Funky/London/UK House
echevarian
babylon sister
You should try making some stuff at a slower tempo Shonx, I still like those Dysfunktion beats you were making.
Drunken Master or Canton would be interesting as house tunes thats for certain.
Drunken Master or Canton would be interesting as house tunes thats for certain.
I've been working on stuff below 130 anyway. Was getting more into the less jazzy, rougher end of broken beat long before I knew about funky anyway. Been buying mostly house
Really hope the original dubsteppers get in on this to be honest, seems a shame El-b's making halfstep, when he's got such an obvious affiniity with this sound. I think some of his wonkier riddims like the Back to Me remix and Wickedest Sound would go down well with contemporary trends being what they are.
Still can't expect producers to make stuff I like if I'm not. Must get on this
Really hope the original dubsteppers get in on this to be honest, seems a shame El-b's making halfstep, when he's got such an obvious affiniity with this sound. I think some of his wonkier riddims like the Back to Me remix and Wickedest Sound would go down well with contemporary trends being what they are.
Still can't expect producers to make stuff I like if I'm not. Must get on this
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Yeah I like the rawness of it, it makes it seem like more ideas can be thrown into the mix... as much as I like a lot of the deeper dubstep that's coming around now there is this sense of a lot of it being extremely slick/sheeny...
From the perspective of a complete production novice it's also a bit discouraging to think that you have to be hitting these levels to get a tune played... although I suppose dubstep's always been about the mixdown
UFO over easy
online mahjong
i want to get a beige t-shirt with "IT'S NOT BORING" written on in massive letters, hoxton style
mos dan
fact music
do it!
as for funky sendage... haha the 'smart crowd' must be cacking themselves. how long before a uk house commission is formed to talk about how to ward off the grime kids, a la so solid?
it almost already happened with that whole Circle wonky thing!
its alarming how quickly the thing is shifting now. although on the most part the music suits me better, i wonder what will happen, what this sudden influx of new expectations and pressures will do
it will be interesting to see what happens from here, especially whether the aspirations of commercial breakthrough will follow. cos the absense of 'stars' and dreams of stardom at the moment seems to be one of the key things which differentiates the situation from garage's turning point, which it seems was tied in with the rise of easily recognisable figures with crossover potential and american dream-type aspirations of success
cos a lot of the new grimey producers seem to be on a different vibe to that, seems like there is a lot more of a sense of doing things independent and building underground infrastructure, which is a hopeful sign i think
aside from that Ben sign me up for one of them t-shirts
mos dan
fact music
well if grime and dubstep were the first scenes to really learn how to do things themselves with the help of the internet, then it will be interesting to see how this/future scenes learn from those lessons... about how to build an underground scene in the information age.
ben although you say "its alarming how quickly the thing is shifting now", remember that we've been waiting for these alarming shifts for quite a while already... not waiting impatiently though, for my part: when it's ready to mutate and go darker, it will, has always been my feeling. that's why i thought it was a bit weird that matt mason was saying 'i told you so' so long before it was 'so'.
mos dan said:
I thought that this had happened already... maybe I'm wrong. 'Say No To Wonky' ? ( Edit; Elgato beat me to it
)Shonx said:
Lotta, lotta presets. Korg Triton horn patches everywhere!
Lots of Reason (Gabryelle Strings !!!) I love it!!! I'd much rather actual tunes than a souless parade of perfect timbres.Corpsey said:
For me that 'sheen' totally f's up the tunes in terms of going deep into the sound, alienating slickness gets in the way. I wanna hear that raw, not quite competant, bearing your soul vybe!
