music journos dissing without listning

well, you have something of a point, but, personally, i do think most genres have a 'golden era', and i do think d'n'bs is past. i don't like saying this but for me its true. now, you can come back and say "but how much have you listened to, name some current tunes", and i concede your point, not a lot. BUT, i can only go on what i hear. i saw jumpin jack frost dj fairly recently, i saw krust, it didn't have the same vibe, the same style, the same excitement as when i was going to jungle clubs 94-96. so, you know, thats my opinion. it happens to be the 'orthodox' opinion i know, but it doesn't change the fact that it is valid for me

to be honest though, i don't see drum'n'bass dissed very much, it is more ignored than attacked. the negative tone towards drum'n'bass here is probably because there are a lot of fans of the genre here that are disappointed with the last 4 or 5 years of it. theres a hell of a lot of other stuff out there that is delivering.

Actually, I got into drum and bass while tech-step was in the spotlight, so I've enjoyed a lot of the post-97 Ed Rush & Optical, )EIB(, Ram Trilogy, Digital, Total Science, Technical Itch, etc. etc. However, even with my late entry into the genre, I'm starting to tire of the same sounds and assets being relied on (last checked Dieselboy's Project Human which didn't leave me with much). Backtracking into all of the much-treasured mid-90s jungle tracks, it's easy to see why people are so tired of the scene's overwhelmingly dominant taste for harshness/darkness. I still have sympathy for this type of sound, but really... I don't see it traveling very far from here.

Unless someone decides that "Circle of the Tyrants" plus "Squadron" is the way to go! Has anyone done this?!?!?

Music press ignoring drum and bass? What about the coverage of those cheeky little D&B heroes Kosheen? "If you were in my heart..." Too catchy.

I trail through lotsa d&b twelve-inches on a weekly basis because there has always been great stuff amongst the new releases. Usually by Dillinja, Total Science, Digital or Roni Size, but certainly not always. Like Night Fever by Dylan & Robyn Chaos must be one of the most thrilling singles of the year so far. So, as a professional music journo, I'm trying to stay pretty alert. It can get tiresome however, when you're listening to the umpteenth boring Bad Company clone. (Their new one, Rush Hour, is a return to form, fortunately).

Nice strawman you've got there.

There's been quite a bit of good drum & bass recently, particularly on Certificate 18 (eg. Teebee) and Timeless (Digital & Spirit). Total Science are always good and those Dillinja samples you put up earlier were really good ("Thugged Out Bitch" might be his best since his remix of J Majick's "Love Is Not A Game"). The return of pop-jungle ("Hide U", "Shake Ur Body", Uncut's "Midnight" etc.) is undoubtedly a good thing, as is the investigation of new hybrid sounds eg. the house sound of Peshay's "U Got Me Burnin" and J Majick's remix of Hatiras' "Spaced Invader". DJ Hype/Tru Playaz are bringing back good breakbeats... In fact drum & bass is probably quite a bit healthier than usual right now.

I also don't think the fact that a scene's golden age has passed precludes it from releasing great tracks. Three of my top twenty all time jungle tracks (Fresh & Vegus's "Otto's Way", Dom & Roland's "Can't Punish Me" and the Global Communications remix of Lamb's "Gorecki") came out in '99, over a year after I personally think jungle started to deteriorate.

HOWEVER, the idea that drum & bass is even a tenth as vital currently as it was, say, eight years ago, is laughable. Unless something leaps out at me I just refuse to spend money on the endless drum & bass compilations that come out, because each time I do I'm punished with about 70% tedious post-techstep 2-step hammering versus 30% good ideas. D&B has a very poor signal-to-noise ratio, and until that improves you're unlikely to see unbelievers rally around it like they do scenes with better ones (like UK Garage and microhouse, at least IMHO).

Big Dapper, I sympathise with your frustration, really I do, but you should check to see whether it's well-founded before you spray it all over the message boards.

signal to noise ratio?

i thought id give uk garage a try so set up gozilla to download every 40 second mp3 sample of UK garage off juno.co.uk.. cant remember how many samples it was in total .. 500 at least.. about 6 hours of listening all up.. so i listened to a massive playlist of tunes called "sf31662.mp3" etc.. noting down the numbers of the tunes i want

well to cut a long story short, 49% of the tunes were crap vocal tunes aimed at top of the pops, 49% were poorly produced bassline tunes aimed at pirate radio.. and about 2% was anything worth listening to.. when i looked up the artists on these tracks they were nearly all either zed bias, mj cole, todd edwards or the odd standout like the streets.

ive never heard so many unmusical, unoriginal, poorly produced tunes in my life - pathetic attempts at commercial success..

im convinced uk garage has the highest signal to noise ratio of any genre

what about the genres "crap vocal tunes aimed at top of the pops" and "poorly produced bassline tunes aimed at pirate radio"?

i nevah listen to any records = the only way i can remain professionally objective obv

Pretty soon, Hunta-D will be through with Jess and then the rest of us "forum fasses" 'll be NEXT. Better stop listening to ALL records Mark. It may be yr only hope.

Alex I hear on on this "Circle of the Tyrants" as a dance number deal but why COTW instead of the monumentally great "Jewelled Throne"? I hear a ten-minute Orb version of it with lots of twinklah-twinklah, and then the tapes handed over to whichever definitive junglist I haven't heard of for optimum chillability.

No mention of Meltzer? Then his reviews were more about about Richard and language than the musick.

Meltzer and Tosches (and maybe Bangs - I can't tell if he actually listend to the Chicago box) both did this, usually capturing the album with bizarre accuracy (see Tosches on Sabbath's Paranoid), drawing much "tsk, tsk"s from the Anthony DeCurtis crowd. Meltzer review of a Neil Young concert he didn't actually go to is one of the best things I've read about Young.

I've read some Everett True reviews where he'll ramble for 9/10s of the piece about some apartment his godmother kept in Toronto or something, but just when you think he doesn't even know what he's reviewing, he'll tie it all together: "And she had a crystal doorknob that is just like this young woman's voice!!" Seems to work....

is there actually an Anthony DeCurtis "crowd"?

not unless you count the citizens of that county in california who get their electrical power from the solar reflection off his head.

John, I can hear "Jewel Throne" too, but I like "Circle of the Tyrants" just as much (and it was kind of the hit--not that Celtic Frost was ever really tearing up the charts haha). Definitely see a pro-tooled chilling remix thing (a la the Thrones vs. Emperor thing- y) and then some ripped up Panacea/M2 or DJ Scud style remix. That would be ace.

I know a lot of former metalheads who are big on these noise-y junglist types (Panacea, Ed Rush, DJ Scud, Christoph De Babalon, etc) and make similar stuff, but strangely none of them seem that into some mutant combination of the two genres (although Panacea's Twisted Designz is kind of metal-y on it's own). Someone needs to figure out some way of bringing the two together in that perfect mesh.

collecting a giant mp3 and working your way through it -- is digital "surfing" the new way of listening to music ?

just like lots of other people, i used to enjoy listening to shortwave as a kid, stations and inbetween, but we called it "skimming" which seemed a fairer acknowledgement of how engaged we were by each specific point on the dial -- is this like "clubbing" ?

Can we engineer this thread so that big dapper/hunta d. and George can destroy eachother?

Yves Montand to thread!!

I didn't mean that!!

ahh, but how many people can ascend the same tor?

music journos are artists, possibly the only true ones left.