dripdrop*drap

2004-09-22T11:29:00.000+01:00

2004-09-17T13:53:00.000+01:00

oh and before I forget:

Ricardo Villalobos
thé au harem d'archimède
(Perlon)
release October 11

3x12" / CD

perlon43/perlon43cd

tracklisting:3x12"

A1. hireklon
B1. serpentin
B2. forallseasons
C1. théorème d'archimède
C2. hello halo
D1. temenarc 1
D2. temenarc 2
E1. miami
E2. stereobox
F1. true to myself

tracklisting: CD

1. hireklon
2. serpentin
3. forallseasons
4. théorème d'archimède
5. hello halo
6. temenarc 2
7. temenarc 1
8. miami
9. true to myself

Plus, heard new Vitalic 12"!!! Live sounding disco-rock drums, hard to make out Teutonic vocals, stomping glam-ness guitars, and then this stunning sparkling middle section, a kind of abused prettyness to it, tugging glamourous heartstrings with big minor 3rd chord shifts. Huge.

worst haircut ever

2004-09-17T13:40:00.000+01:00

2004-09-17T13:12:00.000+01:00

many sleepness nights caused by the clash of this:

AMµNITION
Sept 17 LONDON, Electrowerx

ROOM 1: ELECTRONIC
Jega (live)
Leafcutter John (live)
Datach'i (live)
The Gasman (live)
Chevron (live)
Julian Fane (live)
Ed Lawes (live)

ROOM 2: JUNGLE & BREAKCORE
Remarc (DJ)
Luke Vibert (DJ)
µ-Ziq (live)
Venetian Snares (live)
Bizzy B (DJ)
Shitmat (live)
Exile (live)
10pm - 6am

and this:

FRIDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER : HAYWIRE 9th BIRTHDAY SESSION @ ROUGE
room one: techno:glitch
RICHIE HAWTIN [m-nus]
MATHEW JONSON - LIVE [Itiswhatitis/Minus/Perlon]
ANDREW WEATHERALL [RGC/Warp]
MAGDA [m-nus]
Visuals by Pixelpasta
room two : electro:hiphop:techstep:d'n'b
DEAD SILENCE SYNDICATE - LIVE [Dead Silence]
RADIOACTIVE MAN [RGC/Control Tower]
WARLOCK [Rag & Bone]
SPA CRU [Freeport]
RICK HOPKINS [Outlet]
Visuals by Julia
11pm - 6am

I decided to plump for Hawtin/Magda/Jonson/Weatherall/Warlock. I may well be a mug for passing over the Bizzy B/ Remarc feast of killer amens, but I refuse to line that Venetian Snares character's pockets any longer. Besides Richie's M_nus Records is on ridiculously good form, and any chance to hear whats coming up from them is well worth my time. On the other hand everyone at the Planet Mu night will have a better haircut than Hawtin's current Phil Oakey meets Gareth Keenan in the Village of the Damned thing. So so wrong.

2004-09-16T11:27:00.000+01:00

just another quick thought on blinded by the lights: Comparing it to Weak become heroes is such a great e-burnout parallel. The mood in blinded' is so much darker, more intense ('i'm having such a great time' to 'i'm totally fucked'), and the music follows (encouraging, happy pianos to chastising cold synths). Even if there is a kind of seductive artificiality to the scene in Weak become heroes, it's so much more attractive than the kind of club in Blinded by the Lights. I've been listening to the slightly cheese Soul Central version of Strings of Life, and even though it's all super smooth bongo-and-reverse-cymbals production and has a dreadful/genius tinkly piano show-off, I maybe kind of slightly just prefer it to the original and the real ale misty eyed reverence that goes with it; but it seems a similar attitude those boring stern chords and serious intoxication in Blinded versus the optimism and pre-jading fun depicted in Weak Become heroes. I shall now cower in wait until the techno heavies come and kneecap me with a 909 cowbell...

currently stuck on

2004-09-14T18:45:00.000+01:00

The Streets 'Blinded by the lights'
a scarily accurate anti-superclub protest song. During a night out you see so many silent people sporting that blank anhedonic look; absolutely not having the time of their life. Reminds me of weary families trudging round a theme park, their pleasure at the mercy some big money contraption. I love the way those big serous chords, those stern module strings darting around the mix like the waking rapid eye movement of the truly fucked, are kind of obscured by the closeness of the monologue. The music is drowned out by his anxiety and also drowns itself out in it's complete non-descript forgetability, just a general air of authority. Those big e-rush sweeping filter effects perfect to signify his coming up, that quiet vulnerable point when the synths lose their cutting edge, 'maybe i shouldn't have done the second one...BUT even though the kind of big room anthemic prog mulch that this song parodies is dull at best and cynical manipulation at worst, i still can't stop loving...

Goldtrix feat Andrea Brown 'Trippin'
If only all that Sasha and Digweed tedium was as restrained and careful as this. There's still the sternness, and the filtered build up beginning (just like Blinded By the Lights) but instead of the uncomfortable intimacy, it's tense and throbbing and sexy. Her voice is amazing, chesty and authoritative, leaping out of the broad dry landscape provided by the synths. I'd love to know what she looks like but I'd probably be disappointed

DJing!
I've recently learnt The Big Secret of the DJ; *whisper it* mixing is a complete piece of piss and wicked fun. It's just getting one record to the right speed - cut an eq that you wish to bring in on the other record - bring it in slowly - adjust a bit - ironic spinback - plug headphones into the mic jack - shout something. Done... You would never realise it by the look on some of their faces. If only I'd known this when I used to think that every tweak of an irrelevant knob was another piece of subtle genius.

2004-09-14T18:15:00.000+01:00

sorry for unscheduled break.
thanks to simon silverdollar for the tapes they're large! will report back soon

2004-09-04T11:29:00.000+01:00

I'm now into my third day of my pre-return-to-university jogging regime, making this my most successful campaign yet. when i'm fully into my stride i notice my grunts and wheezes allign themselves into a schaffel rhythm...anyone interested in signing up my trachea?

2004-09-01T19:15:00.000+01:00

What is that cack cover of Thomas Bangalter and DJ Falcon's 'Call On Me' that seems ready to storm the charts? Absolute rubbish, this new version. horrible horrible horrible.

-----------------------

For something that could be such an easily exploitable 'institution', the Notting Hill Carnival is wicked. My first time at carnival (it's never 'the carnival' is it?) on monday, and with a cool bag full of booze I had a great time. Loving hearing the dancehall buff-buff-tish make it's way slowly through the crowd, watching the audience gradually catch on to another tune, another rhythmic code as the soundsystem lorry rolls towards them.

One tune we heard wafting (like so many other benevolent clouds at carnival) over from some outskirts soundsystem was 'Hey Ya' reversioned as 'Ganja'. I'd love to get a copy of this. The dancehall they were playing around the edges was more dubbed and spacey, more swinging and swaying than the rigorous demands of some of the bigger systems. That dancehall beat, the boom-boom on the first beat and between the second and third really must rival the 4/4 in terms of absolute funk purity, the minimum foundations needed to move a crowd. Hidden in it's two booms is the most obvious lesson in syncopation; 'this is on the beat, and this is off the beat'. It's interesting how peoples' conditioning to and experience of certain rhythms affects their taste, and how they react to music aimed at people with different rhythmic knowledge , such as my reaction to single handclap snares on Lil Jon productions, or that period when rock fans got into big beat's big beats (possibly longer post on this to come).

Loads of soca too. I don't know much about soca (or dancehall for that matter), but it seems kind of loose and calypso-y, more the dressing up and parading side of carnival you see in the papers, than the heaving crowds around perilous speaker stacks side, where a tune's 'bigness' can be easily deduced by how much forward crowd momentum it causes.

