whats is the point of trying to make glitch/garage?

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what is the point of neo-garage producers who, working from the realms of completely seperate scenes that traditionally look down on uk garage in particular, as well as most popular and 'street' music, try and incorporate the core aspects of garage (to my mind, in this order: 'skippy'/bumpin drum programming, big sub/bass lines, vocals) with the aspects of the genre in which they work, to try and create something new? i know we talked a bit about this in a thread about squarepushers 'my red hot car' but it didnt seem to get too far. i ask cos i recently bought a new manitoba 12" which seems more successful in, what i suppose, is its task than their last album or ep which seemed honurable but as though he didnt really understand how garage producers made the tracks so damn.....funky. the new one stops trying to be so abstract, although it seems sonically very messy which is somewhat distracting, but has lots of wicked cut up/sequenced vocals cf sunship remix of flowers. in truth the only other people i can think of trying to do this sort of thing is landslide who seem to operate within that nu-jazz thing: they are on hospital and just sit around remixing bugz inthe attic (aaaaaaaghgggghhh west london!), and similarly fail to pull it off tho for different reasons.

in a way the best track to try and abuse garage by nicking the best bits and doing funny things to it is fridges 'kinoshita terasaka'. in fact its kieron hebdons (along with gareths) influence - he would always slip in a few 2step tunes when we saw him dj - that got me into garage in a way. theres something kinda pastoral about it but still pretty funky, although to put it in a set with other bona fide garage tunes, it needs the bass pumping up a bit, and the drums are really low down in the mix (maybe you can do this with eqs on a mixer)....

so, anyone aside from me notice this phenomenon? any comments? will it get anywhere?

as a closing note, like i said before, all the attempts to try and recreate garage in a different form have failed cos it seems that these people dont really know how to make a garage tune. it is this feelinjg that made me hate 'my red hot car' so much cos there seemed to be this feeling like, "i've made freejazz stylee stuff, so this simplistic pop music cant be hard to make, lets see, its just drum'n'bass but slower isnt it?" which fell on its face cos its so badly made, and a 1000000x less danceable than the er...real thing.

god this is a long post. you can tell its essay time.......

― ambrose, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

shit this is meant to be on ILM can you delete the thread, er whoever looks after this stuff? i will post it there. sorry....

― ambrose, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No Ambrose, I think you will get the best answers from ILE anyway - what with us being much more down with the garage massive (and working all night so it dun't matter how much bollox is written).

The point is -simply - to try and understand what makes UKG so vital in the first place. It is its very street nature, mixed up with a kind of sad idea of what makes it "Street". Oddly the beats are easily nicked but in retrospect the aspect of UKG which are the most disposable.

Its often been that case that so called disposable pop is difficult to make (cf St Ettienne in many ways). Sometimes its banging on the edge of ignorance which makes it so vital. Its seeing people scratch agin their limitations which is exciting.

― Pete, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pete, what do you mean when you say that the beats are the most disposable bit of garage? I'm curious as a) they're the bits I like (mm bouncy skittery, can't be doing with all those r&b vocals or tough-guy toasting, and a lot of the ravier, less r&b stuff I've heard just seems really messy) and b) they kind of seem like the defining feature of UK garage to me. But then I'm confused by breakbeat garage for either not sounding like garage or not sounding breakbeaty, and I wouldn't dare step inside a proper garage club, so don't mind me.

It's a very interesting post, Ambrose, and one I would love to reply to properly, but I don't think I know enough about such things. So I hope people who do reply, I'd like to see their responses...

― Rebecca, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah to be honest the beats seem to be the bit that are LEAST easily nicked to me. in terms of all these people not quite getting it right.

but yr right i suppose. the thing about taking all the 'unwelcome' elements of garage - soulful vocals w/ terrible lyrics, cheesy synth noises, er....all the other things - is that its loses its vitality in a way. i still listen for a) the beats b) the bass, but instrumental/dubs of all the tunes are not as tempting as the originals....

but i dont agree that beats are the most disposble bit . irpesume you mean that they are unimportant to a garage sound. to be honest this sounds abit like the 'its drum'n'bass isnt it? just done crap' thing which i have heard many times. eg ed on maxwell d , francis james rmx. - "oh its a d'n'b remix" (ed! i tried to instrcut you (!)). but for me the beats are whats makes it so fucking amazing. i have never in my life heard a style of music that has made me want to dance more than garage. i think the definitive answer to this beats thing is to put dj zinc'138 trek' next to the zed bias remix....although nearly identical, the remix just has that....damn...dont knwo how else to describe it...skippy/skittery feel to it, which is knocking everything off the beat to an infintesimal degree (try making a garage tune on something like fruityloops or something which rigidly quantizes everything....). to be honestwhen i think of words like staccatto and syncopation, than garage feel comes to me, although i've most heard them to describe drum and bass.

is that clear!

