"are we talking guys literally skanking with their cocks out?!" -- simon reynolds

simon all in a lather on "is caspa the guy ritchie of dubstep"?

good article

probably didn't deserve it's own thread but i wanted the quote on new answers

on the right side column

Most viewed on guardian.co.uk

1. Couple caught having sex on Queen's lawn

I couldn't work out if SR is actually saying this album is terrible but... it sounds terrible

Yeah, sounds like awful, lunkheaded bollocks. Shame that that sound is all many people associate with dubstep.

yeah, tbh!

i've got no sense of the number of people who have heard this record, or are involved in the debate he's describing. five gets you ten its fewer people than are registered on this borad.

xpost

sick of confusing Rusko with Roska

I can't read Reynolds anymore.

Caspa just seems like latest equivalent of DJ Oxide minus the crossover "new Prodigy" potential. i liked his remix of TC 'Where's My Money?'

I saw Rusko's newfangled live set a few weeks back and it was pretty good - deep and actual-dubby, not really wobbly. Never seen Caspa.

SR's thing in there of 'how can this be commercial, it's not threatening the top 40' seems to be wilfully missing the point a bit - it mostly still goes through different channels of sales than the top 40, whatever that means anymore, and there is loads of utterly commercial house/trance/d'n'b/whatever that recieves the same 'fate'

I think rusko like skream has realised that artistically the harder/noisier race will always grate eventually. has you guys are really missing the point that this is probably the most popular side of dubstep out there. The man in the street doesnt give a flying fuck about hessle/apple pips deep business, they want nudge nudge wink wink pendulum bangers for an hour or two then off for a kebab and to bed

ha ha straightola you & grimey simey have sold me this record! "awful, lunkheaded bollocks"? bring it on!

I don't think people are missing that point

(xp)

ha ha straightola you & grimey simey have sold me this record! "awful, lunkheaded bollocks"? bring it on!

― Dingbod Kesterson, Friday, May 1, 2009 5:02 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wb mc

i've met the man in the street and, well...

I don't really have anything against Caspa and I like being able to dance to dubstep (or whatever) but do you honestly think it sounds like it'll be good MC?

depends really. if it's anything like the second oxide & neutrino album then prob. not. i'll definitely give it a listen though.

hate hate hate most of caspa's output, turgid, midrangey pish. No groove, not enough low bass, no vibe. Lairy jump up nonsense. My friends who enjoy him = ex-d'n'b dilettantes who were in to Pendulum until they "went indie".

sounds better by the minute!

i'm not that keen on pendulum but then i'm old enough to remember therapy?

failing to see the connection between crap jump up d'n'b and crap 90s metal.

There's not that far you can go with 'I like this because it pisses genre purists off' as an argument TBH

Failing to see the connection between Pendulum and Therapy?

Actually, in a weird 'complete the circle' way, Andy Cairns from Terapy? is a big dubstep fan (I've seen him namecheck Kode9, Burial, Benga and Cult of the 13th Hour) and it filters through in their new album. A couple of tracks almost sound like Distance, except all played live.

xpost

Their original drummer was a big trance fan wasn't he? Remember a photo of him wearing a "Rising High" hat!

Dunno a whole lot about Pendulum, but 'Granite' did sound kinda Therapy?-ish to me.

going to listen to Photek mix of Therapy?s 'Loose' now

That's a great remix.

it was seeing pendulum do propane nightmares on later with jools holland that sealed the link for me. they have that same "bouncing washing machines" thing that therapy? had (have? haven't seen them for 15 years or so) on stage. rocking but with a deliberate mechanical stiffness.

also propane nightmares does sound like smoke on the water sped up and played backwards but the therapy? thing is more to the forefront.

Then I remembered I'd noticed this emerging divide myself at New York's Dub War club a good 18 months back.

Sure you did.

Is this dubstep's 1995 moment or its Mike Skinner moment? I'm not sure dubstep has had remotely the impact that jungle had in the early 90s though, or UK Garage for that moment, so I'm not sure it matters.

Sure you did.

― danski, Friday, May 1, 2009 4:51 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I dunno, I don't even follow dubstep that fervently in terms of a 'scene' and I'm pretty sure people have been muttering about this sort of thing for longer than 18 months

lol i went to a "hardcore continuum" symposium this week and this very subject was discussed. and yes the lairy caspa dubstep stuff is hugely popular (i'm not into it but whatever). rumour has it that rusko is working with SHAKIRA~~~~

^^My gripe was with the 'Then I remembered', perhaps should have been clearer.

one of those caspa songs linked from the article reminded me of planet core productions. didn't PCP-style, unfunky doom-synth music used to be cool? i'm so old.