Best bit, I think, was at 10:30 in the evening, watching the soundsystems drive away up the road, still pumping out the anthems, followed by acres of people walking and dancing along behind them. I wonder where they ended up? In my romantic imagination another carnival, and then another and another until eventually they got back to Notting Hill next year, still playing and dancing and lost in the music. They must not move carnival to hyde park. It would just be some dreary sit down and hear some awful 'main stage' playing ignorable dross type event that passes for en masse celebration these days. Holding it in residential streets makes it noticably removed from the ordinary, (seeing the mundane changed as the carnival is molded around it; bus stops and signs as vantage points, doorways as off licences, the unkind would say driveways as toilets) but this is what makes it seem like a celebration, an open party, rather than some meticulously organised money-spinning 'event'. Long may it remain.
-------------------
I think i should apologise for my part in the recent outbreak of stupidity in the comments section. I was really angry about the comments at the time (and that moment in time was not particularly easy for various reasons), but i now realise I was just being trolled and wound up, and my flying off the handle makes me look a little silly. I shall try to keep my pottymouth to myself.

2004-08-29T10:35:00.000+01:00

I reckon Gloucestershire's success is to blame for England current shiteness at one-day cricket. England are blatantly following Glouc's allrounders galore model, but it doesn't work when the opposition is world-class.
------------
Phat waxness! In the space of two days I've recieved Vitalic 'Poney ep' and Quarks/Superpitcher'I walk'/'Fieber'. Even though I've heard these tunes like, dozens of times, I was still bouncing round my room thrilled at 8:30am when they arrived. Probably something about physically having them, mentally assigning a smell, a texture, being able to touch 'Fieber'. Oh my God 'La Rock01' still sounds scorching white hot, a careering space shuttle burning up on re-entry, it's paint blistering, just managing to stay intact. I should have just stuck this on when the host's wanker step-brother told us to 'stop playing that noise' at a party on friday. In an eighties film, he would have been thrown across the room by sheer force of tunes. In reality he threatened to have us chucked out, and we didn't force the issue.

Let us now praise the techno handclap

2004-08-26T21:35:00.000+01:00

i'm on my fifth read of the fantastic article on Thomas Melchior by Philip Sherburne in this months Wire. I'm mad keen to hear the Yoni album, as it was the paragraph about synth handclaps that really caught my eye. Sherburne seems (and i realise i could be well wide of the mark) to be saying that before hearing the Yoni album, he thought 'phony' handclaps were too stilted and obviously fabricated, a clunky insensitive representation of human handclaps that are found on the off beats of big disco rhythm sections.

Handclaps are special. Probably the sound that embodies the rockist-pissing-off artificiality of electronic dance music, in that it's obvious what it's meant to sound like, but there's no getting away from it's machine-rigidity. It's also a nod to crowd-music synergy in dance music; the music reacts to the dancefloor, so sounds made on the dancefloor should be used in the music.

Tracing the path of the handclap, it always seems to turn up in music where the producers are trying to get absolutely everything out of their limited hardware. You can hear it in something like Mr Fingers 'Washing Machine' from way back in the day. Everything is thrown in to make this groove, whistles, bells, but despite the crisscrossing toms and cymbal splashes, it's the handclap that anchors it all, strafing over spiralling bass. It must be something in it's sonic texture that has kept the handclap so popular for so long, that staggered scratchy lens shutter sound, the perfect accompaniment to a shocking blast of light. My current fave handclaps are in Richard Davis 'In the Air' (acid relapse edit) found on the Michael Mayer fabric mix. The simple addition of the handclaps in this bring the absolute climax like piercing midrange thunderclaps.

When you hear them used like this, across the beat, rhythm as hook/melody, it becomes a bit of an anti-climax to hear them used in Lil' Jon productions or Lemon D 'City Lights' as the only snare. The handclap isn't really strong enough to handle snare duties on it's own and so, while you still do get the rave reference, the rhythm pump is kind of lost. It becomes kind of frustrating to have that the snare not pinned down to a perfect singularity, it sounds too thin to really keep the pulse. Handclaps are best used in ways that Tortoise would think of, splattered across the beat, chucked around freely while kick-snare does the donkey work. You can't constrain those handclaps, producers, please paint them with a sloppy brush.

---------------
weird weird weird horror 8 bar track: Lix 'Candyman 2004'.
---------------

Cheeky Banter steps up:
'I'm wicked/ I play lyrical cricket/ the rhyme is the ball/ and the microphone's the wicket/ other mc's get run out/ caught out/ it's back to the pavilion/ they only made one run and I made a million/ i'm bowling bouncers and yorkers/ to all the breeze talkers/ all soundboys that give lip/ i'll catch at slip/ I'll be with Beefy getting blapsed/ your middle order collapsed'

2004-08-26T13:58:00.000+01:00

the archives of this site has some excellent mixes. Check the Magda mix, lots of brittle crunchiness...

2004-08-21T01:20:00.000+01:00

if anyone's wondering what happened at the boatrave, this will put you straight. I had a great time despite only hearing about 12 bars of music, preferring to discuss pressing matters on the poop deck with buddies. I even did some guerilla advertising for this very blog in the toilet cubicle with a marker pen.

Shouts must go to all rave massive, particularly Elise and Alex for coming all the way from Brighton and paying 16+£ just to get a hammering bitch behind the eyes come the morning. Lovely evening.

2004-08-19T17:13:00.000+01:00

Sounds of the DJ Marc Dauncey He emailed me some old jungle mixes, but the more up to date ones look quality as well.

coldness

2004-08-19T16:56:00.000+01:00

just recieved the DJ Minx 'A walk in the Park' with a Matthew Dear remix, and i'm stunned. The Dear mix is cold but not cold in the way you would normally expect. 'Cold' is usually used (in music reviews at least) to describe an absence of 'warmth', a distance, lacking emotion, and is often used in conjunction with 'harsh' or 'metallic' or 'industrial'. 'Cold' is a standard adjective for so much techno music, a by-word for anti-humanity in the music; machines cannot feel, they are numbed by coldness.

This track is cold in an icy, sparkly way. Crystalline structures on a winter car window, or a perfectly designed icicle. There's a sound on the drums that seems to have the consistency of partially melted snow, slushy and fluid but with crunching icy granules. The synth/glockenspiel that seems translucent, but rigid and smooth, the powerder hi-hats; it's all so cold, but that description just seems wrong. The track is too pretty and brittle to be cold in the conventional sense.

I'm trying to fit Wiley's 'coldness' and his recent comments ('I'm feeling warmer') in here. Those cello/cor anglais bits of igloo seem to have that same wintery non-'cold'ness, also those pick axe in ice off-beat clicks. It just seems that cold is usually taken as an absence of 'warm'(as GCSE physics teaches)and feeling, when in fact it has a feel all of it's own.
---------------------------
I must work on my punctuation.
---------------------------
Warp boat party tonight. Warp don't seem to realise that it's all well and good messing about in boats, but getting on and off at strict times is not the rave style. Ah well, as tha MPC says, lobbing Presspack in the Thames could be a fun maritime folly. Plus sounds of the DJs Ceephax, Vibert, AFX, and Plaid; all shall be shipshape. Hoist the blah blah, pieces of etc....

FK

2004-08-17T14:06:00.000+01:00

After last Saturday, my admiration for Francois K grew even further. Fidgeting around behind the decks with glasses perched on the end of his nose, the crowd controlled as if on a string, drenching 'la rock01' in echo in the builds until it's a massive hydra-headed noize beast, suddenly dropping 'strings of life' sending me and simon running to the dancefloor just to be part of the moment when that piano plays, all those tried and tested eq tricks that have been rocking dancefloors since '75 or whenever. He looked like he was loving every minute of it as well, pumping his fist in the air, just absorbed in his own selections. A really happy, touching night.
------------------------

Yesterday I worked out 'strings of life' on the piano, so if anyone wants to start a Derrick May tribute band you know where to come.

