leamas
Well-known member
Just heard this by high contrast, not sure how long it's been around. Really cool tune done in an old skool style, nothing ground breaking but I really like it. Reminds me of Omni Trio - Renegade Snares.
Modern d'n'b is rubbish - tune ID and a moan from an old man
- Thread starter john eden
- Start date
Haha i kept meaning to mention this, they play it in the daytime on 1Xtra, it's such a blatant - but fun - Omni Trio refix, with a bit of Inner City life thrown in (it's Diane Charlemagne on vocals).
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Oh that! When she does the 'ooooh' bit in the breakdown I thought it was a cheeky nod to Inner City Life and then I read the back of the sleeve and saw who the singer was. The sleeve has a kind of artificially aged thing going on so it's all a bit of retro fun.
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Leo
Well-known member
marcus intalax -- fabriclive 35...any thoughts?
good review at RA: http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=4707
good review at RA: http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=4707
I'll probably pick this up. I've always liked Intelex and the fabric mixes tend to be ok. Plus it has no pendulum on it. I haven't heard that tarantula track that was being discussed at the beginning of the thread, but in general I think pendulum are pretty much the exemplar of whay recent DnB has sucked ass. Rocky, riffy midrange bollocks.
Alfons
Way of the future
Love that tune, has a nice little jungle vibe about it. Heard another tune from High Contrast in the same vibe which I think is going to be on his next album. Warped by Saburuko and some of the older Cyantific stuff was in the same vein, retro jungle revival?
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Picked up the new Fanu album, Daylightless - absolutely brilliant stuff.
wayne wedge
New member
Drum'n'bass - j'accuse!
I spent a good three years being pretty much obsessed with d'n'b. I reckon the kiss of death was that dull, shallow, low-friction toss 'New Forms' getting the Mercury prize. That prize almost killed the careers of Pulp, Portishead, Suede etc. etc. - but in this case it killed a whole genre - within a year there was jungle nostalgia compilations in the shops.
A lot of people took Roni Size's approach (lack of timbre/texture, dinner-party samples, 'real' songs, guest stars etc.) as a desperate gasp for mainstream recognition) or otherwise tried so hard to be 'pure' they lost all identity. 'IDM' pretension took a lot of life out of it too (the ol' middle-class sucking out vitality once again...)... it went up Squarepusher's arsehole.
Roni Size's LP coincided with Blair's election, Di's death .... and David fucking Bowie doing a drum'n'bass album! The reformation of British pop cuture, and the privatisation of subcultures have been with us ever since. Anywhere I've been playing drum and bass nowadays seems to be full of 30-40 year olds... those who feel grime is 'dodgy'...
I spent a good three years being pretty much obsessed with d'n'b. I reckon the kiss of death was that dull, shallow, low-friction toss 'New Forms' getting the Mercury prize. That prize almost killed the careers of Pulp, Portishead, Suede etc. etc. - but in this case it killed a whole genre - within a year there was jungle nostalgia compilations in the shops.
A lot of people took Roni Size's approach (lack of timbre/texture, dinner-party samples, 'real' songs, guest stars etc.) as a desperate gasp for mainstream recognition) or otherwise tried so hard to be 'pure' they lost all identity. 'IDM' pretension took a lot of life out of it too (the ol' middle-class sucking out vitality once again...)... it went up Squarepusher's arsehole.
Roni Size's LP coincided with Blair's election, Di's death .... and David fucking Bowie doing a drum'n'bass album! The reformation of British pop cuture, and the privatisation of subcultures have been with us ever since. Anywhere I've been playing drum and bass nowadays seems to be full of 30-40 year olds... those who feel grime is 'dodgy'...
Gabba Flamenco Crossover
High Sierra Skullfuck
Pretty much agree with this, but with the caveat that Brown Paper Bag is a savage tune, maybe the most effective use of a double bass ever in dance music. But then they overused it, and it became a cliche...
You left out the most important factor that did for d&b in '97... the rise of garage.
UFO over easy
online mahjong
chicken and egg man. it's fairly generally accepted I think that one of the factors that led to the rise of garage was the decline of jungle, rather than the other way round particularly, especially with a lot of producers turning to garage after being locked out of the drum and bass scene. no entry points etc.
is electronica middle class then?
wonk_vitesse
radio eros
You could write a jocular essay about all that class <> music stuff , but once you invent the dumbest term in music genre history 'IDM' it's surley open season. That said, ha
electronica is middleclass, yup! Great thread though , it get's more interesting as it goes on , some good posts about the nature of genre evolution, if only d'n'b had evolved in the same rich vein
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I carry around a sharp stick with me every day just so I can poke myself in the eye if I accidentally use 'IDM' as a genre.You could write a jocular essay about all that class <> music stuff , but once you invent the dumbest term in music genre history 'IDM' it's surley open season. That said, ha
Erm, but I think the obvious application of class to dance music isn't that it goes shit when middle class people start getting involved, it's that it goes shit when it starts consciously aspiring to conceal its roots and tart itself up. Arguably it's a feature of class insecurity more than anything else - you're not making 'proper music' until you're off the streets and into the concert halls collaborating with Courtney Pine...
