the wire

[zhao]

'tis a shame to see that the Wire is now home to Mark Fisher's resentment-tantrums in the form of a blog

reading his thoughts on how Portishead were just too darned stylish the first time around, I found myself thinking, 'could i possibly care less what this fellow thinks about portishead's first record?' (answer: no)

it never ceases to amaze me how lacking in musical and intellectual content his criticisms are

"Gibbons's gloom always struck me as being more like illegible grumbling than the oblique bleakness it wanted to be."

yep, that's genuine critical intelligence, to foment 'suspicion' about musicians' commitments and then tell us what their art 'wanted to be' lol ... nothing like endless psychologizing hypotheses in place of, say, actual discussion of the music

it's hardly surprising that the fellow who so frequently uses the term 'smugonaut' is the one who exemplifies it better than anyone else in music writing on the net

(nice to see Blanning's mention of Todd Haynes tho, with whom I spent the afternoon not long ago discussing theory, gay cinema, criticism, music, and of course the dylan film -- a perfect example of someone who knows theory inside-out and is making art out of it, not hacklike drive-by blogposts lol)

what do y'all think, with a little more work and maybe reinforcing the foundations a bit, this aMinda just might turn out to be suitable for filling in the void left by nomad huh?

but yeah, i quit my 6+ year subscription about 3 years ago and never looked back... wouldn't mind reading the Voigt interview though as I'm a huge fan of his Gas project.

where is this wire blog though i can't for the life of me find it? not even a link from the magazine site.

not familiar with his writing but what he said re: portishead sounds like shit. and he looks douchey as well.

 

[UFO over easy]

what do y'all think, with a little more work and maybe reinforcing the foundations a bit, this aMinda just might turn out to be suitable for filling in the void left by nomad huh?

except nomad was one of k-punk's staunch supporters innit.. maybe aMinda will be the anti-nomad

 

[stelfox]

By the way, since this thread is devoted to The Wire, I have just read one of the top Spanish critics saying that The Wire has become less interesting in the last months. It's funny because I personally think that the magazine is actually getting more interesting...

Who was it, just out of interest? Personally, I think the magazine is in a pretty strong place at the moment. Derek is doing great things with the reviews section. The features are varied and well written — this month there's Kan Mikami, Carl Craig and Dexplicit. Not many magazines where you'd get a line-up like that. Of course, I'm a bit biased, but I think it's more exciting, in terms of the styles its mixing up, than it has been in a very long time.

 

[noel emits]

"Gibbons's gloom always struck me as being more like illegible grumbling than the oblique bleakness it wanted to be."

yep, that's genuine critical intelligence, to foment 'suspicion' about musicians' commitments and then tell us what their art 'wanted to be' lol ... nothing like endless psychologizing hypotheses in place of, say, actual discussion of the music.

To be fair he does declare his subjectivity in making those observations. You could rephrase the line something like "To me Gibbons' gloom always came across as being more like illegible grumbling than the oblique bleakness that I think would be more potent in this context.", which while being more honest and constructive probably lacks the rhetorical punch he was after. I don't know, I don't write for a living. Not to second guess the author or anything () but I suspect he's using that critical voice deliberately.

Anyway you think that's bad, Simon Reynolds just complained about her being called Gibbons! Now that's what I call churlish!

Is this 'blog' in the actual mag?

 

[noel emits]

To take the tangent even further into total irrelavancy, did you know that Scissor Sister's current session keyboard player is the son of ex-Goodie Graham Garden?

I love crap facts like that....

Do, do, do the funky gibbon....

 

[Ivan Conte]

And don't forget the articles on J Dilla, Benga and Robert Hood in the issue with Gudrun Gut on the cover... not to mention the excellent Henry Cow Primer.

You can check The Wire's blog here .

The Spanish critic I mentioned before is Cesar Estabiel. One of the few who is interested in the artists usually featured in The Wire, by the way, and precisely that's why his comment about falling out of love with the magazine is more surprising. is. You can find his comments -in Spanish- in the first lines of this blog entry about Henry Cow. This is what he says (my translation)

Until a few months ago, The Wire was one of the monthly compulsory purchases. Now I only buy it if at least one of the artists featured on the cover is interesting to me, or, in this case I have no doubt, if the issue includes the Primer section. It is a pity that it is not a monthly section. This is the best radiograph on an artist (whose production is difficult to handle) or style that I know.

