bloggers v drum & bass

can we get a personal 04 d&b top 10, martin?

For a good half decade techno recieved a pass for being derivative and repetitiously floor-centric. During the same period d&b is continually accused of stagnation for similar reasons. But let them complain, it sustains the genre. It's time we stop demanding evolution and appreciate experimentation.

You mention some great producers like Fanu and Amit, to that list I'd add Paradox, Blues & Bronco, D Kay & DJ Lee and Pieter K. ryan kuo did a great mix of underappreciated tunes that is worth checking out.

Cruel Intentionz - Divergence

Facs & VCA - Paperclip

Equinox - Acid Rain (The Final Chapter Breakage VIP Mix)

Cruel Intentionz - Combinationz

Paradox - Curse Of Coincidence

'Yes Please'-DnB

(I Love Lists :)

this is a common theme amongst criticism: the dual inability to accept d&b 2004 on it's own, new terms and the laziness to actually go out and look for new and exciting sounds, instead of taking the easy route by dismissing it."

This is a weak argument. The crux of what disappoints with current D&B is that it's *not* dubplate culture. Current D&B may sound very different to '94 jungle, but it doesn't sound very different to '99 d&b at all. Bar "choppage" and maybe the trance influences, pretty much *all* the innovations that have been put forward in the last five years have essentially been reiterations of what was already around. I like High Contrast, but I don't think he would have sounded very out of place at all five years ago. What is missing is the velocity of development and mutation that dubplate culture is all about. I don't think that this makes the scene useless, but I think it explains why so many people can feel complacent in criticising the genre without investing huge amounts of time or energy into surveying every aspect of the scene first. I go and dance at d&b nights probably about four or five times a year, which is not much at all but I don't feel any urgency to go more frequently because the sound never changes noticeably. Whereas, when there were still frequent garage nights in Melbourne, you could almost feel the sound mutating from week to week; attending became a compulsion because you wanted to find out where this music was going to go next.

And of course there are heaps of great tracks and artists (there were heaps of great tracks and artists in '99 too though, which is why discussions of jungle's "resurgence" are always suspect - it's like every Bowie album being a comeback album) which listeners could find if they pay enough attention, but I think that for most non-fans a genre-as-a-whole whose sonic formula is as restricted as d&b's has become has to pass a certain threshold test of dynamism and neccessity before people feel justified in hunting down what are really quite obscure, out-of-the-way releases.

Also this is a cheap shot I think. What makes The Bug interesting is the very fact that, because he's working within a dancehall rhythymic matrix and not a d&b one, said over-load sonics don't sound thoroughly hackneyed (and even then they still do, a bit). Also there's the advantage that, being at a slower tempo, there's still that residual hint of a dialectic between aggression and sexiness that grr-d&b is just too fast to have (which can have its own compensations, but again said compensations are by now very familiar to anyone who has paid passing attention to d&b these past seven years).

And I don't think dripdropdrap's argument is rendered illegitimate because he doesn't get dubplates. This is the whole Kompakt argument innit: one of the things that makes Kompakt so popular is the fact that they're conscientious about documenting their sound in a(relatively) easily obtainable cd format. Sometimes house/techno fans on ILX get sniffy because people buying these releases aren't also investing in overpriced 12inches from Dumb Unit or Sender or Sub Static or whoever, but honestly, with the sheer amount of good music in so many different styles to choose from, I don't think people should be punished for not being excessively conscientious and decadent in tracking down every single release that comes out.

Of course with some genres (eg. grime) there's no easy option, but since d&b sections of stores like HMV always seem to be bulging with new cd releases it would seem perfectly fair to stick with that.

I know it's not difficult to prefer the past to the present, but i think most distaste (certainly my own) for current d'n'b stems from great fondness for jungle (and by that i mean pre-two-step beat, cut up break, ragga-influenced jungle); both the tunes themselves and what it did with music. Something like capone's 'massive' (dillinja=capone) sounds like pinsharp accurate funk. not a single sound is wasted; the beats are punctuated by tiny silences giving it a clipped jabbing impact, but it still is just drums 'n' bass and sounds perfect, finished.

