Reynolds hardcore continuum event

[Tentative Andy]

Was reading Reynolds ''overrated/faves'' blog today with the usual mixture of admiration/fascination/outrage/disgust. I basically like his writing until it doesn't chime in with my own tastes...

Haha, that's a pretty good description of how it goes for me too. There are a lot of things he says that I disagree with, and that often annoy me, but I think I only get annoyed in the particular way that I do because so much of what he has to say is so interesting, it's a sort of 'why can't you be more consistent' situation.

While I was typing this, an ad for a Wigan Bounce comp came on the tv.

 

[luka]

yeah, i'd defineitely defend him and the continiuum... again i'd point to people like footloose and even riko and wiley.

 

[jambo]

Everyone should say hello to Simon.

*wave*

 

[slackk]

yeah, i'd defineitely defend him and the continiuum... again i'd point to people like footloose and even riko and wiley.

Given D Double E was on a jungle thing then garage then grime and now funky, you can slot him into this bracket as well.

 

[Spike]

I'd love to ask Reynolds to take a second look at the 2-step/dubstep extension of the continuum as he pretty much wrote it off at a fairly early stage, 2step due to garage's champagne/cocaine culture and dubstep because he considered it boring
Considering that one face of dubstep seems to be integrating with wonky/funky/minimal and that 2step is going through a revival but with a much more "underground" mentality (by underground I simply mean a break from the no hoods no trainers, mainstream club, 4x4 associations) I'd be curious to know whether he'd give it all a second listen

 

[Tentative Andy]

I think what he is talking about definitely picks out a certian musical tradition/trajectory, sure, but I'd just wish that he called it 'the London continuum' or something. Calling it the hardcore continuum makes it appear that other scenes or places haven't taken up the legacy of hardcore, which isn't true - again think of happycore, donk, Euro styles like gabba, those are all hardcore descendents too. The way Reynolds puts it seems to suggest, deliberately or otherwise, that London holds a monopoly on the hardcore tradition.
It also seems to suggest that recent forms within the nuum still bear musical similarities to hardcore, and although I'm not an expert like some people here, I do struggle to see what dubstep or even UKG/2-step have to do with classic-era hardcore in terms of just the pure sound. Without wanting to get too abstract about it, I think you can see that something descends from something else, through various mutations and developments, without what you end up with needing to have any important shared features with the ancestor. I can take that point that the the newer forms share some of the cultural infrastructure, esp pirate radio, with hardcore, but again why not just call it the 'London scene continuum' or a more catchy version theorof.

But perhaps the most important point - what does it mean? I.e. - even if there is something we can point to and say 'that's the hardcore continuum', how does that advance our understanding of the music?

 

[jambo]

again think of happycore, donk, Euro styles like gabba, those are all hardcore descendents too.

They are kind of, but not so directly. There's more from early techno and way less if any reggae reggae sauce in those styles, I think that's a key element.

I think sonic continuities are there all the way through as well. It's pretty obvious in dubstep, grime and 2-step isn't it? Most clearly in the way the bass is used but also in the detuned lead sounds, riffs, pads, drum sounds, the way samples are used, just about everything really, not to mention attitude. And now I think you can hear echoes in funky of the way breaks were used in hardcore. Maybe that's just me though.

 

[mos dan]

My issue with Reynolds comment is that he just seems stuck on what was relevant to him at a particular time - i.e. dancehall is relevant as a precursor to jungle in the 90s maybe? It's the same blinkered attitude which allows him to write off grime after 2003.

on which subject, allow me to post up this old whinge i wrote about 30 months ago:

http://dot-alt.blogspot.com/2006/09/your-loss.html

People keep telling me, "there's still good tunes coming out". But I'm trying not to hear them. The people, but also, in a way, the tunes too. Like with a love affair, I'd rather a clean break.

Is the verb 'trying' quite revealing here, actually? I'm going to have to throw up my favourite Lenin quote again aren't I....