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yeh things go how they go, it will just be interesting to see how it plays out, cos the shift which is taking place is drastic, and has apparently coincided with a mass influx of new eyes and ears, mostly quite detached from the scene as it has developed thus far (myself very much included). what the implications of that are i am interested to see
im interested to hear your thoughts on this... do you really think grime has learned that lesson? to a great extent i guess any tendency towards a sustainable underground was smothered due to the degree of restriction placed on the rave infrastructure, but i dunno, it seems to me (please feel free to demonstrate my ignorance cos i can't claim any great knowledge or understanding!) that to a great degree the dialogue and dynamic in grime is dominated by the tension between commercial aspiration and 'authenticity', but more often than not individual (or micro-scale collective) dreams of commercial success (maybe understandably) trump any sense of what could be done collectively to make it a sustainable scene
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I liked the way that so many sounds in this could quite easily have come from the acid house days or even earlier. Yeah people hitting buttons and enjoying themselves is way more interesting than hearing some anal retentive take four days on a snare sound.
at the risk of seeming like im talking to myself i've been thinking about this on the way home and think too general a claim, and ignores loads of really important recent developments... BBK, Trim/Circle, Young Dot and the re-orientation around producers seeming significant counter-arguments. although did Trim not say that he was going to quite if he didn't get signed by Soulfood 5 or something? regardless, interesting i to contrast funky in this context against when garage first started turning dark and mc-led
the talk of sonics is interesting... my perspective is that texture is still one of the most exciting things remaining about dance music, its just that i don't usually find the textures of really refined production particularly fresh sounding (although there are some exceptions), in stark contrast to some of the madness heard from relatively rough use of presets. its just not to say that i don't value timbre, and that someone spending ages tweaking sonics to create new textures isn't a very exciting thing for me (e.g. Darkstar, Zomby, bassline, Rustie etc)
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
The thing is, someone messing about with presets can be be utterly shit, and someone looking for the perfect snare etc. can be great...
But I suppose when the focus is on how high-tech your stuff sounds it can take the focus away from whether or not it actually works as music... whereas for example some Mala tracks, you can tell they've been made on Reason (not to say they sound shit at all) they sound pretty rough but they're so strong musically that it doesn't matter... well aware I'm now going to get shot down but you get what I'm saying surely.
But I suppose when the focus is on how high-tech your stuff sounds it can take the focus away from whether or not it actually works as music... whereas for example some Mala tracks, you can tell they've been made on Reason (not to say they sound shit at all) they sound pretty rough but they're so strong musically that it doesn't matter... well aware I'm now going to get shot down but you get what I'm saying surely.
sodiumnightlife
Sweet Virginia
Not at all, I completely agree with you. Its like what house and techno have been going through, it was all pretty digital for a few years, but now some roughness has been thrown back in, things sound nice again. Its just hard not to do it without sounding retro, but its something funky is doing pretty well. Its like mak 10 said "you don't need much..."
I think my preference for tinkering vs over-production is that the first doesn't exclude people who don't know any synth programming skills and can find something useable out of the box and make music with it. I think there's a lot of people who have a natural talent for music who are put off by the often quite steep learning curve whereas that learning curve often seems quite attractive to producers who don't have the musical talent yet can turn out perfect mixdowns of cliched ideas. I often find the most interesting ideas often come from people that don't realise what they're supposed to do musically - I've heard people tapping out more interesting riddims on tables than I hear in a lot of tunes recently.
Think there's a lot of people in electronic music that should really be either musician or engineer but not both. I'd probably make plenty more music if I didn't find mixdowns such a lengthy and dull process, but some people seem to love it.
Think there's a lot of people in electronic music that should really be either musician or engineer but not both. I'd probably make plenty more music if I didn't find mixdowns such a lengthy and dull process, but some people seem to love it.
there's been private state-of-the-scene meetings, late last year of all the DJs, which reportedly were split down the usual US/UK divide...
mos dan
fact music
i wouldn't even apply such a structural analysis of it really.. a lot of it has to do with a crap product - which is not to say that the music is crap of course, but the product often is. in the last couple of years, since the DIY explosion mk 2 (as opposed to when wiley used to sell vinyl out the back of a car, DIY initiative mk 1) a lot of grime mcs, irrespective of their intentions, have put out mixtapes that massively under-sell their talent, and then either not marketed them at all, or marketed them really badly.
obvs lack of rave - and increasingly radio - support makes a big difference too.