Taking sides: Rhythm & Sound Rhythm & Sound vs. Burial Mix Rhythm & Sound

here's one: how come these guys never get called out for using "real live jamaican dub singers"? never taken to task for cleaving to a rigid view of jamaican sound, for growing increasingly inflexible in their sound, for releasing an album of instrumentals just because it's "the dub tradition" or something. i can hardly imagine that another group importing vocalists seemingly picked for pure gravitas and getting away with it scot-free.

that said i REALLY like the new album, it's very creepy.

is there much else out there that sounds like this, outside R+S themselves?

There is a decent digi-dub scene out there, but a lot of them don't have the high production value of R&S. For more tech-dub, try anything on the Echocord or Meteosound label. For more rootsy stuff, try the Paul St. Hilaire solo disc or some stuff by Fenin.

doesn't quite top radio slave's chelonis remix (i'm sorry, i'm sorry) but it's very, very similar. in many ways more subtle, and also more mental; actually maybe yeah it does top the radio slave. anyway, it's fantastic, especially the cut-up, almost out-of-time vocal stuttering at the end. completely disorienting.

w/the Artists is so good, I can see how vahid's question above might stick in the craw but the sounds are just so niiiiiiice

Feel free to berate me for my ignorance but I've never known what Burial Mix is, or what the difference between burial mix and rhythm and sound is. Since sometimes burial mix is labeled on things in a way which i can't seem to figure out what is being referred to. So if someone would be so kind. . .

i'm not sure but i think that rhythm & sound is more dub cave experiments while burial mix is trying to bring older reggae to electronic production

w/the Artists is so good, I can see how vahid's question above might stick in the craw but the sounds are just so niiiiiiice.

Yeah, it is great. Creepy and smooth and sensual. I don't get Vahid's criticism, tho. Is he saying that R & S (a) is poaching Jamaican cultural traditions, (b) adopts an overly-rigid view of what constitutes Jamaican musical culture and heritage or (c) something else?

I think Vahid's saying that if anyone else was as relentlessly narrow-minded in their appropriation of another culture's musical traditions they would getting a lot more flack for it than R&S has.

I don't think there is much of a difference between R&S and Burial Mix at this point (if there ever was.)

BTW I'm not sure I agree with vahid's assessment. Where artist's tend to get the most flack is where they tamper senselessly (see: Bill Laswell), not where they try to reproduce flawlessly or whatever.

BTW their Basic Replay label which they just released a CD sampler for is complete fucking brilliance. The recent Prince Jazzbo EP is so good that I wish they had released an entire CD of vocals rather than 4 instrumentals.

adopts an overly-rigid view of what constitutes Jamaican musical culture and heritage

^^ this

Who gets flack for that?

you don't sneer at, say, billy bragg?

or jurassic 5?

Rhytm<<<<<<<Sound (<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Melody & Harmony)

I don't see those as being particularly comparable actually.

well, that's what i wonder, is why not? i sneered when leftfield exhumed afrika bambaatta to rap on a track, i sneer at stuff like damon albarn's "mali music", or when jsbx exhumes guys like rl burnside for cred. why don't i sneer at rhythm & sound?

I want to visit Geirland where melody and harmony exist separately from sound. Trippy!

i think the answer is, rhythm & sound and tikiman each have a lot more cred than any other musician i can think of who's orchestrated a "back to roots" move.

I know it's mostly personal bias, but whenever someone from a predominantly English-speaking country does it, it often feels like cultural tourism, a pitch at credibility, or is seen as an "experiment" instead of a simple affinity for the music. I don't think it's necessarily the problem of the artist, but the culture that they're bringing the work to?

They also managed to evolve (using that word loosely) to that position relatively seamlessly over the course of a decade or so, rather than suddenly going all traditionalist.

^^ that's a good point, but their releases were quite scattered over that 10 years.

There is something about R&S that seems much more labor of love-ish than Leftfield or that Albarn Mali-thing (although to be fair the problem with that record is mostly that it's not very good, not that it's crass--and Honest Jon's might not be Wackies/Basic Replay, but it's still very good.)

Isn't the case essentially that what Albarn/Leftfield are doing is basically one-offs with their collaborations, as to dip their toes into exotic territories, whereas Moritz and Mark have been working in dub (not pure dub and reggae, but an aesthetic which is directly influenced from that) for years and years. I saw them in the summer with Paul St. Hilaire and it seemed more like a true collaborative effort, in that R&S were the ones in the background while P S-H was kind of headlining it; it kind of shows how he's not an auxiliary component of the act and that R&S were coming down to his playing field, not the other way around. Going for something more on the side of authentic that of novelty.

That's my guess at least.

Has anyone else heard Pulshar? I picked up Brotherhood this weekend (after hearing "Mr Money Mon" on /rupture's show). Really good R&S knock off (probably better than the last couple of R&S releases actually.)

Too many weak vocals on the Pulshar. The bits where the guy isn't singing aren't bad though.

Aw I like his vocals (or at least I like his vocals smeared with tons of echo.) Are any of Bolivar's other vocal-less things this good? I've never heard of him before this.

I was kind of surprised this didn't get a mention anywhere on ILX. This seems right up a lot of people's alleys.