Their original drummer was a big trance fan wasn't he? Remember a photo of him wearing a "Rising High" hat!

― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Friday, May 1, 2009 3:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Fyfe Ewing _ great drummer, and they were a great band when he was there: afterwards, not so much.

My gripe was with the 'Then I remembered'

why? people aren't allowed to remember things?

i've got no sense of the number of people who have heard this record, or are involved in the debate he's describing. five gets you ten its fewer people than are registered on this borad.

ffs nrq change the record you tedious diet-dom

i was pondering pretty much the same thing as matt dc; but whatever, be hostile all the time!

maybe "ur just butthurt imo but whatevs"

New York based expat-Brit music journalist Simon Reynolds has been stirring things up in the dubstep community of late. Blogging for the Guardian, Reynolds has infuriated the scene’s arbiters by ruminating on ketamine’s influence on the wonky sub-genre, and more recently asked, ‘Is Caspa the Guy Ritchie of dubstep?’.

Reynolds, author of rave history Generation Ecstasy and brilliant post-punk account Rip It Up and Start Again, suggests producer Caspa (Gary McCann) represents the hooligan aspect of dubstep. He writes, “you’d have to conclude that McCann does have an unsavory preoccupation with masculinity”.

While he wasn’t entirely negative, the blog drew heated comments. Caspa was invited to respond by the Guardian, but declined as he didn’t wish to fuel the fire. No one had asked him about the episode until Real Groove broached the subject, and he was only too happy to oblige…

“Oh, that fucking donut!” he starts. “When I first read it I actually laughed. I don’t ever recall in my life meeting this guy, so I don’t know where he got these words that he writ you know?

“He writ 1700 words on how much he hated me, when actually all I am is a 26-year-old guy enjoying myself, making music, touring the world, doing something that I love. And there’s someone trying to bring me down and saying all these things like he knows me as a person.

“He doesn’t know me at all, so I just found it quite funny that he had all these assumptions and all these ideas when he never met me. The thing is he’s a journalist, and journalists are there to antagonise and get people to raise their eyebrows and go ‘ooohhhh!’

“And that’s what he’s done, but to be honest, if he’s got nothing better to do than write 1700 words on why he hates me then he’s a prick. I don’t mind people saying bad stuff, if they don’t like me as an artist that’s fine. But he kind of got personal, and he didn’t need to do that. I’m sure one day we’ll meet face to face, and uh… he won’t be hiding behind his computer.”

Caspa's Everybody's Talking, Nobody's Listening album is out now.

http://www.realgroove.co.nz/Blog.aspx?id=109

"Then I remembered I'd noticed this emerging divide myself at New York's Dub War club a good 18 months back."

i love how SR always finds time to big himself up lol. he did actually post about that though on his blog, so fair play.

Everybody's Talking, Nobody's Listening - what an apt title. i've zero interest in hearing his album after sitting through that tedious fabric mix cd. but here we all are discussing it on a message board anyway.

it's a great album, you should listen to it!

For the record, I didn't really see the point in dubstep until the Caspa & Rusko Fabric mix and the Caspa album. Call me a dilletant lunkhead if you must, but I see this sort of stuff as keeping much more in tune with the "hardcore continuum" (hate that phrase, what the fuck is it supposed to mean anyway?) of old skool rave and jungle than the empty, atonal fart-in-the-bath stuff that critics and "true" dubstep fans seem to enjoy. In fact it's a return to everything I love about dance music - catchy smash-yer-face-in basslines, pounding (danceable) drums, cartoonishly violent movie dialogue etc. "Qawwali" and all that is kinda nice, but I wouldn't necessarily want to drive around the leisure park with that blasting out the subwoofer.

I hear more trad dubstep as similar to what Roni Size did to Jungle - taking out the teenage weed-smokin hyperactive side and trying to turn it into something more ponderous and artsy. Caspa is as offensively punk rock as the Ragga Twins, 2Live Crew, Altern-8, early Prodigy, and yeah Pendulum, and I don't see the problem with that.

Is it less to do with Caspa not being a very good producer, and more to do with "tru" dubstep fans being butthurt at it's sudden acceptance by the wider public?