2004-08-17T11:12:00.000+01:00

Like Mr Reynolds, I think it's time for drum 'n' bass to be abandoned as this blogs arch-nemesis. I shall send it on it's way to do what it pleases, and not darken these doors again. To end on a positive I like what Jess Harvell put at the bottom of that bloggers v. d'n'b thread;

'dnb is 10-12 years old now, arguably...which means basically it's house around 95-97. lots of big superclub fodder, lcd twelve-inches, and any number of underground, less popular strains (inperspecitve/breakin/bassbin/offshore as relief/cajual maybe?). which means maybe in two to four years we'll have an "underground" dnb scene as vibrant as house's was at the turn of the last decade. can you imagine how good (and weird) a dnb basement jaxx would be?'

yeah!or a d'n'b Perlon or Kompakt or Matt Herbert. I would wager that jungle is probably too fertile a fomula (or anti-formula; the freedom of structure and technique) for this not to happen. Just look at how much music has been created in tribute or debt to jungle, ie. loads and loads of the warp/rephlex/planet mu axis. It seems bound to produce something that will one day be worth getting really excited about. But for now, it's goodbye.

Matthew Dear/Francois Kevorkian/House Music All Night Long

2004-08-13T12:02:00.000+01:00

This saturday i'm off to fabric, dodging the beshirted stag night types (who tend to clear off by about about 3am, the ravers watershed), and all being well, enjoying a feast of up-down jerking rhythms with Matthew Dear and Francois Kevorkian. Seeriously I CANNOT wait.

House seems to be my biggest interest at the moment. Just thinking about housey hi-hats makes me put on a smug face and gently rock my head in time, as if the grim kitchen i'm in is a sweaty but restrained Parisian basement club. Matthew Dear in particular seems to be comprising the majority of my musical expenditure on his own at the moment, so addictive is his bouncing funk. His tracks all sound so well organised, components never fuzzed in an over busy mix. His hat-snare-hat, hat-snare-hat patterns work in perfect clock-like regularity, but are surrounded by shuffly cuts and glitches that give the tracks their garage-like itchy restlessness. I can think of lots of artists with a signature sound, but Matthew Dear is the only one I can think of with a signature feel. It's all about taking Chicago's piston jack, and stripping it all down to bare minimum, and allining unlikely sounds in place of big riffs. He makes great use of silence as well, tiny chinks of light written into the rhythms like the stationary image left on the retina by a strobe light before the next jerk. Anyway here's a rundown of his best (omitting those i haven't heard):

EP1 (Spectral)
It's all here, the emphatic jack but without any big open hi-hats or resounding bass drums, keeping it clipped. 'Reae' is the banger here, staccato chicago bassline and delicious lift and fall effect in the beat. Hammers is a pretty good Todd Edwards impression but with Todd's vocal cut-ups and the garage shuffle, it's a bit too close to being a straight rip. 'Versus You' makes use of a nagging machine-sound, a slow, noisy printer in a hot office with Benny Benassi playing in the background.

Jabberjaw: Girlfriend EP (Perlon)
This is the shit. As minimal as it gets without resorting to blatant dubby-ness. The title track sounds barely above water, lugubrious bass bubbles, and the snatches of vocals gasping for air (they come in just slightly too loud, as if in panic) cut off before they can make sense. The more I think about it, the more it seems to fit in with the drowning metaphor. In 'I speak for some of that' the vocals sound like overheard conversations above the meniscus, the watery skank of the bass blocking off your ears suddenly. This really seems to be Matthew finding his own way with vocals, not using the Todd Edwards lush montage effect, but using the words like they were rhythmic 'jack your body' exhortations. The words (also the track titles) he actually uses are surreal/mundane snapshots of everyday life, a long way from forceful dancefloor orders. He works so well within the structures of house using classic little motifs (the backwards drum edit, full bass eq cuts) but at the same time you realise you've never danced to sounds like these before. Bicycle wheel squeaks and half picked-up radio stations, but all arranged in his killer pulse.

Leave Luck to Heaven LP
Hmm, I wasn't too sure when I got this. A lot of the tracks seem to sail a little close to the big synth wash wind. Not much of the bright tick and bounce of previous eps, a lot of definition is lost in the dub-ness of much of the first half of the album. The real stars are the two pop songs near the end. 'Dog days' uses these weird synth string yelps, and rhode-sy piano, to turn it into messy, wired soul. Stevie Wonder with added robotic jerk. 'It's over now' is even better. Like mournful speed-garage, 187 Lockdown with Joy Division. Terrifyingly drowsy vocal, and the grim determined laughter of the percussion. When the bass drops out at the end he sounds drunk and despearate 'I don't want to be left out/ why can't we work things out', as the percussion grows more and more pronounced drowning him out.

Anger Management (Spectral)
This is another wired funk panic. Fastest thing I've heard of him and also the most dense, a frantic guitar spasms around a straight house rhythm. Shuffling madness as if, he's beginning to lose control of things, desperately trying to reign the music in by cutting the bass but it has too much momentum to hold for long. It genuinely sounds slightly unhinged as it speeds along, as if it could easily disintegrate into complete noisy abandon. If the poppy, macro direction is where he is headed, I hope it sounds something like this.

His remixes are also works of subtle dancefloor genius. Check the ones for 'Bout ready to jak' by osborne (bassline! tight bouncing stuff, with creepy graveyard sounds in the background) and 'Clockwise' by Hakan Lidbo (trance-like(no not like that*) and cyclic). New album out soon I believe, and i'm looking forward to more dark goth funk pop on saturday.
--------------------------------------
I didn't know a thing about Francois Kevorkian when me + buddy went to see him last year, but he was genius. Huge build ups of static and echoing, thrashing white noise, into pure New York gay club jacking. Not afraid of The Anthem either; 'La Rock01', 'Higher states of conciousness' 'Freak' by LFO, but I've never heard such a unanimous cheer as when he dropped 'strings of life'. That piano riff has to be in my top ten sounds ever, simultanously hands in the air euphoria and nostaligic contemplation. It says so much about the way dance music works that something so emotionally affecting, rather than overtly feel-good can provoke such a great reaction. People love to feel happy, but to feel tears welling up inside is far more cleansing.

(apres rave report to follow, i shall spend the next 28 hours or so getting worked up)

*=Reminiscent of something Andrew Weatherall said recently, that big breakdown snare-rush trance musics not trance inducing, and I must agree. It's far too up and down to have the stable vacancy of the mind in a trance, too much to distract. I think minimal house does far better in that respect, constancy over climax. Even something as traditionally 'soul-y' and familiar as Carl Craig has that mesmeric effect. House seems to be just at the right tempo to do this, just beneath exhilaration, just above the minimum for constant body movement, the energy flashpoint (arf).

2004-08-10T02:54:00.000+01:00

ILM thread started after my post on d'n'b

more d'n'b---soundsystems---gripes---to my london crew get paypwa

2004-08-08T05:10:00.000+01:00

Revisited one of my favourite killing time/ procrastination haunts yesterday the oxford street HMV (our halls were opposite selfridges don't you know) and killed time/procrastinated like the good old days. ah yes, many an hour would be spent leafing through drum 'n' bass singles and getting all indignant that it wasn't very exciting, flinching at ludicrous over-production of pendulum and such like (pendulum are three behoodied australian ex-metallers whose d'n'b tunes resemble earpiercing versions of some hellish gameshow theme tune, thanks for that guys). anyway i listened to these records just to see what still a gwan today in d'n'b, and see for myself how depressingly little these records shared with the old jungle i was getting into at the time. Often there would be ones I liked, Roni Size 'bumbakita' is good fun, Technical itch can clearly rock a compressor, Ebony Dubs is always catchy ('muderation' has a retro junglist intro: "*siren* when i came in this business it wasn't about money, it was about music" hmm...). I liked Lemon D's latest effort called 'Pharoah' or something, tough looped amens and a no-nonsense bludgeon bass, rhythmically twitchy enough to make me think of bizzy b 'bad boy sound'. Dillinja 'in the grind' was also kind of bizzy-ish but with standard snare boredom and without the rave heritage (the recognition thrill you get from hearing it in a new context) of the mentasm sound in bizzy, and just goes on and on and on. If only these records used their loops for a fraction of the time before moving onto something else, THEN we'd be talking.

