Dubstep

mos dan

mos dan

fact music
luka said:
i got to agree with marcus. things are looking/sounding a wee bit brighter.
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this is a point that only needs making if you've been taken in by kpunk and alex william's notion that messy times=end times, that we're approaching a great deceleration/cultural entropy.
 
A

alex

Do not read this.
^which is obviously just a scapegoat/generalisation of dubstep, people just dont look hard enough.
 
M

mms

sometimes
mos dan said:
this is a point that only needs making if you've been taken in by kpunk and alex william's notion that messy times=end times, that we're approaching a great deceleration/cultural entropy.
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oh drop it dan it doesn't fit you.
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
mms said:
oh drop it dan it doesn't fit you.
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don't get me wrong i loved alex's post in particular as a think-piece, fascinating analysis.

but christ, things *are* good right now, is all! with the untold fact mix getting played and replayed on my mp3 player, zomby's new ep currently ripping to mp3, logan's new grime mix sounding very good (see grime thread), the 3 or 4 amazing cooly g sets i've seen out recently, and the heatwave's very, very promising funky-bashment night at fabric on friday.. how could you not be optimistic?!
 
M

mms

sometimes
mos dan said:
don't get me wrong i loved alex's post in particular as a think-piece, fascinating analysis.

but christ, things *are* good right now, is all! with the untold fact mix getting played and replayed on my mp3 player, zomby's new ep currently ripping to mp3, logan's new grime mix sounding very good (see grime thread), the 3 or 4 amazing cooly g sets i've seen out recently, and the heatwave's very, very promising funky-bashment night at fabric on friday.. how could you not be optimistic?!
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in the main you coulda been a bit nervous a year and a half - 2 years ago.
but yes things are looking fresh right now. it's almst like things are that far away from drum and bass now too which kinda haunted dance music for a while, wouldnt budge.
still don't see what that's got to do with alex's piece thats random, you got too caught up in it.
 
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mos dan

mos dan

fact music
mms said:
in the main you coulda been a bit nervous a year and a half - 2 years ago.
but yes things are looking fresh right now. it's almst like things are that far away from drum and bass now too which kinda haunted dance music for a while, wouldnt budge.
still don't see what that's got to do with alex's piece thats random, you got too caught up in it.
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er i don't see why it's random, it's intrinsically linked imo, it's about whether late capitalism has exhausted our creative (musical) resources, or if there's life in the old dog yet (which we're seeing that there really.. is). but either way sorry to bang on.

really liking the zomby EP, not least because it features a track blackdown played ages ago called 'be reasonable, demand the impossible' or similar - and i chopped out of the set for repeated listening - it's now retitled 'Firefly Finale'.

review by rouge's foam here http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-zomby-one-foot-ahead-of-other-ep.html

also features a review of woebot's review, sort of. which is right up my street but see what you think.
 
M

mms

sometimes
mos dan said:
er i don't see why it's random, it's intrinsically linked imo, it's about whether late capitalism has exhausted our creative (musical) resources, or if there's life in the old dog yet (which we're seeing that there really.. is). but either way sorry to bang on.

really liking the zomby EP, not least because it features a track blackdown played ages ago called 'be reasonable, demand the impossible' or similar - and i chopped out of the set for repeated listening - it's now retitled 'Firefly Finale'.

review by rouge's foam here http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-zomby-one-foot-ahead-of-other-ep.html

also features a review of woebot's review, sort of. which is right up my street but see what you think.
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no it was random that you think cos luka agrees with me, it's because of what k punk or alex thinks
 
4

4NR

Well-known member
yeah that footnote was a serious takedown, not just of S.R., but what we maybe can call the "Simon Reynolds" industry
 
Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Argh, the Fact magazine site still won't work for me. After reading RF laying into the Woebot review I really want to have a look at the original.
:mad: :eek: :rolleyes: , etc.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
here's woebots review from fact....

Rating: 8 / Format: CD/2x12" / Label: Ramp Recordings
Zomby’s critical appeal lies in his thinking outside of the dubstep box. His earlier 12”s ‘Spliff Dub’, ‘Mu5h’ and ‘Rumours and Revelations’ were practically cartoon versions of dubstep, sativa strings over goofy student-skank. Rapturously received within dubstep, perhaps in the way that folkies embraced the earliest Bob Dylan discs, these records seemed capable of perfectly encapsulating what people wanted their scene to be.