Which leaves me wondering why a large amount of dance music fans and critics (as opposed to people who like dancing to music) exhibit this almost rockist attitude towards their chosen genre. Unlike the early days of rave when "if you could dance to it, it got played", dance-nerds are terrified of having their chosen sub-niche sullied by the dirty hordes. It reminds me of club nights in the mid-late 90s where junglist snobs would bemoan the playing of any track that was over a few months old. Why, when dance music is supposed to evoke unity and passion on the dancefloor, are so many people repelled by stuff that while not necessarily be deep'n'meaningful, is after all quite good fun?

(sorry if that wasn't very well thought out - i post from work and have to write in little drips and drabs).

"almost" rockist attitude

b/c they don't find it fun, perhaps?

and a lot of people who criticise caspa, rusko etc DO enjoy music which evokes unity & passion on the dancefloor

though you're probably right in that some of them probably haven't seen a dancefloor in a decade, but imputing these broad motives to people isn't v helpful

Rubstep more like.

it wasnt as though aphex was an outside copping peoples style, or leeching off street dance musics, because to me, he was street music also.

this is very reynoldsian, it's kind of the heart of this thing, isn't it?

basically outsiders, non-street people, calling shots on what is and isn't 'street music'. if you're not a street person, and reynolds isn't, what's at stake? im paraphrasing t j clark's 'the painting of modern life' basically.

part of what matters

what guarantees this? it clearly isn't meant to mean, "the music is better" because that's up for grabs. it means that the people who listen to it -- but don't write about it -- matter. but if they listen to new age music or britpop, then we have problems.

tbh i never thought of Aphex as 'street music' - it was only fields where his music could be heard alongside Grooverider AND German Trance - but that's nitpicky as the point is more that they did all co-exist in shared context and many people dug them all for a time.

(okay fields and warehouses on the edge of town)

I remember the first time I went clubbing in London when I was a student. We were brought to Home by a big Trance fan at my university. I'd been warned I had to wear "proper shoes" and a "proper shirt" and stuff, which I saw as a ridiculously oppressive way to have a good time. Being forced to dress a certain way when you're supposed to be out having a great time is bullshit as far as I'm concerned. Obviously if it were a formal dinner or a wedding something, that's different, but clubbing in your office shoes is impractical, uncomfortable and most of all inexpressively regimented.

Pretty sure that Gatecrasher and yr big room trance places didn't have that rigorous dress codes, for one

(circa the turn of the century - multiple xposts)

glamour is not oppressive

seeing people dressed like slobs all the time is depressing

again it was more because of Home's location (Leicester fucking Square!) rather than directly down to the music they played xposts

NRQ - depends on the connotations you're reading into 'street music' I think - and I think what Gareth is getting at is slightly different to what someone like Stelfox would mean by that phrase. Because if Gareth is anything he certainly isn't an outsider to that scene.

Dropping a guillotine at 1996 isn't a very Reynolds thing to do either.

anyway surely if you want to actually dance the best clothes to wear are a t-shirt and then whatever trousers you feel most comfortable in. it's too dark/busy to see anyone's shoes anyway etc.

dress up in a fucking cummerbund and spats for all i care, but being turned away from a club because you're wearing trainers, that's false snobbery on so many levels.

When you're in a club with dodgy guy milling around corners in groups all with hoods up or wearing caps in baggy clothing you can kind of get where the dress code thing makes sense.

dodgy guys

have you been clubbing in bluewater?

perhaps there were some Jungle nights where you were turned away for wearing shiny shoes and a waistcoat.

what about bouncers telling you you're wearing the wrong type of shirt? I know someone who went clubbing after attending a wedding in the day and he wasn't let in because apparently his suit made him look like a chav. This was in Stevenage, ironically.

... clubs exist to make money. they want to let in people who are likely to spend money. they also don't want aggro, and the attention of the police. (and also to preserve a monopoly on the drug supply inside.) they don't really give a fuck about being street, non-elitist, whatever.

x-posts I thought it really was just the one dodgy guy though.

The idea of grooverider and german trance and aphex twin all being played together isn't so much an argument that IDM is de facto rave and more a remembrance of a particular moment when all these things hadn't emerged as distinct and at times even mutually exclusive styles. I think it's still a bit off-base to suggest that "Didgeridoo" means IDM = rave music.

"what guarantees this? it clearly isn't meant to mean, "the music is better" because that's up for grabs. it means that the people who listen to it -- but don't write about it -- matter. but if they listen to new age music or britpop, then we have problems."

I think these things are always circular - for sr and for gareth and for me and you and everybody.