One of the most annoying things about nu-d'n'b records is that they're mastered at a ridiculously high volume, and try to fill every range on the frequency spectrum. This means you're basically listening to white noise, all pitches rolled into one aggressively loud mixdown. The last d'n'b event i went to (fabric i think) all you could hear was a nasty overdriven hiss, a snare dull-ly sounding through the fog, with the mc bigging this mess up over the top. Such is d'n'b's need now to impress with raw power, it's become all so turbo-cosworthed up far beyond what it's weak musical chassis can handle. It's become an excercise in hi-tech engineering, who can design and manufacture the heaviest bass, ot the biggest drums, the tune that will come in with the most force to wobble peoples trousers and big up the stadium-slaying sweeping effects. LFO and Nightmares On Wax built their bleep 'n' bass around a similar competitive premise; who could physically cut the loudest bass, but then it was adventuring into areas of the soundsystem that weren't exploited before. In d'n'b today systems are being over-revved and pushed way beyond what they what they can handle in the name of 'progrssion'.

When he hears something particularly wicked and dancable, one of my friends tends to say 'i could dance to that all night'. To this day i've never heard him say it about a jungle or drum 'n' bass tune, which is suprising as I'm pretty sure it has popped up in conversations about about garage/house/rock/hiphop, but that's not how jungle is supposed to work. It's strength is in temporality. It's not meant to settle into a safe followable pattern with seamless mixes creating one endless continuity. It's all about those momental contortions, being swamped by too much rhythmic information to process at once. Moments needing a rewind because you can't work out what actually happened during them. That's why the structures are so strange on '94-'96 jungle records; they need to be heavily punctuated to keep the potency of these seperate moments. If you look at a d'n'b 12" today you notice that in the right light it will always show three concentric rings (as well as the grooves being a relatively long way apart like a fingerprint, for extra volume). The outer ring is the intro, ususally just drums with a scary/futuristic synth or 'soulful' sample depending on whether they're hoping Grooverider or Fabio will play it. Then the second ring, the largest is where the bass comes in and remains for the majority of the record. This is sometimes preceded by the bass drum going buf buf buf buf bufbufbufbuf bubububububububu. The next one is another scary/soulful break down and then back to the main riff. The punctuation is standard and the moments are rendered useless by their reptition, bludgeoning the point about their one rhythmic idea.

oh well, i won't stop listening, if only to stir up my (self-)righteous ire.

---------------------

a late arrival to the charts as market force capitalism debate: surely simon reynold's SOACAs also have market forces exerted upon them from within, the dancefloor acting as trading floor. Producers will create tunes that pander to what the dancefloor wants, even refining them after dubplate pressings so they do their job more effectively, nothing is created in artistic isolation. However small the scale music is created with demographics and purposes in mind, which is all part of the self-criticism process everything is subject to.

---------------------

Listened again properly to Dizzee's new one 'Stand Up Tall' and i'm really beginning to Love it. Love to hear it played bassily in a house set. Love the way that the lyrics and synth have a similar *but not quite* rhythm in the first part of the verse. Those strings in the chorus are really one of THE great unexpectedly melodic grime moments (like the sinister cello/ cor anglais 'Peter and The Wolf' bit in Igloo), like suddenly it flourishes into something that makes perfect harmonic sense.

I'm so glad it's a big party track as well, just to show those 'fix up' nay sayers. Too many people treated bonafide party slaying anthem* 'Fix up look sharp' as a guilty pleasure, or just rubbished it entirely as a record-company-placating thrown together promo piss-about. It probably didn't the critical respect it deserved as it didn't really fit in with 'this new grime thing made on playstations by 14 yr-olds, vibrant blah blah blah' broadsheet reviews, and was kind of ignored as a step in the wrong direction. 'Stand up tall' is both grimy and party rockin'. Dizzee didn't rocket up through the underground because of his skill just as a chronicler of introspection, but through wrecking raves and 'flushing mc's down the loo' as well. 'Fix up' has amazing flow, those bits where he lets the first beat go to leave room for the Oooh sample, and then picks it up and it just rolls on, he sounds like a world-beating rapper, more vocal grain, imagination, style, rhythm than most i can think of. I am now sooo hyped for the album.

*scientifically proven when played as climax of DJ Le Jacques Magique's cannot-fail floor slaying final trio after 'run to the hills' and marc smith vs. safe'n'sound 'identify the beat'.

2004-08-05T11:58:00.000+01:00

actually, Slint may not be playing at this thing... look

hope this doesn't fall through, i imagine Foundation are a bit down after RE:TG went awry.

Summer Here Kids ('stay alone/ put a record on/ listen to the songs/ keep yourself at home')

2004-08-03T23:06:00.000+01:00

thanks to heat inertia, job, and the fact that while a test match is on all i do is sit around steadily growing into my XL Viz tshirt, i have heard very little new music recently. oh well, i thought i'd do a pointless self-indulgent run-down (possibly ongoing, we'll see) of what i have been enjoying during the sweaty months:

Luciano & Quenum 'Orange Mistake' (cadenza)
nice to see long standing structural traditions in house music being challenged (mainly the disco device of layers building and then breaking down), maybe showing that the microhouse thing is not just a sonic tweeing up of house, but a kind of commercial/cultural placement shakeup in making the dj's 12" record more home-listener friendly. this may sound a bit light-weight (some may see this as leaning too far over the hardcore/accessible spectrum*), but with some complaints that techno caters far more for the dj than the fan, this can only be a good thing in terms of popularity and success. Part of the reason that kompakt is now such a massive cult is surely their tireless compilation issuing, and the poppy accessibility of the tunes themselves. I wouldn't like a return to the idea of 'electronic listening music', but a move away from the great public-shunner 'trackiness' would realign it towards the enthusiast rather than trainspotter (subtle difference maybe).

anyway... orange mistake has this seven-note riff (it sounds kind of blues guitar-y, but played on a cheap unison organ) that is played in different ways within the constraints of keeping these clunky notes in that order (not that that makes much sense, er, you'll know if you heard it, it sounds like a ball bearing falling down differently shaped flights of stairs). it just bumps along until the snare kicks onto the off beat and then it's just wicked crisp jacking. 'Funky dandy' after some trickling water noises a groove forms and someone says 'so nice, so cool, fonky dandy' like a french robot chef. then this clipped riff in is brought in by a jarring Phil Collins drum break. it's so light that it only allows very small jerked body movements, I imagine only very stylish Parisians can adequately dance to this. Both these are so entertaining, so funny and, I was about to say tongue-in-cheek but that's exactly what they're not, they're sort of witty and sharp and happy.

Moodyman 'Music People' (KDJ)
i love the way in this it sounds like there are loads of people bustling around at a mardi gras carnival while the song plays in the background. The rhodes piano burbles just under the surface and everything has that aged classic feel. maybe he's run it through a slight high filter to stop anything sounding too new and metallic. After listing to so many minimal records recently it's quite odd to hear a tune with so many layers going on, something so unashamedly big. I'd be very suprised if Luke Vibert hadn't heard this before making kerrier district, as it's the same mix of disco classiscism and tripped-out repitition. I'd say vibert's is less dense and more synthetic; this feels more like the real thing. Haven't heard the Moodyman album yet, but (as opposed to the luciano stuff above) i hope it's more looped, tracky stuff like this. in this case I think song structure would be a mistake.

Graham Coxon 'Freakin' Out'
kind of a pastiche of big indie-rock hits. it has all those stage madness stares in all the right places, the right unexspected chord jump where the bassists knees would buckle, this song was MADE for the Reading festival. I can visualise bottles of piss and burly metallers just listening to it. cool guitar chops though, as if you were watching Ash or someone playing the smaller tent, while the occasional blurt of metallica headlining the main stage wafts over on the stinking breeze.

2004-08-03T09:32:00.000+01:00

great article on gutterbreakz on Front 242, Pansonic and noise in general. fits in with discussion that started with David Keenans noise primer, and went via k-punk and blissblog. with the sometimes dramatic chart scrap that passed through those parts as well, the blogs are shit-hot right about now.

