have not actually read very much of apart from on message boards). but its ok.

anyway, this post has become another mess of what we were discussing in the other post dubstep thread hasnt it. dont think theres much new to be said on post-dubstep vs funky anymore. this thread needs to be put back on route.
 
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hucks

hucks

Your Message Here
gumdrops said:
anyway, this post has become another mess of what we were discussing in the other post dubstep thread hasnt it. dont think theres much new to be said on post-dubstep vs funky anymore. this thread needs to be put back on route.
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Yeah, there's a more interesting discussion to be had here than funky v post dubstep. Why did New York die, for one? Assuming it did...
 
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petergunn

plywood violin
luka said:
sorry peter maybe i wasnt being vry clear. i meant what has ny come up with rcntly? what sound does it have to call its own? that is to say over the last 15 years or so. i mean loso, dipst whatevr is ok and verything and id be happy in a club listneing to that and dancehall too, thats great but the dipset glory years are a fading memory and fabulos nevr had any glory years.
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uh, lady gaga?

i kid, i kid...

i admit, there are no instant idenifiers w/ nyc like there used to be and like there are for other cities (juke, UK funky, b-more club), but i guess i would say NYC's strong point right now is whatever there is everywhere else, we have it here... like reggaeton is from puerto rico, but you can hear shitloads of it here... every DJ from everywhere else in the US (and the world) wants to play here...

they are still lots of little neighborhood niche scenes... whether they are united enough to be some sort of recognized movement in the media, we'll see...

i think what that sort of attitude misses is the general musical climate and, despite Hot 97 not playing almost any NYC artists regularly, the musical climate here is good... people have gotten over that and artists like joell ortiz are starting to straddle the point between being reverent to the history of NYC hip hop and being relevant in 2011...
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
ny and london will always be major world citiesl, or at least for the forseeable future. lots of people live there. lots of tastemakers live there. the 'brand' is always going to be strong. every band always has to go there, every dj. people there will always be well dressed and witty and sexy and whatever. evry potential immigrant will want to go to one or th other. every teenager from the sticks will want to move there. im not disupting that or trying to say they are not great places to live/visit etc. of course they are. i mean, not to sound bad or nothing, but you just said joel ortiz, which is sort of thee point im trying to make.
 
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FairiesWearBoots

Well-known member
I dont think either London or NY are really dead, but I do think the ease with which people can make music and promote themselves now has watered down so many genres

Hip-hop is a great example - youtube gave us Souljah boy???? Please. Now he is in some ways a legitimate 'star' (less so now maybe previously) but if he had tried to do the same in the 80's or 90's even he would surely have had to (rap) battle himself to the top? all he had to to was film a shit dance in his bedroom pretending to be Pharrel and next he's on MTV???

music journalism also must face the same challenges these days? everyone's a critic/booster so there is just SO much dross to wade through to get to something good?
 
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petergunn

plywood violin
luka said:
ny and london will always be major world citiesl, or at least for the forseeable future. lots of people live there. lots of tastemakers live there. the 'brand' is always going to be strong. every band always has to go there, every dj. people there will always be well dressed and witty and sexy and whatever. evry potential immigrant will want to go to one or th other. every teenager from the sticks will want to move there. im not disupting that or trying to say they are not great places to live/visit etc. of course they are. i mean, not to sound bad or nothing, but you just said joel ortiz, which is sort of thee point im trying to make.
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lol,,,

yeah, i know... believe me, i know... if Ortiz came out in 93, contrary to his belief, he'd just be another dude...

i think in the internet era, it's tough... people place less emphesis on their immediate surroundings and link up w/ whatever... i def notice kids in nyc listening to music from all over the world... i think in smaller cities, people have more direct regional pride, b/c the city is more of their entire world...

it's tough for me to have this argument, b/c like you (and 95% of the people in this thread), i don't have a stake in it... when i moved to nyc i heard jay z and dmx out of every car stereo... now, i hear Waka Flocka... if you asked me which felt better, i'd say the former, but i don't know if 19 year olds now give a fuck...

i also don't like the idea of city hopping to go where the next "amazing thing" is... around 2002, so many people i knew moved to berlin, and alot of them moved back!

a city is a sum of so many parts, and only some of those parts make interesting magazine articles in XLR8R... as i said before, there are plenty of little underground subgenres in NYC, all seperate from each other... whether any cause the rest of the world to take notice, i don't know...
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
the thing about history is that in london, i dont think grime/funky producers/artists have ever really been reverent towards the history. yeah theres a bit more love for it and acknowledgement of the past (weird to hear various grime mcs all paying tribute to dizzee flows/bars in recent years though as that wasnt that long ago) but theyre not going to get misty eyed about it. the only ppl that do/did get misty eyed about it really is dubstep guys. not much surprise post dubstep guys went digging even further back into dance history.