Dillinja today sounds wasteful, so much energy and effort obviously in the music (time invested in the mix and mastering, getting those bass lines absolutely as chest-cavity vibrating as possible) and for what? his records today remind me of a oil rig out of control, firing indiscriminatly to all corners. No control, just pure power flooding out without control. To see this 'progression' is depressing, how is it he's seemingly immatured? has he unlearned the kind of control that many musicians would take years to learn? Dillinja is just one example of this, there are so many who, without much explanation, followed the two-step bosh pattern when it became popular (hype, zinc, shy fx...a list is pointless it's EVERYONE), but I give special mention to Dillinja because of this (from radio1 forum):

Dillinja was Flight's show recently. In the interview he went deep, talking frankly about the D&b scene? the past and where it is now. One of the things which stood was for me, was how much he loved the music but to keep above water he has to play the game.

What's the game? Well going with the flow is the game. Making tracks the kids are into. He'd love to sit in the studio and make stuff which is gonna challenge the dancefloor but has to constantly churn club bangers in order to even be allowed to create the music he reeeeally wants to make. If he doesn't he could be seen as falling off?

how sad is that, both for him AND for us?

I've listened to the linked grooverider show and it pisses me off. It's SO annoying to hear grooverider enthuse about these tunes while i can't catch even the faintest headnod buzz off them (giving three rewinds to something or other, or like him saying one of the tracks made him cry *cue awful cymbally hyper-revved amen break*; me too mate, but for entirely different reasons). That pendulum remix of Nightbreed 'pack of wolves' is some pig ugly Pitchshifter (nottingham nu-metal/d'n'b: avoid) shite. Nu-metal and nu-d'n'b like that fucking deserve each other. Same aspirations of funk, same OTT sinisterness, same bellowing into the void.
Also i hate hearing things i associate with jungle on new d'n'b tracks, the sped-up soul yelps in the middle of breaks reduced to a predictable techno-tick, the amen-break used SO much but always eqed to put the cymbals at eye-melting volume and pitch. it's annoying to be reminded of these things in a new crap context, and if two-step d'n'b is a separate type of music why should it have to borrow these elements from jungle.

Anyway, HMV: it seems to have a pretty good overview of current d'n'b. There's not many names on the grooverider playlist i don't recognise. I admit i don't precisely know what you mean by 'dubplate culture', but surely many of these white labels will see a release if they are deemed good enough. I don't know music by photek or the nu-breaks crew, and should find out more about them. From what i have heard (the occaisional bailey show) i could easily like it very much, and it seems radically different from most grooverider-endorsed stuff. but go on big dnb websites, there is still very little interest in this, very few clubs for this kind of thing, it's still all about the big players, the ex-junglists. Offshore records (whose sampler i would buy if saw it anywhere) has a long way to go before it is 'what's going on' in dnb.

if 'dubplate culture' is what i think it is ie. the constant search for the new, it may be some way to blame for what has happened in the mainstreams of dnb. The search for 'progression' has lead the scene to a dead end, they are now 'progressing' in tiny technical increments; bass grains, slightly changed two bar loops. However much the 'p' word is used, i don't think a grooverider show from 2008 will be too different from one now.

I think you're right in saying that drum'n'bass should be taken as an entirely different music (in fact I said as much on this thread)but you'd think that all the major players are involved in some conspiracy to make sure we never find out that pre-two-step d'n'b ever existed, such as the 'history lesson' on that show just being a primitive two-step rather than a cut-up track. Come on if that was me choosing what to play, i'd want to have some fun, bang on krome & time or something, but instead we have origin unknown, still very much part of 'the game' and the cut-up written out of history to keep the dominance of the two-step. (staring-eyed conspiracy-theory over)

i don't hate drum 'n' bass, it's just annoying. It's usurped a music i have far more affinity with by claiming that it's a reincarnation of the same.

Memo to 2004 d&b: you want us to be interested in you? interest us then.

(the one thing i'll give dnb is when they saw schaffel coming a la 'bodyrock' they called it CLOWNSTEP)

Same thing with d&b; when it came to the crunch in the mid-'90s, the Peshays and Grooveriders of this world preferred to put out pallid Chick Corea impersonations instead of the sonic mindfucks which got them there to begin with. The sad truth is that the greatest d&b record ever made could be recorded and released this week but no one will notice because its time has passed, and it's partly its own fault.

Stop making proper music and keep on making noise. That's what we pay you for, it's your fucking job, get on with it.

when is this track from? the intro is brilliant

(oddly, the google search for 'Fresh Shinobi' picked up the listing of my end of year cd for 2003)

For example:

"Last week in London there was a meeting between 40 djs from the scene and 40 producers to discuss the future of what look a very bleak scenbe at the moment. A large majority of the djs felt that the music being made these days is very sub standard.They also felt there was far to much noise going on in the dance which they think has contributed to the declining numbers at the clubs and raves. "

continued: http://www.irishdrumandbass.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=NS-phpBB&file=index&action=viewtopic&topic=15307&forum=1

or

DILLY BASHING:

http://www.irishdrumandbass.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=NS-phpBB&file=index&action=viewtopic&topic=14368&forum=1

!!!