Slint

2004-08-03T06:29:00.000+01:00

Slint are playing at camber sands in december at this

2004-08-01T17:11:00.000+01:00

is the origin of that ubiquitous snare/ footstep in snow/ stadium clapping in time sound such as in j-kwon 'tipsy' and 'in da club' actually 'we will rock you'? i should hope so. i like that sound, the way that the spread of timing is v. head nod friendly because it's not a rigid pulse but a more relaxed lean-into-and-withdraw feeling. long may it continue to wreck up the charts.

other stadium stuff: I flicked on E4 where they were showing foo fighters at rock in rio. they did the iron maiden ending ie. loads of strumming on last chord, drummer counts 1-2-3-4, DER-DER-DER DUM, DER-DER-DER DUM.

2004-08-01T15:27:00.000+01:00

after sleeping outside on friday night i have nine mosquito bites on my right foot. can anyone beat that?

Bizzy B: science ep volume 3

2004-07-29T16:58:00.000+01:00

i suppose that part of the reason that drum 'n' bass abandoned the sampled breakbeat was that the junglists themselves were too programmed to constant progression. like the model for a drum 'n' bass dj set (each track stepping up a gear from the last, each drop surpassing the previous in dancefloor potency) or the competitive energy of a 'scene' (each track produced trying to be the one that all the others copy; cliche= 'going to the next level'. how many times have we heard that phrase and been faced with complete crap?) the emphasis is always on pioneering and taking the rest with you. Many of the biggest players in drum 'n' bass had been rare groove and early house dj's (fabio, grooverider, dj hype) and then been through breakbeat hardcore into jungle, and so when faced with where to go next chose the strand of jungle that had most response on dancefloors at the time, which, handily, took in techniques and themes of technological progression. the two step bosh even sounds like forward momentum hence the oft-used chase-scene analogy, and it's full and sometimes fetishistic use of the late nineties studio advances must have sounded so futuristic and visionary compared to the dusty antique breaks in use since the beginning of drum sampling. Listening to something like johnny l's 'piper' the snare sounds more like air escaping from a compression chamber or a pod door opening or any other sound effect you care to mention from a tacky sci-fi/action blockbuster, anything apart from a drum (johnny l carried on his progression into making UK garage with truesteppers it should be remembered). Breakbeats were too weighted down by funk and the original player's sense of groove, and so could never be as controllable as separate hits.

But once the forward momentum of this beat had been established it became hard to supplant. Two-step is too infectious for it's own good, a mediocre standard stifling the flights of fancy and inspiration possible with the cut-up breakbeat. But their now remains a disparate underground of producers and fans with no connection to what jungle has become, who unlike the big d'n'b hitters of today, cannot resolve the music of now with that of ten years ago. Bizzy B is probably one such person, abandoned by jungle as an anacronism despite his obvious skill as an engineer. He avoids the kid-in-a-sweet-shop attitude to engineering on an advanced set-up, preferring to use his craft to distill the perfect essence of rave. the amen-break on this ep sounds unbelievably heavy. where on some jungle it's the bass drum that puntuates, fitting in edgeways around snare acrobatics, while the hazily defined bass rumbles along in your chest with little high end to get in the way of the snare and cymbal assualt, here the bass is the detonating epi-centre with the snares thrown off in every direction. 'Afraid of the dark' uses the mentasm synth as devastating three-octave bludgeon riff, with a 4/4 bass drum and screeching tyre sounds. The psychotic compulsion of gabba with natural body moving effect of jungle. This shares it's bass heavyness with current d'n'b, but it's so much more precise and directed than huge bassline over two-step bosh combination, bass and drums working as one unit rather than across each other. 'darkside' has a huge sub-bass rumble but begins with a beautiful tingly melodic wash intro; think the shimmering flourishes of the beginning of 'dred bass', it gradually lets the hardness disintigrate into wistful keyboard voices. my favourite, though is 'bad boy sound', bouncing rubbery bass, snares tripping over each other, but just managing to stay grooving and upright. all these tracks are so well structured, each drop expertly timed, and the changes from light to heavy seem logical rather than jarring. these are obviously elements that I've heard before, but not in such a perfect balance, never outstaying their welcome, working so well together.

Maybe the most encouraging thing about this ep is that it's not an excercise in retro-ism, like soundmurderer or the remarc reissues (a recent remarc dj set was just a load of current d'n'b; why? what's the point? it won't bring you any current cred or please the old skool fans), or an IDM 'reimagining' of jungle like lots of other stuff on planet-mu (shitmat? venetian snares? please...), bizzy b sees this ep as the vanguard of a new jungle movement, a return to twisted, stretched, distorted drums deployed to move the massive rather than just be mad for madness' sake. He writes a manifesto on the back of this ep, saying how he spends '12 hours a day on the beats' and can see 'with today's technology we can rekindle the legendary sound of hardcore/jungle into a new wave of global beats'. this may sound far fetched, but with paradox, breakage and that recent offshore records compilation getting plaudits for their twisted beats there is some momentum growing. I for one would fucking love it if he was right.

new dizzee video

2004-07-27T13:12:00.000+01:00

here
grime's transition from pirate station to MTV base seems to be causing a few problems for the video makers. this video is obviously supposed to accentuate dizzee's britishness when bookended by two american hiphop videos, but none of the rest of the video would really raise any eyebrows.

i suppose there has to be some aesthetic crossover for the video to work, but as silverdollarcircle pointed out recently this dilution with american hip-hop r'n'b seems to be spreading to the music as well. i hope that videos don't replicate this trend (ie. other grime following suit after seeing local boy succeeding by being on american looking video, but i suppose having grime on mtv base at all will do that to a certain degree) as it would clearly be a regression. the songs pretty good though, I would have liked there to be 8 bars of distorted half-time like in the original musical mobbs 'pulse x' from which this takes it's 909 drums. dizzee's voice sounds a bit lost among the production, his usual emotive inflections flattened by synths popping up all over the place, although this is a party tune (see scratching) rather than ganja-paranoid-twitching-urban-desert-despair-aggression.

bowman's capsule

2004-07-27T10:30:00.000+01:00

edith why? we barely know each other and you rush into this? come on i look just like a less talented version of him.

don't look at me like that, i'm serious. it's not too late, we've been down since RI:SE...

womad

2004-07-26T18:38:00.000+01:00

crikey, it's a bit odd. birkenstocks, fungal toe-nail infections, half-interested dancing to yet another cack hybridisation of 'traditional folk music' and modern flavas *boke*, using the word 'incorporating' to describe ripping off some small african trend, then shoe-horning it into your own inoffensive flat shite. i never ever ever again want to see another smug six-string bass session player, gently grooving around his massive amp stack. the atmosphere there is that of a village fete, which is precisely what i would want if i, like many, had brought the kids up from Guildford or Harpenden or somewhere like that. i know it's very easy to make fun of, and i will resist jibes about reading the guardian etcetc, but there is something completely colonial about womad, leafing through the programme to find something that 'sounds interesting', just like watching a member of the royal family clap along with some 'tribal drumming'. we did see some good stuff; a wedding orchestra from zanzibar playing first solemn and restrained and then frenzied; senor coconut doing kraftwerk and michael jackson songs in a cha-cha-cha/meringue style (nice touch: teutonic-looking man staring straight down at a powerbook in cream suit, looking like ralf hutter surrounded by loud shirts and maracas); a workshop by the dhol foundation which provided context and genuinely interesting paralells with more familiar music, by talking about the functions and methods of the music, instead of just looking on thinking "isn't it good that we're being exposed all these cultures" and going back to reading the latest angela carter (being given away free with the guardian at womad). 'world music' is truly a horrible term.

i suppose the music is hardly the point at womad, it's more about a general idea of doing something good, expanding your horizons, benevolence and suchlike like a museum and in that respect i can't really talk. i got drunk went on fair ground rides and danced to rock the casbah outside a wine stall three nights in a row.

reminds me that i must get round to actually reading Edward Said's Orientalism, rather than just thinking about it.

this post is a mess, i know. not really as entertaining as a rant, just a load of things that irritated me. i wish there was something shocking and intense, like the bizzy b record i'm listening to now, for people to get rabidly behind, or boo off. i don't know, i'm a tired person.

2004-07-21T19:11:00.000+01:00

thanks to k-punk and crew for kind words. i am sorry if this all looks very small to you, it's fine for me. i don't know how to change it, so ner.

you won't hear from me 'till monday now as i'm off to womad festival. yes, the one that gap year merchants go to in search of authenticity and funky beads. oh well, sure i'll have lots to talk about when i get back, bye for now.