"We would be committing a great mistake if we attempted to force the complex, urgent, rapidly developing practical tasks of the revolution into the Procrustean bed of narrowly conceived 'theory'."

the more i think about this event the more i think i might well go. just a shame for dissensus's sake it couldn't be held in the george in dalston

 

[Tentative Andy]

They are kind of, but not so directly. There's more from early techno and way less if any reggae reggae sauce in those styles, I think that's a key element.

I think sonic continuities are there all the way through as well. It's pretty obvious in dubstep, grime and 2-step isn't it? Most clearly in the way the bass is used but also in the detuned lead sounds, riffs, pads, drum sounds, the way samples are used, just about everything really, not to mention attitude. And now I think you can hear echoes in funky of the way breaks were used in hardcore. Maybe that's just me though.

Yeah, but that's sort of my point - hardcore wasn't just the London-based, breakbeats and reggae-bass style, you had bleep, you had the Beltram/Belgium ultra-heavy stuff. And those scenes have clearly had offshoots too. This is not to denigrate the breakbeat ardcore btw, because though I like lots of other early 90s stuff, at the end of the day that's what I keep finding myself coming back to.

As for the contiuned similarities, I take your point about the bass - in fact that's the aspect that I respond to most positively in, say, dubstep. Drums, I'm not so sure, I think there's a distant relation, but the way breaks are used in, let's say, breakbeat ardcore, classic jungle, and the half-steppy things in dubstep, are very different ways of developing the same model. But one of the main things that always struck me as key in hardcore was the melody elements - Metasm stabs, piano-octave riffs, litte bits of shrieking diva, the sped-up squeaky vocals, perhaps bits of sirens and whistles etc. - all perhaps linked by a tendancy towards high-frequenies. And I think that is certainly something that's gone, and indeed had gone pretty much as soon as jungle became an independent scene.
Not exactly sure where I'm going with this, except why name it after hardcore, as if everything is a direct offshoot of this, when really the only substantial link is the approaches to bass? Why not Soundsystem Continuum, or Sub-Woofah Continuum?

 

[Slothrop]

Well yes. Once you make the jump from dnb to garage you move from the idea of a musical continuum to the idea of a social / cultural one. Musically, I think a lot of nu-dnb has more in common with breakbeat hardcore than funky, but it doesn't count because it's not East London / pirate radio / working class enough. And because it's rubbish.

But that brings us back to the question I keep asking - if the defining features are East London ghetto yout' and pirate radio then why start with hardcore?

 

[Tentative Andy]

Take that point, Slothrop - but even then, even if you can say that the same sorts of people have been involved in the different periods of music, doesn it not often seem that the 'cultural feel' of the scenes are very different from each other? I would have to disagree with Jambo, for instance, saying that the 'attitude' has always been something that ties it all together.
Probably sounding like I care about this more than I do. But the internet is for pointless arguments, right?

 

[Slothrop]

Take that point, Slothrop - but even then, even if you can say that the same sorts of people have been involved in the different periods of music, doesn it not often seem that the 'cultural feel' of the scenes are very different from each other?

In some ways, but there are a lot of common elements that keep getting passed down. And although the attitude varies, it seems to vary in a fairly consistant way, ie the pendulum swing between aggro and cheese.

Plus it's not just the same sorts of people but actually a lot of the same people.

 

[Tentative Andy]

Yeah I guess that makes sense. Personally I think what we need to get back to is something with a lot of aggro and a lot of cheese, all at once.
The people who have been there right through must be getting on a bit? Bet they'll have a few stories for the kids/grandkids.

 

[jambo]

I mean attitude in the sense of an approach to the music more than the social setting actually. To me it's clearly all rave music, and it's also clear that there is a direct lineage of 'ardkore > jungle > ukg > grime / dubstep. I don't know what it means either lol, but what it says is there was this thing born from a disparate set of elements and a situation and it has in a way survived through these various regenerations. It's a feeling really, but the sonic signifiers and/or their echoes/ghosts are there, just not necessarily in an obvious literal way, it's an evolution.

I guess we probably agree on that and I may not bother so much with this either but it's interesting to hear it in UKF now, at least I think so. As for where it should go, I don't think you can predict where the 'nuum is going to go next.