 

[UFO over easy]

Walking out of Kode9's DJ set at the recent BLOC weekender in Norfolk, all of us there in The Wire's chalet were saying more or less the same thing- noone else plays the kind of music Kode9 currently plays out. There's very little of anything approaching dubstep in his sets: instead, there's what sounds like speeded up crunk, Southern hiphop reedited into ever sharper shards, all kinds of ghetto funk given technofied refixes, neo-soul taken at breakneck pace.

Both Kode9 and Hyperdub seem to be going in the opposite direction to what you might associate with dubstep: the music is getting quicker, sharper, more synthetic and fractured. Watching his set, I wasn't sure whether to dance or to just marvel at the way he's able to splice these musical genres together. The breadth of music traversed was enough of a rush on its own.

reading this made me quite sad. the music press seem keen to help hyperdub shrug off the dubstep label when they're one of the great hopes for the scenes continuing health.

I think it maybe shows a slight misunderstanding of what dubstep really meant to people a few years back as well..

the rest of the post stems from the claim that the music's got faster. tempo-wise it's still centred around 140bpm, don't know where he got that from. the music kode plays is certainly busy though, probably just an illusion

I think the sense of mystery that these people seem to get with kode's sets stems partly from the fact that, understandably (as they're not keen at all on the majority of music given the dubstep label), they aren't really paying that much attention to the music anymore. So when they hear something exciting it catches them off guard.. but there are other people playing out this stuff, and making this stuff.

 

[faustus]

Watching his set, I wasn't sure whether to dance or to just marvel at the way he's able to splice these musical genres together

are you dumb? dance!
serious, kode 9's sets are wicked, danceable, and all round fun

i think for me the wire is generally a bit too much about 'marvelling' at music

 

[vimothy]

By the way, since this thread is devoted to The Wire, I have just read one of the top Spanish critics saying that The Wire has become less interesting in the last months. It's funny because I personally think that the magazine is actually getting more interesting...

I agree with this -- The Wire has been getting less and less interesting, IMO. My subscription ran out recently and I won't be re-subscribing.

 

[bassnation]

are you dumb? dance!
serious, kode 9's sets are wicked, danceable, and all round fun

i think for me the wire is generally a bit too much about 'marvelling' at music

yep, thats how the blog seemed to me. plus this line, at the end of the kode9 article annoyed the fuck out of me:

I'm still seriously impressed that it ends up creating something so graceful and exhilarating, rather than some disfunctional mutant that only a drugged-up crowd would enjoy.

elitest crap. if it wasn't for "drugged up crowds" (i.e. the entire fucking early rave scene) derek wouldn't be able to over intellectualise music that comes from the streets. as stelfox would say, this strikes me as rarified indie bollocks.

 

[stelfox]

er, don't put words in my mouth about my reviews editor thank you!

also have no idea where the wire's blog is.

 

[noel emits]

reading this made me quite sad. the music press seem keen to help hyperdub shrug off the dubstep label when they're one of the great hopes for the scenes continuing health.

I think it maybe shows a slight misunderstanding of what dubstep really meant to people a few years back as well..

Maybe it's defeatist (it is), but I guess if you've been through a similar process with others genres you might just reckon on it being a lost cause in terms of being able to retain an expansive scope while staying under the same umbrella. It's like you can't fight the tide of history and the word 'dubstep' now belongs to more people with a limited idea of what that means than it does to people who are interested in making their own definitions and stretching boundaries, sadly but perhaps unavoidably at this point. I suppose the attitude is give it up now and put your energy into making something else, get a new umbrella or be forced out to stand in the rain.

It is bollocks though because Kode 9 is still 'dubstep' to most people, even if not to himself (), so there is hope. As for placing Kode as the only person playing that music well that's a little lazy but it is a blog and I suppose you have to give people an easily identifiable point of contact for an idea.

Have they disabled comments on that blog? That's a shame, can you imagine!