Kanye West- College Dropout

2004-07-20T18:34:00.000+01:00

iknowiknowiknow. the internet is saturated with praise for this album so i'll attempt to keep this brief, but i bought this today and it's so powerful and joyful and sumptuous i have to say something. it kind of reminds me of a musical, but so much more entertaining, touching, romantic, funny and all those other things that most musicals try so hard to be but can't because Kanye West isn't involved. the triumph through adversity, the central character you urge on even though you know he succeds in the end. The little cameos, funny caricatures in side-show sketches. The orchestration, steady through the album but versatile enough to enhance every moment. The sudden changes of scenery to preserve the pacing, the pauses for applause in between certain tracks. Obviously there are songs and moments that stand out, but it's the spectacle of the entire thing that is most impressive. The threads that tie these tracks together are more important than the differences that seperate them.

Where some mcs talk about about 'riding' the track, teetering on top of the beat like a surfer trying hard to not be overcome by the waves forward thrust, Kanye lets the sounds curl around him, swamping and then receding, falls into the wave. His hi-hats are perfect, they have a sort of woody quality, they sound dusty and aged like antique sideboards. The sheer luxury of the production is awesome. the neptunes sound too harsh and crass when attempting real instrument-soul, they can't give up up the hi-fidelity for a touch of classic finesse (the closest they come to Kanye's richness must be the drums in britney's 'boys' or the whole of NERDs 'bobby james'- a similar lushness/dereliction juxtaposition like'we don't care' here). However this isn't just beauty for the sake of itself, this is beauty that acts as a sonic metaphor; the drudge-work and hours of practice he describes in the lyrics were all so he could build this, his glittering musical palace. There's a clue on the front cover as well, the ornate framing containing the picture of the eponymous downcast bear. This is his picture surrounded by what he has now, to remind him of what he was then.

compulsion

2004-07-20T17:18:00.000+01:00

i am a slave to 'fieber' by superpitcher. i can't stop playing it, and when i play it i have to get up and send shockwaves through my body until i want to hear the beginning again. i am never satisfied with the volume, it has to be louder until it just sounds like a distorted mess through the crippled computer speakers. i want to be it, to move with the brutalism that it demands. tear off my humanity and become a piece of pulsing energy. anatomy is my only hindrance.

2004-07-19T22:07:00.000+01:00

daytime radio 1 is going some way to lighten my mood while i'm hunched over the industrial dishwasher at work. kanye's 'all falls down' can't fail to make me smile, it's so effortless. i'll pick up the album tomorrow.
also try as i might i can't dislike spitting games by snow patrol. like if my bloody valentine had signed to a huge label, who had forced them into releasing an andy wallace mix of 'when you sleep', with a middle eight tacked on. hmm, that sounds awful. maybe hearing this just makes me pleased that never happened.

silverdollarcirle on three of a kind 'babycakes'. read!
having heard it now the chorus really is amazing, it's seems made to sound like two people gently singing a song they heard on the radio to each other. only as they sing it, they realise the way it completely describes their situation and are kind of embarassed by the honesty, but can't hide the excitement of knowing they feel the same way towards one another.

2004-07-19T22:00:00.000+01:00

i hate the way the singer from hoobastank jerks the microphone away from his mouth when he sings a louder note.

also enjoying

2004-07-18T18:33:00.000+01:00

ibi - 'macula' (pro-jex)
on a pro-jex mix album that i bought mainly because it was called 'jack!' and had some odd cover art with frogs. it's a building minimal snappy techno track with kind of dubstepping snares, and a sample of a woman telling a chorus of her friends about last night. 'went home with the motherfucker/ i'm thinking i'm gonna goddamn get my ass tore up/ TORE UP!'. bird song in the background. the sample ends in a slightly weird place- i counted 20 bars before it started again and a new percussion element joined the track- and so the usual 16 bar structure is put out of joint. itchy, flaky funk.

being hungover
went to aforementioned house warming party and so missed weatherall/!!! but i probably wouldn't have had a better time. slept on a floor with my clothes on and no covers whatsoever, and woke up drunk, but i love the gallows humour (ed's description) and the pure sillyness of everyone feeling crap together. stupid jokes, hearing mogwai young team for first time in ages, playing I-spy in the car...the good stuff.

rebel bass

2004-07-17T16:39:00.000+01:00

gosh it was really good.

i feared the worst when at midnight marcus from rephlex was playing a pretty potent jungle set (capone 'massive', soundmurderer 'call da police', AND skeptic 'tear') to about fifteen people. I dread cavernous empty club nights, they are so pointless and depressing. it gradually filled up and by warlock there was an atmosphere, a sense that everyone was, in pirate radio parlance 'locked in', bodies mechanically controlled by every whipcrack snare. At times like this i find it hard to believe that the 'vibe' is actually intangible, just a shared perception by a load of people listening to the same music (no i wasn't on drugs, but about four different types of beer and an addlestones blatantly helped me do my bit for the vibe).

Plasticman was brilliant. such a suprise after the End events were slightly underwhelming, and the tunes he played stood out a mile from trudgy go nowhere dubstep tracks, boring ganja-addled murky bass where drum twitches eliminate the moving thrust of the tune. What made his tracks stand out was the splintering metal treble, laser guided precise hi hats, rather than complete emphasis on bass that sometimes overpower the pinball machine funk . 'pump up the jam' even sounded flat in comparison, just because the rest were so well structured and dynamic. honestly it seemed like what he was playing was miles further down the evolutionary timescale than some. the highlight was he dropped a 4/4 track (an emerging trend- warlock played lfo 'freak' at the end of his set, always welcome, and i think plasticman has a 4/4 track out) and then came straight out of that into a lethal rhythmic doosra. this sudden change was electric, so satisfyingly wrong-footing. I struggling a bit to write about this 'cos i don't have the music to listen to, but i can remember the sight of people not just bouncing around, but real improvised choreography; reflex head movements like avoiding punches, arms jerking out to bass hairpin corners, wrists flicking pointed fingers to respond to flash-cut snares, it was going offff. it's moments like that you suddenly see the point of re-winds, kind of 'what the fuck?!, did that actually happen?!' moments, so fleeting but powerful that they deserve to break up the flow in order to pay them their full respect.

anyway big up the massive. t'was a wicked night. i said congrats to warlock and plasticman in my slightly nervous 'you must get this all the time, and you know what i'm going to say so I'll keep it brief and awkward' way. also mistook new warp-geezer jimmy edgar for someone else. nice chap though.

2004-07-16T15:48:00.000+01:00

bought two compilation CDRs of various vocal grime from pirate stations, one of them is roll deep and pay as u go, other one has ruff sqwad, boyz in the hood and NASTY crew. its all from 2003 (i am way behind on this whole scene in general try helsinki station or silverdollarcircle trust me they know things ), but aside from the wiley instrumentals, and some lyrics it's all new to me. really addictive listening because it seems able to infinitely replicate itself. different combinations of mcs on different riddems, seems like it could just go on for ever, and what I have is just a tiny random sampling of this massive body of music. i like the wiley album very much, but it seems wrong for this music to exist in concrete songs, as definitive versions (one lyric over one beat), rather than to be produced as the manifestation of a moment. the right tune dropping, the right mc blazing the right lyric, you know when it's kicking off in these recordings, but to isolate these moments and set them in stone is nowhere near as exciting as hearing something absolutely firing in real time, something is lost when you know it's been thought about rather than a spontaneous flashpoint.

best thing (although this could well have been highly thought out) : wiley playing one of his devil mixes (igloo-ed) with a news report about the bombing beginning in baghdad over the top. but the fact he says nothing about this, provides no context, makes this not a political statement but a nervous 'it's scary out there' depiction of chaos. powerful stuff.

will see what plasticman, warlock and co can come up with in response tonight...