No one has mentioned how SLSK, CD burners and CDDJs have disrupted much of the dubplate politiking and forced labels and producers to really get their shit organized. In comparison to three or four years ago, with releases like Dillinja's Cybotron and Calibre's Musique Concrete taking more than a year to move from dub to shops, popular tunes are released in a much more timely manner.

I think one could attribute the (slight) bump in genre activity to this great file-sharing-dub-burning-club-spinning equalizer. And the attitude of many Producers is grudging indifference, since they all use stolen copies of CuBase and Reason.

the bug is dancehall btw martin .. he's also the exception rather than the rule, a one off..

Zerstulelte

SC:Amsterdam
IChiOne presents Subversive Renaissance 3

line up:

20:00 John Doe (IChiOne/Counter intelligence)
22:00 Pressure (IChiOne/Redzone)
00:00 Live pa by Paradox (Paradox Music/Esoteric/Outsider)
01:00 Fracture & Neptune (Inperspective/Offshore/Outsider/Streetbeats)

9th of October
from 20:00 till 03:00
Café Pakhuis Wilhemina, Veemkade 576 Amsterdam
Entrance 5 euro

Live stream by www.Jungletrain.net

art and details will follow

www.subvertcentral.com
www.ichione.com

for better or for worse, one of the reasons dnb is the way it is today is that the KIDS WHO GO TO THE CLUBS LIKE DANCING TO IT. that's what dillinja was saying in that interview. shouldn't that be right up your alley, all you reynolds-wrapped pseudo-marxists? there's no more "auteur" and the DJs are just giving the pilled-up punters what they want. isn't that a beutiful thing?

seriously, i'm sick of hearing you lot go on about how great things were 10 years ago. move the FUCK on. if it's not doing anything for you now, skip to the next bin in the aisle so you can intellectualize some other kind of musical blackness.

i couldn't care less about pseudo marxist intellectualising, all i know is once the breaks were mindblowing and now its too fast, the beats are WACK (with a few notable exceptions) - and its way too noisy for it to mean anything.

the fact is, that 180bpm + is too fast to make it funky. now all its got is the power thing, well if thats what you are after then just grow a mullet and get some metal. whats the other variants on offer again? bland jazz funk at breakneck speed or that rubbish disco house vibe that people were rinsing out? for christsake i want my jungle to be JUNGLE - if these sad incremental variants are the best ideas that jungle producers can come up with, then it is dead. maybe we should flog the corpse a little longer before we can admit that to ourselves eh?

propah jungle is now just a memory and i don't want that memory to be sullied with the kind of crap that is masquerading as jungle. i can't tell you how much it pains me to see something that i poured so much passion into turning into such an unimaginative dead end.

http://bassnation.uk.net/sound/oldskool12-2001.zip

(BTW Equinox is, in my opinion, one of the few producers doing anything half decent at the mo...)

you call it hating, but its something i feel strongly about. i will never stop loving jungle but on my terms.

I can't apologise for enthusing so much about the scene infancy tho. I listened to 'Horizons' this morning, it was nice.

i agree wholeheartedly with your comment:

"propah jungle is now just a memory and i don't want that memory to be sullied with the kind of crap that is masquerading as jungle. i can't tell you how much it pains me to see something that i poured so much passion into turning into such an unimaginative dead end."

...with one qualification.. the producers out there still trying to make 'propah jungle' instead of new d+b in the 'Pillinja' mold deserve a bit of respect..

it may seem to us, from a distance that the flames have gone out, but to those carrying the torch, a slight flicker of life may still be visible amongst the embers...

... or so im told
(sorry for the awful olympics metaphor)

"Zone of Fruitless Intensification" is, like many good critical concepts, one which sounds obvious in retrospect but actually is not - intensification without cease is uncritically celebrated by many critics, artists, audiences...

But I have to disagree with his tedious anti-intellectualism, his interpretation of what ZFI means (in no way can it be intepreted as "nothing must change - you got it right and then you fucked it up"), and his rather hysterical (and entirely predictable) over-reading of Reynolds' use of the phrase "black music," which aside from being flat-out wrong on the basis of the text itself is also disproven by pretty much everything Reynolds has ever written about jungle--he's always seen it as a mixed-race, mongrel music...

