no-one wants another acid jazz revival thats why. its a subnote of a subnote of an unread footer in terms of dance history. i can think of four tunes which are passable and even then i have to hold my nose to say i like them, such is the opproprium heaped upon the west london scenes shoulders. berets, jazz ciggies, toe-curlingly faux-sophistication - NEVER AGAIN.
and ultimately their sole selling point beyond the "warmness" (a euhpanism for jazz lite if ever i heard one), the brokenness of the beats themselves have been way surpassed by dubstep long ago - and before that jungle makes a mockery of those pretensions. does anyone still really like it?
i don't know why, but the very idea of it makes me feel light-headed with irritation.
For the sake of discussion I'll play devil's advocate to this commonly stated view about the social/outward implications of broken beat ^^^ :
Since Im not from the UK, the endless (and endlessly tedious) comments about this being aspirant west end cognoscenti-wannabees or whatever just goes nowhere as a musical criticism, because I don't care, and there's not enough time in the day to process the UK class issue - ultimately it's not my problem ffs! Broken beat at its best, at least to my ears, links up with traditions on which I was raised, i.e., motown, philly soul, r&b, jazz funk, hip-hop, and so on, then gets twisted as it passes through the junglist bottleneck - so of course I'm going to take an interest. Personally speaking, I love good broken beat, and as has been pretty much universally acknowledged, the bugz fabric mix is a great example of how potent this music can be. Especially with the vocals, which are fking awesome. Plus, the way it accommodates artwork red, with its nod to other emergent strands, etc etc...
As for "berets, jazz ciggies, toe-curlingly faux-sophistication - NEVER AGAIN," yeah sure, typical comment. But to this I would ask: who really cares, ultimately, what the dorky scenesters are doing with the fashion of the scene? One could VERY easily poke fun at the standard dubstep weedy whiteboys chiming "yo bad bwoy, bassline was SICK" with their hoodies and hats sideways and writing broken english on forums and doing their best to belong (yes, I've been to dubwar, a friend of mine played one). I mean, in some ways, to someone removed from these scenes,
all outward attempts at identity-building through fashion can look sillly.
Or, it can look perfectly human. Who cares, ultimately? I don't. To each his own. If they like berets I'm fine with that, not really my place to judge, not really interested in judging others to begin with, etc etc. I'm infinitely more interested in knowing if the music is doing something special, and if people can articulate it or not.