this weekend

2004-07-14T14:30:00.000+01:00

as a celebration of/ middle finger to my new job (temping in kitchens; start now postponed till thursday) this weekend is going to be bbboshing. as previously advertised, i'll be at the rebel bass night on friday (really looking >>>forward to this; I like the star wars rebellion theme on the website and Plasticman being 'expelled from the galaxy of Gargagia for the trafficking of outlawed bass frequencies', that's jokes), and on saturday I have a choice between:

A> Ivan Smagghe in Nottingham
B> !!! and Andrew Weatherall at Fabric
C> a friend's housewarming mini-party in Cambridge

Realistically, I'm probably going to go to Cambridge housewarming do, and maybe head back late for !!!/weatherall, but it's an excruciating decision (although none of them are exactly rare catches at the moment). Smagghe's electro-house compilations (I've heard 'suck my deck' and 'death disco') this year have been killer. Was listening to death disco today and realised that even though I can recall the names or artists of ooh, maybe two or three tracks, I know the words to the vocal tracks off by heart*. On 'suck my deck' (I'd really like to be able to refer to this album by a different name) there are less vocals so the samples will have to do for identification purposes. So there's 'bounce check' which has a wheezy robot voice going 'bounce check bounce check bounce check bounce' and then...BASSLINE. 'lady in a red dress' (forgotten the original artist, but Tiefschwarz are the remixers) has Frank from Donnie Darko saying the title and ...seriously I can't describe it you have to hear it for yourself, it's as much fun as a bouncy castle, or a rocket powered pogo stick but mdma euphoric as well. Plus the funniest drum fill of all time. Death disco is more of a mixed bag with a funny slower tough as old boots italo-y section, and Kiki 'love sikk'; a kind of stately regal house track. Superpitcher's schaffel mix of Quarks 'I walk' is a sultry cabaret seduction. If I were to write an electroclash musical, which come to think of it would be completely appropriate, this would be sung in the club by the leading lady. Hmm I wonder what warren fischer's doing at the moment, this sounds like a project...

* therefore good compilation/dj set= when the track titles are superfluous and all of it alchemically merges into one.

I've only properly heard 'Me and Guliani Down by the schoolyard' from !!! and I didn't get it at first. Didn't like the way The Edge turns up to play guitar in the middle bit, vocals are silly, only memorable tune is that doodoodoodoo bit. But then I listened to it on headphones and walked in time with it and couldn't stop listening to it. It is still a bit of a structural mess, but the bits are so good. The sleaze grind bassline and cowbells made for a private eye to do his snooping around to; the erratic brass section, like James Brown if he loosened up a bit and didn't fine his band for getting things wrong. And the way at 3:30 it tenses up and vibrates until it explodes into well, a slightly misfiring chorus. Still, it gets better as the Edge is cut and the thin stringy guitars return. From what I've heard of the album the LCD soundsystem should have nothing to worry about in the NY dancefloor stakes, but I suppose they're different, LCD *has* house where !!! *has* Pfunk. Still I'd love to see them live, and Andrew Weatherall I can't get enough of at the moment.

I only heard andrew weatherall dj a few months ago, and he was great. Just loads of really good unfamiliar electro-house and soulo 'switch' (psuedonym of the usually pigshit Jameson, UK garage fact fans! I can't find that track anywhere, if anyone is listening can they sort me out?) which is kind of a jacking garage track if i remember correctly. But I really like him as well. I saw him flicking through dub cd's in rough trade, with his pock-marked yellow skin and ridiculous combed back haircut, greening tatoos, and his now regulation uniform of check lumberjack shirt and huge turned up jeans, heavy boots. He looked like someone you wouldn't mess with in the first place going to a fancy dress party as someone you wouldn't mess with. He dances to northern soul endearingly badly aswell with arms coming into his chest in a reverse breaststroke. face also a picture of trance-like boredness.

the choice, as they say, is mine.

look

2004-07-14T14:25:00.000+01:00

i now have a links section. if you want to be involved in it, send me an email. it took me a while to work out, and i still don't know why those empty bullet-points are there.

this is classic

2004-07-13T00:17:00.000+01:00

take note the rapture.

so's this but tragically so. seriously i feel awful for finding it hilarious.

journey

2004-07-12T22:33:00.000+01:00

the train journey from moreton-in-marsh to Paddington is fantastic. you see the kinds of things you forget exist living in suburbia; grazing sheep, deep cuttings through hills, fields until the horizon, reservoirs, sewage farms, tiny stations with one platform and no ticket office like honeybourne, pershore and kingham just saved from the Dr. Beeching cuts. The train had to wait at a signal for 20 minutes, but because it was such a beautiful evening no one seemed to mind. The japanese family opposite me started taking photos out of the window. As you get closer and closer to London you begin to notice the city encroaching on the countryside. Pylons become more frequent, a huge sci-fi industrial power station between oxford and slough, some new housing estates right next to the tracks.

Most of the way I was listening to Aphex Twin's Selected ambient works 85-92. Having recently got this back from a friend, I was worried that my current exposure to loads minimal house and techno, would render this album redundant, or kind of primitive. God, i was so wrong. Some of these tracks still had me on the edge of tears, so soft and gently they touch your brain cells. On 'Xtal' every sound is a caress. 'i' is like sunlight leaving imprints on your eyes. 'We are the music makers' groovy as anything, but not a dance track by any means, another warm sumptuous hug. Everything on this album seems soft and tactile, no hard callouses or matted fur.The darker tracks like 'Hedphelym' and 'Schottkey 7th Path' are simultaneously reflective and sinister, like an angry but loving parent. 'Ptolemy' and 'delphium' are detroit hits that never were, they sound so classic and fertile. 'Pulsewidth' is pure langorous contentment, a memory from a happy dancefloor. Some of these track trip some receptor in my brain telling me to dance, but when I try to my hips don't respond, all I can do is close my eyes and slowly move my arms, the rhythms are just out of reach. The brilliance of this album may be because of the surroundings I was in and memory buttons pressed by mixing of this album and environment; i used to alternate between this and Loveless as my soundtrack for cycling along the disused railway line from Hatfield to St Albans usually at the same time in the summer evening, past hidden lakes and huge orange fields. I know that I have to buy Selected ambient works 2 soon (i know, i know, what an oversight) but I find it hard to believe it will top this. Selected ambient works 85-92 is just too heavily imprinted on me to be dislodged. It's my property, my memories are built around it, and I cannot give higher praise than that.
I think on this train journey I managed to reactivate some strange happiness gland that switched off recently, just by looking at little details going by and listening to music.The first time I hadn't been slightly anxious or nervous of something for as long as I can be bothered to remember. It won't leave my discman for months.

ooohh excitement

2004-07-12T22:20:00.000+01:00

REBEL BASS...

FRI JULY 16TH 2004
@ ELECTROWERKZ (BEHIND ANGEL TUBE)
10-3AM

DUBSTEP, ELECTRO, GRIME, BREAKBEAT

SONIC SELECTORS...

PLASTICMAN (REPHLEX, TERRORHYTHM, SOULJA)
SI BEGG (NOVAMUTE, TRIGGER, NOODLES)
YOUNGSTA (FWD, RINSE FM)
PROFESSOR J-S (HYPONIK, BREAKS FM)
WARLOCK (RAG N BONE)
DOWNSHIFTER (HYPONIK, BREAKS FM)
MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED...

BRINGING BASS VIOLATORS TO JUSTICE!!!

INFO@HYPONIK.COM
WWW.HYPONIK.COM
WWW.REBELBASS.ORG

this could be brilliant. warlock especially has released some huge bangers recently. I hope this becomes a regahla thing as it is starting to look like a 'scene'.

daniel vettori: the k records years

2004-07-12T13:57:00.000+01:00

glad to see that new zealand won won the natwest triangular tournament thingy, they are truly my second fave cricket team. especially pleased to see daniel vettori succeed, not only as a boring, apparantly obsolete finger spinner, but he's such a complete indie rocker as well.

messy hair; nerd-rockin' glasses; cheap promo t-shirt; quaint favouring of unfashionable, minimum effort techniques; he's not even professional, probably works at Borders cafe to fund his tours to play in front of small but knowledgable crowds.

here he is rockin' out! the umpire's probably his bitch ex-girlfriend who dumped him for that smooth talking anil kumble. 'I THINK OUR LOVE IS COMING TO AN END!!!!' he opines as the batsman pads up to his arm ball.