PPS Although I too think current jungle is pretty mediocre, there is a certain amusement in seeing golden-ageism afflict a, uh, musical discourse that always virulently opposed it...

So now I'm trying to understand why Equinox is being so critical of bloggers and bigging up what the 'kids' dance to when his music so blatantly veers towards what the bloggers want rather than the kids.

no, its simply that the MUSIC isn't as good as it was. its too fast to be funky, its lost the lithe sonic invention that characterised it in favour of power. why do you think sooo many of us who were into old skool jungle and 'ardkore back in the day have turned our backs on it?

as for simon being middle class, well i've never met the bloke so i couldn't shed any light on that - BUT i come from a council estate - when i was growing up people would be listening to 'ardkore when joyriding round the estate - so am i allowed to have an opinion under your misguided rules?

the fact is, as much as you want to intellectualise it (weren't you accussing simon of just that??) jungle is no longer what it once was. time to let it die with some dignity.

http://www.bassnation.uk.net/sound/oldskool10-2001.zip

but, yeah, smashing.

I feel like I'd be remiss in not mentioning Certificate 18 here, whose Hidden Rooms comps kept up the rhythmic pressure at least half the time 98-01. Though funnily enough people like Klute are/were actually crapper than most when they *do* make straight 2-step beats - the big exception being Lexis whose beats were always a joy to listen to whether fractured (I've been listening to "Irrampent" a lot of late) or straight down the line.

One of the interesting things about the resurgence of "choppage" is that it literally is "regressive" (the charge allegedly laid against the Inperspective sound by some people in the scene, according to the Knowledge article) in so far as it goes back to that 94-96 style of making beats, whereas there's obviously a lot of ways to make heavily fractured beats in a post-techstep style. I think I'd happily fall back in love with jungle proper even if it simply resumed the programmed edginess that characterises about one third to a half of those Certificate 18 tunes (see also Klute's "Silent Weapons" (but not the yucky Photek mix) or "Leo 9"); an actual resurrection of "the golden age" wouldn't be necessary at all.

But, I presume, the reason for Inperspective etc. reaching right back before techstep is that they have to put a lot of distance between themselves and the magnetic tug of the one-bar-loop structure; I get the sense that it's very difficult for producers to retain rhythmic complexity from within post-techstep's borders without tumbling toward the center.

This is probably what really irritates me about the predominance of the one-bar-loop sound - not that it's replaced ragga or 'artcore' or whatever, because those sounds are distinctive enough to retain their own identity and be rediscovered; rather, that it's installed a hegemonic approach to the post-techstep sound that was really quite unneccessary, and in the process the existence and potential of tunes like "Irrampent" has impliedly been denied. D&B could be quite thrilling again with much less of a transformation than the Inperspective artists are actually advocating.

I suppose an analogy would be if at some point last year, instead of expanding its sonic borders, the majority of grime producers had reverted to a strict devotion to the "Pulse X" blueprint and demanded that this be adhered to in perpetuity. It wouldn't be the loss of pre-"Pulse X" 2-step that would be tragic so much as the lost potential glimpsed in (what would be) pre-reformation tunes like "I Luv U" or "Eskimo".

it's become so fast breaks wont fit (many producers say this about the 175bpm speed over the mid 90's 165).

and it's being made by people who only listen to their own sub-flavour of d&b, so can't imagine beyond the dancefloor or techstep's palate.

tracklist:

1. Equinox - Don't Wanna Hurt You
2. Skitty - Sweet Vibrations
3. Alias - Cosmos
4. Random Movement - Struggle To The Grave
5. Rohan & Basic Operations - My Brother
6. Fracture & Neptune - Bless Me
7. Breakage - Disco 45
8. Seba & Paradox - Sound on Sound
9. Paradox - Bongolia
10. Breakage - So Mars
11. Seba & Paradox - Frost
12. Breakage - Ask Me
13. Calibre - Can't Stop This Fire

ah: http://www.discogs.com/release/328475

1.01 Fresh - All That Jazz
1.02 Q Project - Ask Not
1.03 Ebony Dubsters - Who Run Tings Pt.2 (Murderation)
1.04 DJ Die & Clipz - Monorail (We Got The Funk)
1.05 Clipz - Cocoa
1.06 Lemon D - Get On Down (DJ Die Remix)
1.07 Splittin' Atoms - Bulletproof Monk
1.08 Generation Dub - Tax Man
1.09 Generation Dub - Champaigne Cocktails
1.10 Distorted Minds - Fight Club (TC Remix)
1.11 Krust - Paper Monster
1.12 Dynamite MC & Origin Unknown - Hotness (Roni Size Remix)
1.13 Fresh - Tombraider
1.14 Distorted Minds - Revolution (VIP)
1.15 Distorted Minds - Ouch
1.16 E-Z Rollers - Crowd Rocker (Distorted Minds Remix)
1.17 Fresh - Submarines (Pendulum Remix)

which looks better, on paper. that said, the last few have all washed over me.

