what is the point of trying to make 'funny' 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)

More to the point, what is the point of trying to make any type of "garage" to begin with?

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Ignore me.

Alex in NYC, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

well, at least you posted something. At least, I'm interested in it!

has a more boring post ever been....er....posted?

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

Ambrose, I'd post something large and expansive except that I basically agree with you. You can really feel the tension in all of this quasi-garage: the producers like garage, but they're afraid of liking it so much that they'll compromise their values, be it drum & bass hardness, nu-jazz pretentiousness or nu-breaks anal- retentiveness. That said, Landslide's "Round the Corner" was actually very nice.

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

i suspect manitoba's inability to articulate 'proper' garage is because he's only recently relocated to the u.k. from canada. garage is completely alien to canada.

i think dan snaith (manitoba) probably has distaste for garage as it is essentially trashy, populist dance music (in its current state) and his re-mix is definitely tongue in cheek.

'my red hot car' is definitely another case of taking the piss, and its inclusion as the first track on 'go plastic' confirms it. tom jenkinson is a real prankster and while it is a brilliant piece of music, everything about it screams his frustration with garage and the legions of sheep-headed garage fans.

since i'm on the topic, can anyone recommend me some GOOD garage? i'm quite interested in learning more about it (just so i don't write it off entirely).

fields of salmon, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm not wanting to sound irritable, Mr. Fields of Salmon, but if you tend to dismiss "trashy" populist dance genres as the domain of the "sheep-headed" then maybe garage is just not for you. Pointing you in the way of good stuff (but, for the sake of it, try stuff by The Wideboys, Sticky, Ed Case, Zed Bias, El-B, Horsepower Productions etc.) won't do much good if your criteria for judging dance music are so ill-suited to the style as a whole.

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

hey, "fields of salmon", you're completely wrong here, and not just for the (excellent) reasons that tim's pointed out.

i know for a fact that dan manitoba snaith is a huge garage fan; in fact his 2nd favourite track of the year is "gotta get through this" by daniel betingfield (after timbaland and magoo's "i am music"). his remix definitely wasn't tongue in cheek, either.

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

in his interview on brave new waves (a great little canadian radio show devoted to all breed of, er, "underground" music) from a while back (i'm pretty sure it can be found buried somewhere in the bnw website's archives.. www.bravenewwaves.ca), dan snaith simply could not stop raving about uk garage. this was also when he was still based out of toronto, which says something about canada's "alienation" from garage. it's actually always been my thought that the prevalance of uk-imported dance music (in comparison to that of other genres, anyway) has for years been significantly greater here than in the states.

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

...and predictably I now really want to hear the Manitoba album.

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

Did anybody see the NME review of the Squarepusher single? It's basically an open celebration of whats being called into question here. Now to find out whether its actually any good or not.....

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

hear it on the warp site. it is probably better than his previosu attempts at trying to find a new sound, and it has got er....elements f garage, but it is, at the end of the day, LoadsOfCutUpDrillnBassMadBreaksWooLookAtMyCleverSequencing er...run of the mill squarepusher stuff .only a bit better. sometimes it streams when you are on the site.

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

The contrast between this thread and the identical ILE one is very illuminating. (Ditto the Geo Harrison threads).

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

garage is completely alien to canada.

Sure about that??? I wish it were true. Luckily garage still means a form of rock music to most, thanks in no small part to Nardwaur.

Mr Noodles, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...
i'm from hamilton, ont....

(dan snaith's hometown)....and he has been part of a pretty solid group of garage enthusiasts here....in hamilton we have the only weekly garage night in the whole region...recently we had Kode 9 (from hyperdub.com) over from london to play a big show and do some interviews....

for those who think that garage is consumerist garbage...i highly suggest you go to www.hyperdub.com and get yo-self educated (wink)

and if you are in southern ontario...come to the casbah night club every wednesday night for hardcore garage (benny ill, oris jay, phuturistix, wideboys et al)

ggboy, Thursday, 10 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(uk) garage is definitely a bit foreign to torontonians - much easier to find people who like american garage. the average house head here looks at it as a bit of a bastardisation of music that is taken quite seriously. anglophiles are into it, as well as some music nerds, but it is very much in it's infancy. i don't think dan is being ironic - when he djs here (toronto) he usually plays some 2- step (good stuff too). from my perspective, everything that is mildly interesting about the idea of uk garage can be found in r&b, except funkier, sexier and with better drum programming. i'll take timberland over artful dodger any day.

benjamin, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But Benjamin that's a deceptive comparison: Artful Dodger would be more like the Rodney Jerkins of garage than the Timbaland. El-B or Zed Bias would be the closest *real* comparison points, and neither have had such a crucial formative role or overwhelming dominance as Timbaland has with R&B. I would say that UK Garage is much more advanced than R&B on a rhythmical level - with the exception of Timbaland himself R&B hasn't really developed beyond "Bills, Bills, Bills", whereas UKG has gone in heaps of different dirctions and keeps evolving and getting more intricate all the time.

PS. I've finally heard that Manitoba track, and it is brilliant.

Tim, Thursday, 24 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two months pass...
I don't think "My Red Hot Car" was supposed to be danced to. I wouldn't call it simplistic either.

Henry, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)


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