2004-07-11T23:56:00.000+01:00

for god sake read Luka's heronbone blog. Seriously it's brilliant.

scenes and soundsystems

2004-07-11T23:26:00.000+01:00

Simon Reynolds often talks about the democratic function of the dancefloor, that acts like an instant focus group to musicians. If a crowd goes wild for a particular track or element then the Darwinian selection process will mean that these traits are selected for (origin of species style)in future tracks to replicate the effects. As most DJs are producers also, the effect will be instant and direct.
Surely then a similar thing occurs with the types of soundsystems that music is being played on. For instance (and I'm really sorry to go on and on and on about it)Dubstep currently has it's home at >>>Forward held in Plastic People, a shoreditch club basically comprising a fantastically huge and crisp soundsystem in a basementwith no fancy lighting, no toilet attendants. Most times I've been there I've gone away thinking those molded earplugs now seem very attractive if not fucking essential. One such incident involved a large quantity of strongbow and The Bug, whose ragga and white noise attack turned into complete semi-circualar canal surgery on the plastic people soundsystem. I imagine the bassline grind of the music played at >>>Forward must be devastatingly huge on that system, so much so that it must be the the music adapting to the system, engineers trying eek out the furthest reaches of plastic peoples transistors on their tracks. Again this is a Darwinian effect, sounds which work on this system would be selected for and those which don't would be discarded,and as this is primarily where dubstep is being played (and plastic people has the capacity to handle vast sine wave bass)tracks are made with this in mind.
Similarly jungle (orrrriginal jungle before the bigger rave events)would not have been played on systems with huge capacity, and so the amen break with it's focus on the snare (surely the greatest snare ever recorded) would be perfect for cheaper systems with a big midrange and not much else. The current state of drum 'n' bass could be seen as a reaction to being played on soundsytems tweaked for trance and big-room techno; big hi-fi sweeps are now possible across the frequency spectrum and so producers are obviously eager to show off their epic filter effects, and the purer fidelity now available means tight engineering is favoured over quality of form and content and excitement.

Jak's spurious guide to types of music and the soundsystems that spawned them:
Punk: small venues, mate of band working the desk, everything as loud as possible
trip-hop:headphones, enclosed-ness and claustrophobia
stadium rock: erm, stadiums...but mainly Mutt Lange's hi-tech studio moniters and equipment, plus shitty techniques like recording every string of a guitar separately.
trance: love parade floats
whatever genre star wars sound effects are in: THX, baby

more dubsteppin'

2004-07-11T22:30:00.000+01:00

was interested to find out that the term 'dubstep' derives from dub versions of garage single usually put on b-sides. In some ways this must be why it is currently appealing to the more techno orientated end of the dance music spectrum currently; the syncopation and off-time shuffled snares are new for this listener (although not the garage fan), and purged of vocals, cheese and suchlike for a dub version, the tracks are ready for consumption by the tracky tech-head. hell, they even have 909 handclaps. It treads on more familiar territory than east london grime for the techno fan. Mc's are generally a bit much for the Hawtin crew.
I suppose one weakness of dubstep is that it will always be tasteful, its minimalism cannot really evolve without turning into the bassline battering Ram (records) of snarly d'n'b. Hopefully more of the 'dub' psychedelia in the sound will be exaggerated, such as in SLT mob's 'zombie' with delays, disembodied vocal snatches, horror film brass crescendos and such other textbook dark motifs. Also hatcha's 'highland spring' where a sub-continental flute and vocal dance ritualistically over the hypnotic throb bass. A strangely, even embarassingly spiritual listen for those more used to machine worship. Obviously this would lead dubstep more and more towards just becoming dub, but at its best dubstep does well to both disjointedly funky and mesmirising (haha i wrote that as mesmirinsing! typo creativity! all the best music is mesmirinsing).

Listening Noyeahno 'brixton bells' (on rag & bone records; watch out for them) another touchstone for dubstep surely is nightmares on wax 'aftermath' and suchlike. the warp classics compilation. 'brixton bells' has cold one finger synths, bass that clearly has had some time spent on it to make it as low and intestine-disrupting as possible, those dull metallic sounds that make you think of crane hooks, girders and building site refuse. Also its not just the sounds, it's the arrangement and the patterns used. The percussion is in no way arranged as a drummer would play a drum kit, they are arranged like a minimalist piano piece, each sound equal in it's use rather than specific parts fulfilling traditional roles (hi-hats ticking along, snare providing pull to the bass drum's push). The mood also shares much with that post-electro-pop sheffield industrialism like coco steel and lovebomb 'feel it', this is music for sodium streetlighting, damp mossy concrete, and rusting oil drums.

currently liking...

2004-07-08T15:15:00.000+01:00

A mix John made starting with radioactive man, some electro, through the murky meandering roads of dub-step, and ending in full-on libido melt-down with a clutch booty/ghetto-tech.

At first listen this is not the kind of thing I usually like, I find some of the electro-breaks techno (drexciya and suchlike) too austere and dry, and without the compulsion that 4/4 kick drum lends to other techno. 16 clicky hi-hats per bar, no bounce or jacking feeling, shuffle done away with as too loose or feminine. But at night this can be powerful stuff; radioactive man 'uranium' is gothic but more in the way of the epic anti-hero than the grimness or sleaze or claustrophobia of other dancefloor darkness.

Plasticman 'pump up the jam' TUNE! screaming ghouls in the background acres of bass. markone 'raindance' TUNE! the dub of dub-step in this case must be some kind of misnomer, there's no space here at all, every last inch of sound is taken up by the bass. like driving a tank through rhythm and sound's sonic sepulchre. warlock and and markone rival for syncopated tension, sometimes you wonder whether the beat will finally fall on the first beat, given the dancer a reference point, and I imagine dub-step will become more and more arrhythmic, and maybe lose some of it's potency for it. The rephlex compilation may influence the scene towards a bias in favour of head over hips, but one thing that the croydon dub-step sound has over the east london 'grime' mc section is it's funkiness, and the twitchy half-familiarity that garage lends the 'step versus east london's unrecognisable alien-ness. And who wants some shoddy drill'n'bass rethink of this music anyway. In fact,with the ragga-jungle retrospection in full swing making drill n bass redundant, it wouldn't suprise me at all.

This mix is the first time I've really heard dub-step outside of the booming sloshing acoustics of the End, and it gets a far more favourable reaction here. at the End the subtleties were lost somewhere in the soundsystem, and the hyper-syncopation seemed to do little for the uninitiated dancefloor. Add to that the over-exuberance of the mcs declaring every single half-thought-out CDR test press idea to be worthy of a rewind, and the croydon sound didn't lend itself to it's central london surroundings. The second rephlex grime night was better, with oris jay's straighter breaks sound more popular and danceable but probably less exilerating, but there's plenty of time yet. More anthems to be written and more beats to be explored (without falling off the edge of the world in regard to accesibility, here be dub-step's monsters), and dubstep could run tings yet.

Energy like a dog pounding away at your leg. Booty bass is probably how all dance music would sound if made by anthropologists on a mission to find what makes people dance (probably a blend of excitement disorientation and sexual energy, but maybe one day i'll expand on this). The speed and simplicity and lewdness is just pure excitement,dj assault's one trick of re-using rap and r'n'b samples keeps it relevant and also takes the piss out of so-called sexy music. destiny's child 'say my name' refrain pops up followed by a man and a woman saying 'bitch say my name', 'nigga say my name', another goes 'let me see that pussy work' over and over again until you can't stop saying it and people take out court injunctions against you. In ghetto-tech sex is not romantic, just fucking. Huge basslines too you know, but hopefully Britain won't be too boring for booty to take off hugely. Anyway what would be more fitting than the nations classrooms resounding to endless refrains of 'ass n titties ass n titties ass n ass n titties titties'. It sure beats the rubbishness of current d'n'b for high speed excitement...

*drip*drop*drap