You could write a jocular essay about all that class <> music stuff , but once you invent the dumbest term in music genre history 'IDM' it's surley open season. That said, ha
Great thread though , it get's more interesting as it goes on , some good posts about the nature of genre evolution, if only d'n'b had evolved in the same rich vein
yeah i don't buy that, 'once you invent the dumbest term...etc' in the states maybe. it goes on and on but idm wasn't really invented by anyone apart from that US email list thing it kinda came about that way. I'd love to hear the dude who started that list up defend that term now.
you're the guilty one here i reckon with class insecurity etc, your ridiculous stereotypes just compound it.
i suppose you have a checklist of musicians class backgrounds you can verify your claims against, so if anyone starts to start acting out of character you can pull them up on it and put them in their place?
people do things in music or lead it in directions for mostly other reasons than class, there are so many distinct things that bring about changes in direction with music, most of them are a mixture of internalized reasons, people wanting to change things, often as an auteurist reaction like someone like mala doing lady vocal tracks in a scene dominated by wobblers, or a reaction to external pressures of perception, market value, audience, competition within a scene etc.
anyway to counter your arguement
4 hero.
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Yeah, probably. I'm pretty middle class (university educated parents etc) and the way the phrase gets slung around as a term of abuse in these parts really grates on my nerves.
That was kind of the point I was making, though. It's not about working class people = good music, middle class people = shit music, it's about writing for the dancefloor = pressure to keep making good music (to some extent), writing for the critics (or even for yourself, if we're still allowed to believe in that sort of thing) = less pressure to keep things fresh, more tendancy to get self indulgent.
Yeah, you're right. I didn't want to bring class into it but it was there in the post I was replying to. I guess I've been reading K-Punk too much lately. But there is a definite push towards 'musical legitimacy' as defined by real instruments, 'albums you can listen to at home', organic sounds, 'maturity', vocals, playing live and all that business. I'd say there's insecurity there about whether what you're doing is 'proper music' or just naffing around witha computer to make some noises for people to take drugs to. You probably could view it as ambition / decadance instead of insecurity (I almost stuck a note in the previous post apologising for the word insecurity - I'm sure there's one that better describes what I meant and doesn't sound so patronizing.) But it's certainly aspirationalism and moving away from roots, and it very often - particularly in the case we're talking about - seems to lead to fairly dull music. Whether you view it as class based aspirationalism or not depends on whether you subscribe to the view that musical legitimacy is a bourgeouis frippery and the working class just want to go out an ave a good time innit. Which is a generalization, maybe an iffy one, but it seems to show up unchallenged quite a lot around here.
I think the interesting things are all the different tensions that get played out in any kind of music, and i think everyone wants to aspire to things, whether that's played out lyrically, or thru patchy musical signifiers, ie in the case you're talking about a kind of over serious bloodlessness, or thru a scene dynamic and the conssenus within that scene and the faith and relationship in the audience.
I happen to have no problem with electronica, i don't think it's dull, there is or more often now there was some great stuff, some of my favorite electronic music is what got called idm, it's just great very imaginative music at times and really fun to listen to, i don't actually think any of the people that made music that got called actually had any intentions but to do what they wanted and not worry about scenes, they were also informed by other music too by freeing themselves from that idea, but inevitably a scene kinda followed them.
Inevitably the really good ones leave a trail of second rate clones but you see that in every music, i've got no problem calling most music in genres shit as it's true.
Get something right and people will copy it, it's the kind of irrational cargo cultish behaviour you see throughout society, but it's not real creativity that way. One of the other problems is that scenes become vaccums the most interesting producers are either those who totally patent their sound or those who bring in sounds informed by music outside that scene, again it's another one of those tensions.
The really interesting things happen when people find the space to negotiate themselves out if the tensions though, either by dealing with them, ignoring them or improving them, or by just physically creating a space infront of speakers where egalitarian things happen.
I happen to have no problem with electronica, i don't think it's dull, there is or more often now there was some great stuff, some of my favorite electronic music is what got called idm, it's just great very imaginative music at times and really fun to listen to, i don't actually think any of the people that made music that got called actually had any intentions but to do what they wanted and not worry about scenes, they were also informed by other music too by freeing themselves from that idea, but inevitably a scene kinda followed them.
Inevitably the really good ones leave a trail of second rate clones but you see that in every music, i've got no problem calling most music in genres shit as it's true.
Get something right and people will copy it, it's the kind of irrational cargo cultish behaviour you see throughout society, but it's not real creativity that way. One of the other problems is that scenes become vaccums the most interesting producers are either those who totally patent their sound or those who bring in sounds informed by music outside that scene, again it's another one of those tensions.
The really interesting things happen when people find the space to negotiate themselves out if the tensions though, either by dealing with them, ignoring them or improving them, or by just physically creating a space infront of speakers where egalitarian things happen.
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ChineseArithmetic
It is what it is
Anyone heard this? I'm just listening to it now, and it's surprisingly palatable. Certainly compared to Photek's Form and Function 2, which I also heard today and was utter fucking shite. It's a tragedy to hear something with his name on sounding this dire.
Alfons
Way of the future
Yeah I quite like the Marcus cd, it's not all banging dancefloor bizness... Clarendon is a tuuuune.
Marcus Intalex, St. Files, and Calibre (Mistical) feat. DRS - the 11th hour
http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF247643-02-01-01.mp3
basically drs rapping this thread
That form & function vol. 2 thing looked really bad, haven't really checked it out though.