in new york, with hip hop, its a tougher thing, cos they obv have tons of pride over the lineage there, sort of like new orleans and jazz, but its hard to really stick with that tradition without sounding like other scenes/regions and still sound fresh/urgent. but new york had a great run as far as rap, pretty much from the mid 70s through to the mid/late 90s. and then it went to the south. but even that seems to be in something of a holding pattern for the last few years.

hip hops its own discussion though. i feel we need a bigger picture of what makes cities die out. cos from what i hear, NY hasnt got much to boast about even in rock/dance terms these days. i think its natural for a city to lose its luster/grip on the consciousness as an artistic hotbed, similar maybe to how economies/civilisations tend to wane over the course of time perhaps.

the search for a 'new thing' or something avant garde i think is also something that perhaps we place too much emphasis on (i think ppl have carried this over from dance music to a certain degree, on this board at least) - i mean reggaeton might not be 'cutting edge' but its afaik, still consistent somewhat. similarly if i wanna hear some hyper soca, i know theres some good club nights i can go to in south london, it might not be avant garde, but theres something to be said for that (and soca nights ive been are more fun than most other types of music). the days of one thing dominating a citys listening habits might be gone, who knows.
 
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FairiesWearBoots

Well-known member
re cities: that's maybe the point i'm trying to make - Is the simplification & democratisation of the music making process lessening the need for big cities to have central roles in creating new music?
 
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petergunn

plywood violin
gumdrops said:
cos from what i hear, NY hasnt got much to boast about even in rock/dance terms these days. .

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that's the thing tho, i mean i DJed at the Liars first show, my band opened for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and i can't say going to those shows and being around that felt any different from going out now... i had fun and heard decent music then and the same thing happens now...

i guess bc i was not really into those bands so it wasn't like i felt like i was seeing something special...
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
not sure about the "NY hasnt got much to boast about even in rock/dance terms these days" thinking. at least 50% of the bands written up/gushed about on pitchfork are based in brooklyn. and both dennis ferrer and todd edwards are still local in jersey, right?
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
well in that case i suppose london has nothing to worry about either. weve got what, wiley, mala, dva, tempz, burial, etc etc etc.

end thread plz.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
gumdrops said:
well in that case i suppose london has nothing to worry about either. weve got what, wiley, mala, dva, tempz, burial, etc etc etc.

end thread plz.
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i'm not making a value judgement on those pitchfork artists, i don't like most of what they cover myself. but if "happening" is the criteria, then they qualify of some level (perhaps not one we care much about, but still).
 
Sectionfive

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
gumdrops said:
not much surprise post dubstep guys went digging even further back into dance history.
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Part of the reaction to wobble innit. Or more specificity the reaction to people who had come to dubstep with little interest in where it came from. A lot of the hand-wringing around 07/08 was more to do with perceived attitudes towards "dubstep" rather then the music itself.

When the shift towards house started it was mostly the younger, less established players that moved first. Dubstep might have been the first thing they had really invested in. People were precious about it, not necessarily in a bad way just the same as everyone is about whatever their thing is. Being "new" to house they didn't want to fall in to the same trap as the wobble brigade did. So you ended up with far more threads and buzz about Larry Heard and Chicago then anything contemporary. The Swamp81 retro 808 thing captured a bit of that. Didn't have to be new or ground breaking to be successful because it felt authentic enough to satisfy the thirst for old.

Then the other side is that it was DJ led so you got more digging and more history.
That could probably account for the lack of reverence and sacred cows in grime somewhat.
 
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stephenk

Well-known member
CrowleyHead said:
Brenmar is officially evidence that London successfully killed New York, as in murdered. Until I heard him speak, I was convinced by the stupid haircut that he was an Englishman in New York (No Sting).

There is a person in America so BLINDLY taking cues from whatever goes on in London, that until I heard him speak, I was so drastically convinced he wasn't actually american. I figured he was just Oneman's crate-carrier who got stranded on the way back from a show.

You guys might as well just start taxing our house producers.
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hahahahahahah brenmar
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
I just passed a group of 7-8 year old kids huddled round a mobile listening to a Riko set. Nah London ain't dead yet
 
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Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
It may be that London's recent weakening has to do with its becoming too self-aware of its own grand narrative, as evidenced by this thread. Certainly dubstep's forced and hysterical modernism in reaction to "brostep" stealing all its thunder is largely to blame for how diffuse, aimless and difficult to grasp it has become.

I agree with what has been said earlier on that ironically brostep really is the true inheritor of the HCC mythology. It's probably no coincidence that it has also achieved this status quietly, and without realizing it.
 
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