To pursue the Bob Dylan analogy - at the risk of inflating Zomby's ego to yet more absurd heights - what happened in parallel, and which subsequent path has come to define Zomby as an artist, was his creation of a new sound all of his own. Like the Dylan of Bringing it All Back Home he has become an artist in exile; one operating at a much more rarified artistic level than his peers. With the mind-bendingly beautiful ‘Strange Fruit’ and the stunning double EP on Hyperdub he ditched the clumsy digidub allusions, and atomised dubstep into a flurry of Super Nintendo arpeggios. A track like ‘Aquafresh’, where the lead line shifts pitch as though it were alive, raised the bar to preposterous levels. Where dubstep was almost always clunky and clumsy, these records were bright-eyed and fleet-footed.

The Zomby trademark, that halcyon sound of 8-bit trills made wet in a paradise of modern VST reverb, is a re-imagining of childhood, journalist Simon Reynolds accurately describing it as "a working-through of the music/popcult assimilated during infancy and early childhood". The vessel here is ganja, and the way it operates socially to perpetuate infantile desire, allowing the user to foster unnatural fixations, to refine and "vibe" on pleasurable effects in a way that betrays the systematic dedication of the adult. As an aside it's simple to see how weed-smokers (when the levels of THC they are exposed to are not as high as the better formulated strains of hydroponically-grown skunk) come to use dub reggae as a gateway music, before finding it not sufficiently fucked-up to mirror their head-space.

And Zomby must certainly be very high these days, still in that deliriously wonderful state where drugs offer acceleration and an effortless symbiosis with one's craft. The One Foot Ahead of the Other EP is one of those very special glimpses into the future, an organically avant-garde experience like Derrick May's The Beginning EP whose busy, racing lines it often unconsciously echoes. However, overlooking untouchable masterpieces within like the title-track and ‘Godzilla’, it also reveals our hero in danger of becoming too esoteric, abandoning the vestigial cheesiness and "choons" that ‘Strange Fruit’ made manifest. Furthermore, Zomby, in deciding to "keep it clean" has missed another trick: I for one would have liked to have heard more of the squalid, ear-melting disorientation of ‘Aquafresh’. How long, like Icarus, can he fly upwards towards the sun?
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mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
RF accuses Woebot's review of suffering from a "lack of musical detail" but his own analyses don't offer much in that regard.

For instance, RF mentions "Zomby’s method of hypnotically developing musical structure through the systematic expansion and contraction of metres, rhythms and pitch sequences" but there's no fine-grained treatment in the offing. It would be interesting to know precisely what is special about Zomby's use of changes in metres, rhythm, pitch; what *exactly* does the critic think is happening - spelt out in the standard musicological terminology. What does he mean by the 'systematic expansion of pitch sequences' - is this just that the arpeggios are slowed, so he moves from semi-quavers to quavers to crotchets? Does it mean that there is a chord progression motif that recurs, played at different speeds on different 'instruments'. Are sequences extended across a wider range of pitch? What does it mean?

Not to single out RF at all; vague use of purportedly clarificatory metaphor as a substitute for music theory meat is a general problem.
 
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M

mms

sometimes
just a different take on it that's all.
you don't have to know what makes up music to describe it or enjoy it.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
mms said:
just a different take on it that's all.
you don't have to know what makes up music to describe it or enjoy it.
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I'm just wondering to what extent this kind of description succeeds in communicating what's going on in music, especially when reviewers conflate subjective impressions (the 'hypnotic' quality of the music, for instance) with statements that refer to properties that, where invoked, should be discussed with much greater precision - a 'systematic expansion and contraction of metres, rhythms and pitch sequences.'
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
if you can sample some reynolds speech from that hardcore continuum talk at the start too that would be pretty amazing.
 
wise

wise

bare BARE BONES
dubble-u-c said:
anyone here up to making a chain saw calligraphy/ hyph mngo mash up? :p
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Tried this today couldn't get anywhere without reducing Chainsaw to such small parts that it became pointless.

Too much noise vs too much melody.

Anyone else?
 
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