We privilege certain audiences because we think they have the right ear (i.e. they like the stuff we like). Then we privilege the stuff they like because it's that audience who likes it. On level it's trying to push responsibility for our subjective taste onto some objective process of social arbitration; on the other hand, audiences are really existing things, and they provide music with a social context that we might enjoy as much as the music itself.

Undeniably, a huge part of what I love about UK funky is the way it feels like the resurrection of what i loved about 2-step garage on so many levels. It seems counterintuitive to then pretend that the shared social context for the two scenes (not to mention shared personnel) doesn't exist. But that doesn't mean that this audience/scene/context is destined always to make great music.

id prefer it if more clubs asked/demanded people to go all out and look interesting rather than just swish. but nothing that wrong with that either. and its not like just cos everyones dressed up theyre all gonna be on their best behaviour. i remember going to rnb clubs where everyone would be pretty smart but youd still get cunts like anywhere else. im just not into this 'dressing down = REAL' (which half the time reeks of 'i want ppl from the inner city to stay in their station') shit. obv for some music like grime or dancehall, i wdnt expect people to be in their nice shoes and trousers lol, its sometimes just easier/nicer/less of a big deal to go casual, but for funky it makes sense.

"being turned away from a club because you're wearing trainers, that's false snobbery on so many levels."

it is (though not sure why its false?) but a lot of people just want to be reassured that when they go out there wont be a load of kids in their tracksuits and baseball caps eating a chicken burger in the corner.

i think dress codes in the local meat-market are bullshit. An urban night in a genre related to UKG and knowing the trouble that happens at other urban nights is to me a lot more reasonable.

having a dress code is more reasonable. Jesus I need some coffee.

In Melbourne if you're wearing a suit on a Friday night you're more likely to be turned away. Bouncers assume it means you've gotten wasted at after-work drinks, won't drink anything more and will still grope people or start a fight.

This is like the argument I used to have with my mates every Monday night for ten years x1000.

(I am still trying to understand what this thread is about.)

"dress codes in the local meat-market are bullshit."

actually in a meat market they are even more necessary. if youre gonna be splashing out on some prospective meat you at least want that meat to look nice.

but for funky it makes sense

interesting tho. probably would've said the same about house/garage 15 years ago...but why exactly?

if youre gonna be splashing out on some prospective meat you at least want that meat to look nice

especially in the queue for the exquisite cuisine of the kebab shop afterwards

AFAIK you can't get into Fabric in a suit either, but then Fabric is sort of a special case because it's so consciously trying to be democratic and warehousy.

also they want to keep City Boy tossers at bay

funkys just seen as a classier/sophisticated (even if its on a very superficial level) music/scene (by the ppl in the scene and clubbers alike), even with some of the ruffer dubs out there.

going back to the title of this thread for a second, if there was a dubstep night where guys WERE skankin with their cocks out that would be a pretty memorable night.

dont know how theyd get their cocks out with such strict dress codes

'crotchless pants only'

Guys at dubstep nights usually aren't good looking enough to make it worth while though. Mostly shaggy hair and droopy man-breasts hidden under sweat-sodden t-shirts. I imagine their penises would look rather pathetic also.

(no offence peoples, I'm sure each of you is the exception to the rule)

xxp the skanking is actually them trying to get their flies open and failing with animated and hilarious results

"are we talking guys literally skanking with their pipecocks out?!"

bishop bashment

maybe its about farmers getting into dubstep.

cockafeller skank

once saw shitmat and there was a guy literally skanking with his cock out. He was pilled out his face as well so it was a shrivelled half-inch effort. He looked like he was in his late 20s.

got to respect that guy.

audiences very much in character

Jim your last sentence makes it sound like you managed to tell his age by looking at his penis.

maybe he was using the technique ppl use to tell the age of a tree from looking at the rings on the trunk.

on another note, i'm looking forward to Stink Like Sock dubstep night in Cambridge in September. Anyone going to that?

Stink Like Cock etc..

maybe he was using the technique ppl use to tell the age of a tree from looking at the rings on the trunk.

bingo.

This is like the argument I used to have with my mates every Monday night for ten years x1000.

(I am still trying to understand what this thread is about.)

You had this argument over 500 times without ever understanding what it was about?

no it was every Monday night for 10,000 years - dog latin is a Sisyphus for the Mixmag generation

Balls, that wasn't a dog latin post was it

The argument every Monday night was about dress codes in clubs. Never mind.

It has nothing to do with this thread, which remains incomprehensible, but still, very funny for an outsider to read.