 

[bassnation]

er, don't put words in my mouth about my reviews editor thank you!

also have no idea where the wire's blog is.

oops sorry dave. you used that in an entirely different context unconnected to the wire. don't want you to get into trouble over me talking shit! i still stand by my comments on that article though.

heres the blog:
http://www.thewire.co.uk/themire/

 

[noel emits]

if it wasn't for "drugged up crowds" (i.e. the entire fucking early rave scene) derek wouldn't be able to over intellectualise music that comes from the streets. as stelfox would say, this strikes me as rarified indie bollocks.

We didn't fight in the rave wars so that you could practice this kind of sober consideration!

In defense of The Wire, there was some excellent stuff played on their Resonance FM show last week, I think Biba Kopf was selecting.

 

[bassnation]

We didn't fight in the rave wars so that you could practice this kind of sober consideration!

ha ha, damn right! derek should be made to double drop before he sits down at the computer. its the only way that integrity can be properly preserved.

 

[zhao]

Comments on this blog are restricted to team members.

what the fuck is that wack shit?

 

[nomos]

dunno, ben. derek's been pretty sharp on grime and dubstep the last few years. and when was the last time that kode9 really seemed to identify with dubstep? he said way back that he prefers the open-ended idea of hyperdub to being tagged with a particular genre. and pretty much all of his output and interviews since then reinforce the point. also, some hyperdub releases are pushing upwards of 147 bpm which i think matches peak tempos in his sets.

i see what you're saying, but if djs/producers like kode9, mala, shackleton, etc. aren't really calling themselves dubstep then there's no reason to force them into it.

what's the link to the blog, btw?

 

[aMinadaB]

oh hey, nice to see a discussion going

link here:

http://www.thewire.co.uk/themire/

 

[bassnation]

dunno, ben. derek's been pretty sharp on grime and dubstep the last few years. and when was the last time that kode9 really seemed to identify with dubstep? he said way back that he prefers the open-ended idea of hyperdub to being tagged with a particular genre. and pretty much all of his output and interviews since then reinforces the point. also, some hyperdub releases are pushing upwards of 147 bpm which i think matches peak tempos in his sets.

i see what you're saying, but if djs/producers like kode9, mala, shackleton, etc. aren't really calling themselves dubstep then there's no reason to force them into it.

what's the link to the blog, btw?

its a pity that dubstep isn't considered a broad enough church these days really.

 

[UFO over easy]

dunno, ben. derek's been pretty sharp on grime and dubstep the last few years. and when was the last time that kode9 really seemed to identify with dubstep? he said way back that he prefers the open-ended idea of hyperdub to being tagged with a particular genre. and pretty much all of his output and interviews since then reinforce the point. also, some hyperdub releases are pushing upwards of 147 bpm which i think matches peak tempos in his sets.

i see what you're saying, but if djs/producers like kode9, mala, shackleton, etc. aren't really calling themselves dubstep then there's no reason to force them into it.

yeah for sure, I'm not saying anyone should be forced into anything at all, but for me dubstep was always a word for the scene more than anything sonic, and (again, for me anyway) hyperdub still represent a corner of this scene more than any other. You're right, it doesn't have much in common with the majority of what's going on, but I don't think that matters too much when you consider that it was them, along with a couple of other labels, who really defined the scene in the first place.

with the speed thing - for the most part it's still strictly dubstep tempo. some of kode9s own tunes were pretty quick for a while, but his stuff seems to have slowed back down again a bit. generally the tunes might be a bit faster but you can certainly mix just about everything on hyperdub in a 140bpm set, apart from the flip to globetrotting which must be in the low 130s

but I guess if you've been through a similar process with others genres you might just reckon on it being a lost cause in terms of being able to retain an expansive scope while staying under the same umbrella

that's true too, but then it just becomes a question of where do you draw the line - anyone with some grasp of uk dance music has seen or at least read about what happens to scenes like this, so you could just see it as a doomed enterprise from the get go. I think at the moment though the scope is still there, and it will be as long as adventurous DJs keep on getting booked.

Kode 9 and Hyperdub obviously have every right to do what they want though, and if they are trying to seperate themselves at all they're doing it well. Not making a fuss about it or anything, just carrying on releasing great music, Kode 9 carrying on performing in interesting places and just letting the hype machine take care of it.

Talking of hyperdub/the wire/blah blah, is anyone going to any of this? - http://www.museumgardenhistory.org/atmospheres2

I'm going to pop along for the monday I think, looks fun