― ambrose, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The beats are the easiest part of UKG to reproduce. There's nothing too smart about two-step after all. But the very simplictity of them makes sophisticated composer/producers think that they canbe elaborated on to make things cleverer/better. The good UKG rocks out of the stable of simplicity buoyed up by a tremendous idea (music ginnick) or excellent chatting/MC-ing. Look at hardocre when it turned first into jungle and then IDM. What was sucked out was partially simplicity, partially the knowledge that things could be done a better (schmoover, slicker, more calculated) way.

In the end you can hear the limitations of the player/composer in the music - and its the fact that people are banging agin said limitations that makes it exciting.

― Pete, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

new link!

here is someone frome warp trying to do it it should stream automatically somehow. hes called dj maximus. its still frustrating though. whats the plan now, just cut a garage tune a lot, to sound IDM style?

at any rate, interesting

― ambrose, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hmm, semantically I think I fucked that one up. The beats are the key point of UKG, what makes it UKG, and yet they are easily the simplect, easiest reproduced part of the genre. The question is what you do with said beats. I think this is similar to pretty early hip- hop when everyone was using the same samples, it was the artistes who weren't being too clever who really got it. Its a rough & tumble music, and sometimes it doesn't bear too much examination.

Its all about shaking yo ass before you scratch your chin after all.

― Pete, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pete I think you'd be correct if most artists were literal about producing a 'two-step' rhythm, but that's actually pretty rare. Instead most of the rhythm tracks in 2-step tracks have the same relation to a straightahead 2-step beat as the rhythms on, say, Screamadelica or early 808 State have to a house 4-to-da- floor: the feel of the rhythm is the same, but the beats are actually in all the wrong places (in a good way). I imagine the beats of producers such as The Wideboys or Sticky or even Artful Dodger before they fell off (note in "Rewind" all those lovely jazzy fills) would be as hard work to program as any post-Timbaland hip hop or R&B.

I think the mistake a lot of outside producers make is that they consider the sharpness of 2-step beats to be a weak link, replacing them with a thicker, papery breakbeat sound that usually sounds quite plodding at that tempo (Stanton Warriors are an exception, and I wish I could explain exactly why that is so). My favourite "experimental" producers would be Horsepower Productions, who interestingly work within the scene rather than alongside or against it, and whose nervy tech-soundscapes have little to do with garage except for their tinny 2-step beats.

Also: they don't like divas or MCs = they have no lives.

― Tim, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i really dont get stanton warriors. i eman, theyre ok, but i would give them as an example of breakbeat producers who placed alongside similar garage producers, dont seem to match them....

they do have nice bass sounds though.....

any info on horsepower productions?

― ambrose, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

... Of course it depends on which Stanton Warriors you hear - "Determined", "Right Here" and their remixes of Jocelyn Brown's "Somebody Else's Guy", Fatboy's "Demons", Jaxx's "Jump & Shout" and Artful Dodger's "Please Don't Turn Me On" are all marvellous; their straight breakbeat tracks like "Da Virus" are less so. Their "trick" in my opinion is to merge breakbeats and 2-step syncopation in a manner that actually does reveal the qualities (and not shortcomings) of both.

Horsepower Productions = underground kru with connections to both El- B and Nico of drum & bass yore (they're the flagship producers for Nico's No U Turn-derived garage imprint, Turn U On), their sound has been described as M.R.I doing 2-step, which I think is pretty bang- on. Voluptuous and fluffy but often very dark ambient-dub-tech soundscapes - "Gorgon Sound" could be Maurizio with 2-step beats. The M.R.I. comparison also works because Turn U On's stylistic relationship to No U Turn is very similar to the relationship between Force Tracks and Force Inc.

Best Horsepower Productions = "Fists of Fury", which has an awesomely swooping groove.

― Tim, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ambrose, You really don't get it do you. The 'sonically messy bits' are the best bits.

― Tom, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

that maxximus/somethin j track is utterly excrable, its not idm its not garage its just crap

― Ed, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Stantons azzido da bass remix is great also. er thought I'd add that.

― Ronan, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Definitely in da club. After a while it started to underwhelm me on my home stereo.

― Tim, Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The timo maas remix of get ur freak also pleases me greatly these days.

― Ronan, Sunday, 9 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have made a mistake so before someone corrects me I will do it. It's not a timo maas remix, actually I don't know who remixed it but there is a fantastic get ur freak on that I hear regularly.

What Timo Maas did was remix Kelis, and that does rock my world you know it does.

― Ronan, Sunday, 9 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...

hi i found this site searching for info about making uk garage in fruityloops and somebody here says its impossible because fruityloops quantizes too much!! so is the rythmic syncopation more irregular than a regular swing/shuffle groove? fruity does shuffle, i think its the standard every other quarter beat type swing..... is that enough? or do i need something more?? please help.... so far fruity shuffle sounds close but not quite but i dont know if thats fruitys fault or cuz im new to this kind of thing.....

thanks in advance for ur advice,

― djtruckstop, Thursday, 31 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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