Am I talking to someone involved in the mag? I could add that I buy a lot of UK dance mags, and Knowledge isn't the worst, and I'm not very impressed by any of them. I buy Knowledge for the CDs, which are mostly very good.

ps a lot of UK dance mags... what UK dance mags lol?

(I've only read one issue of the magazine btw. I just remember being bored by it.)

Funny someone mentioned 'you might as well listen to thrash metal' - Concord Dawn, who are arguably NZ's biggest d'n'b act, getting plenty of radio play on even commercial radio stations (!), are comprised of two guys who used to (still do to my knowledge) play in metal bands. A good half of their tunes these days have foregone any pretensions of d'n'b's 'funky' rhythms and just use a big ugly reverbed all to hell rock kick and snare playing a 170bpm rock beat with chugchugchug metal guitar over the top. And of course ear-bleeding distorted hihats.

There are a couple of acts vaguely pushing an envelope (some of the b-sides on the Upbeats album are a bit interesting) but whether it's the envelope, and whether they're pushing it in interesting directions, remains to be seen.

As a bit of an experiment I dropped this (Frey - Ethical (that's me, though d'n'b isn't my main genre of production)) on a local forum full of d'n'b heads and they told it wasn't d'n'b. Go figure.

NOW [8pm - 10pm]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/6mix/

As for my two cents' worth, I'd say that leftfield dnb is healthier than it's been in a while, if only to judge by the quality of releases in the past months on Outsider, Subtle Audio, Bassbin, Breakin', Counter Intelligence, Offshore, Inperspective, Covert Operations, Subject 13, Warm Communications, Secret Operations, Lightless, Exegene, Transmute, Thermal, Forestry, Mindrush, and Planet Mu. I am sure that I have forgotten some.

And by the aforementioned labels I refer *only* to leftfield material, not to mainstream dnb (which has been much discussed and rightly maligned for a long time now, most of all by the leftfield producers and DJs themselves). I can think of at least one, and in some cases six to ten, tunes on each of the labels just mentioned that I would argue for or 'get behind' on the grounds of aesthetic merit, production style, drum programming, and musicality.

on the other hand, my wallet thanks me immensely.

And for those who prefer compilation CDs to vinyl, here are some very good recent releases:

- "On The Lam," an excellent mix on Make:Shift Recordings
- the Breakage album on Bassbin, with one disc of dnb and one of downtempo
- a new ASC/Covert Operations Remixes & Collaborations CD on Covert Ops
- a new compilation from Exegene ("Noise Corrosion")
- new album from Alpha Omega ("Word of Mouth")
- the Clever mix for Knowledge mag ("Unsung Heroes")

NYC event update & bye bye from Tr1c1a R.:
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0722,romano,76790,22.html

Revive...
I have been getting back into listening to some new D&B mixes lately, and while I'm enjoying them, I can't help but feel that most of the tracks wouldn't sound out of place in say 97. but maybe this is an unfair measure of stagnation. To me, Drum and Bass made such incredible innovative stylistic changes throughout the 90s that to expect the evolution to have continued at that pace is an impossibly high standard. do people expect the same sort of advancements out of techno or house? but what new stuff IS worth it? and given the cyclical nature of fashion does D&B have a chance of making a big return to the limelight in the 2010s? Has it allready happened as Dubstep? and if not, what will this return sound like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FozYUManGsw

There was an article in Mixmag that I glanced at in store suggesting that drum & bass was "the biggest sound in dance music in 2009" or something to that effect, and citing high sales of an album from a producer I hadn't even heard of.

But I didn't have time to read it more closely or get a sense of what it was referring to.

I would have said it's now one of those genres whose development is so strictly limited to internal standards of what counts as "transformation" that it is always arguably in revival or in decline, but never obviously one or the other. But I didn't listen to any 2009 d&b so what do I know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0J9mTpDUeU

Pretty heavy.

what do people think of the whole autonomic thing?