Drum'n'bass 98-99

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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
craner said:
I like M-Beat. I wasn't saying it was his best record and you're right, part of my affection for 'Incredible' is how Levy ended up infuriating the future architects of Drum and Bass.

I also understood then and I understand now why they reacted the way they did: they had a couple of years experience of being ignored or derided or insulted by people who were now poised to profit from their achievement and potentially destroy it in the process.

But, then again, who elected them to speak on behalf of everybody else? As Charissa put it, "who are they to tell me I can't play 'Incredible'? I like it."
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Yeah that's all True enough, but then again looking at the sets of pirates and events (rolldabeats is back up btw) I always feel like this story is overblown. The fact is ragga jungle was kinda played out by end of 94, beginning of 95. Youth culture is always a fickle thing. A bit like how hardcore only had the committed by end of 92, into 93.

If you were playing Incredible mid 95, well, you would probably be seen as lagging. Although strangely, I used to have a few dream fm tapes (one of the rare pirates which tried to chart a middle ground between jungle and happy hardcore) and they never played Incredible. At all. And they weren't exactly averse to the cheese. they're probably around on mixcloud and soundcloud, I lost them in the hd crash.
 
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Beast of Burden
thirdform said:
Yeah that's all True enough, but then again looking at the sets of pirates and events (rolldabeats is back up btw) I always feel like this story is overblown.
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Yes, but it's a good story. Good scenes have good stories. They have a mythology. Jungle had good stories.

Drum and bass never got more exciting than Ed Rush losing his rizlas behind the sofa or Source Direct failing an MOT.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
craner said:
Yes, but it's a good story. Good scenes have good stories. They have a mythology. Jungle had good stories.

Drum and bass never got more exciting than Ed Rush losing his rizlas behind the sofa or Source Direct failing an MOT.
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I don't agree. Chicago house has no mythology, no story to it, just kids making fairly basic industrial influenced post-disco jack traxx. and arguably was the more revolutionary art form than detroit, in the 80s.

Don't be a simpleton, you need to retire into the curator role you were always destined for. Luke might disdain the nts aristocracy, but at the same time he went to New Zealand and Doof land, so...



Larry Heard, 1988. Beating the Detroit geezers at their own game.

Oh but also



This is still the avant-garde.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
craner said:
Yes, but it's a good story. Good scenes have good stories. They have a mythology. Jungle had good stories.

Drum and bass never got more exciting than Ed Rush losing his rizlas behind the sofa or Source Direct failing an MOT.
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Also some of the best hardcore has no real story attached to it either. Too weird to be poptimist.





If anything, jungle and later dnb developing a story, a myth, serves as a progressive and a conservative factor simultaneously. The art of a good dialectician is recognising this tension. Something @blissblogger mentioned in his Wire series as regards the track Truly One by Origin Unknown. Because you are no longer dealing with an ad hoc kitchen sink white label culture but a tradition in the process of being established, with its conventions and vision. It is why jungle defining itself against the detritus of cheesy rave was progressive in 93-96, less so in 97-98. But the myth hasn't really changed, it's still about inner city music with a street aesthetic pushing the envelope. It's just that pushing the envelope no longer accords with what we want it to be, it now indicates technical perfection as the parameters have been worked out.

This is why people went over to garage in 97-98. They wanted jungle's sample collage aesthetic, but in a much more atlanticist house context. A lot of UK garage productions like bleep are much more high definition than ramshackle breakbeat choppage. Actually I take exception to something Simon wrote about how 2step sounds nothing like house at all, I dunno, I can hear the lineage quite clearly. There's comparitively little Jamaica in 2step chassy, actually. Apart from flava. Whereas roots and ragga are essential to jungle. You can hear this in the way someone like DJ Hype programmed his basslines, they have the bass quake tectonic movement which you get from sound system.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
observe:



You rarely get this sort of reverbed spaciousness in garage.

More than King Tubby this is about the sound system echoing in the community centres and town halls.

Garage to the contrary has always been made according to club standards.
 
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old goriot

Well-known member
craner said:
Yes, but it's a good story. Good scenes have good stories. They have a mythology. Jungle had good stories.

Drum and bass never got more exciting than Ed Rush losing his rizlas behind the sofa or Source Direct failing an MOT.
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Well there is the story of Messiah and the end of Konflict. Accounts vary, but supposedly there was a dispute over the ownership of the tune between Kemal from Konflict and Clayton from the Renegade Hardware label, which set off a race to get the DAT tape from Music House. Kemal got to the tape first, but Clayton’s goons caught up with him outside and forced him into a car at gunpoint. The song was released on Renegade Hardware and nothing else was ever released under the Konflict name
 
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Beast of Burden
old goriot said:
Well there is the story of Messiah and the end of Konflict. Accounts vary, but supposedly there was a dispute over the ownership of the tune between Kemal from Konflict and Clayton from the Renegade Hardware label, which set off a race to get the DAT tape from Music House. Kemal got to the tape first, but Clayton’s goons caught up with him outside and forced him into a car at gunpoint. The song was released on Renegade Hardware and nothing else was ever released under the Konflict name
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So are we all agreeing, contra @thirdform, that good stories are good?
 
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