 

[jambo]

Someone mentioned the evolution of Footwurk on the Juke thread, the rapid feedback and mutation in a focussed scene. That's exactly what happened with 'ardkore - a very intense situation where mental experiences dancing to the music with loads of people in an altered state lead directly into music that inscribed that intensity and fed it back into the rave, and that with a real clarity of purpose, albeit a joyously anarchic one.

 

[Tentative Andy]

Cool, I think I can agree with most of that. Milk and cookies all round.
(One niggling gripe though - isn't grime, or some aspects of it, anti-dance? Or is that a misconception? I don't get to hear much of it.)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Why start w/ardkore? 1) It was the first modern dance music to unite the common nuum audience across class/race lines. By modern dance music I mean of the faceless techno bollocks model of amateurs using affordable/available tech & gear to avoid production/distribution chokeholds. 2) London's ardkore was the only version that had both of the main elements of all nuum musics; hip hop breakbeats (Shut Up & Dance, Criminal Minds, Danny Breaks) and the dread bass, plus ragga chatting or sampling (Ragga Twins, Demon Boyz, Rebel MC, etc.). Bleeps had the bass but not the breakbeats, Beltram/Belgium didn't have the low ends sorted out, purist techno wanted nothing to do w/it at the the time, house was about get tasteful in backlash.

Also, sure, the further away from '91-92 ardkore you get the more tenous the soundwise links get but surely someone else has drawn the parallels between, for example, the kitchen sink madness of ardkore and the anything goes madness of early grime especially. I'm not saying Wiley listened to Hyper On E and went "Yeah! Eskimo!", just that there are certain elements, strains that have seeped into the DNA of UK and specifically London nuum music. I mean, I always thought the nuum was more about the collective unconscious of the massive, rather than some hyper-conscious messiah like Burial recreating Remarc gigs that he didn't go to (which is brilliant in its own way, of course).

If nothing else, his reputation stays standing because he was one of the first people to stick his neck out and take an interest in the cheesy disposable side of dance music and to actually start thinking seriously about stuff that most critics were writing off as lowest common denominator trash. The fact that we're having this conversation at all speaks volumes for his influence....

Well, yeah. Nuum or not he did not get a lot of things right and he's obv. a great writer. Situation's a bit similar to the old rockists - to win a short term struggle over the legitimacy of the music you're championing you shoot yourself in the foot for the long run by codifying & lionizing a bunch of ideals, which immediately start to calcify, then try to fit every following sonic development into those ideals. But you still have to respect that initial struggle and the intent behind it.

Having said that, if I was going to ask him a pointed question, it'd be whether and why he still feels able to comment on the UK underground dance scene from the other side of the atlantic given that part of what he was originally railing against was people who write about dance music without getting their hands dirty and getting first hand experience of the culture...

I suspect that he knows better but can't resist. Can't really defend it but I doubt SR would try very hard to defend it either.

Plus, as Luka said, I'll defend SR & the continuum to the bitter end.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I see Jambo already said what I meant to say but more succinctly and clearly. ah, well.

 

[subvert47]

But perhaps the most important point - what does it mean? I.e. - even if there is something we can point to and say 'that's the hardcore continuum', how does that advance our understanding of the music?

that's my point of view, yes


but never mind all that
when's Totally Wired due out?

 

[droid]

2 minor points:

I think what he is talking about definitely picks out a certian musical tradition/trajectory, sure, but I'd just wish that he called it 'the London continuum' or something. Calling it the hardcore continuum makes it appear that other scenes or places haven't taken up the legacy of hardcore, which isn't true - again think of happycore, donk, Euro styles like gabba, those are all hardcore descendents too. The way Reynolds puts it seems to suggest, deliberately or otherwise, that London holds a monopoly on the hardcore tradition.

This has come up before, that the 'The' in the title infers some kind of exclusivity. I don't think this is the case. Its simply the use of the definite article, as in THE theory, THE cat etc...

But perhaps the most important point - what does it mean? I.e. - even if there is something we can point to and say 'that's the hardcore continuum', how does that advance our understanding of the music?

How does any theory about any kind of art advance our understanding of the art in question?