Rave Futures

The over-analysis of Bassline / Funky / Niche is truly spectacular. What started 10 years ago as some theoretical musings by Simon Reynolds has developed into a full blown pseudo-academic discipline all of its own.

It seems that every single minor variation/innovation in The ‘Ardkore ContinuumTM has to be scrutinised under a microscope by bloggers, commentators and journalists. The rush to plant a flag in the ground goes way beyond the hipster “I saw it first!” of yesteryear. Now every two bit fucker has to have a theory about What It All Means. In the melee of shouty grandstanding, any discussion of the actual music, creators or scene tends to get sidelined.

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The ContinuumTM is now prodded about and observed in the same way as the stock exchange*. Commentators’ cultural capital is at stake here, and its value can go up or down depending on the accuracy of their predictions about the activity in emerging rave markets. The ‘lust for result’ is palpable.

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The ‘nuum brokers are agitated, bullying their clients into jettisoning their shares in Grime, in the mistaken belief that their portfolio will go down the tubes otherwise.

Styleslut (which, gobsmackingly, disses Jammer for having his dreads “too long”. Thus taking on the role of the much-hated “Barber” in so many reggae tunes. See Prancehall’s retort and subsequent flame war.)

K-Punk: “Both dubstep and grime have been shaped by their suspicion of the song, female voice and the kind of exuberance that was once the unique defining feature of the panoply of musics that developed out of British rave music”

I won’t, can’t, defend Dubstep, but this completely ignores Grime’s vast catalogue of tunes with 2step female vocals and its more ‘pop’ moments. Skepta’s “Sweet Mother” is about as pop as it gets, surely? Ditto Ruff Sqwad versioning both Edwin Starr’s “War” and Cutting Crew’s “Died in Your Arms” on the same mixtape. As for exuberance, you only have to look at Stageshow. This cap only fits if you ignore the evidence, which is easy to do if you stopped listening to Grime two years ago because you were looking for the next big thing.

Watching from the sidelines, it’s heartening to see that there are some people able to pipe up and question the entire basis of the goldrush. (“isn’t the hardcore continuum just a way for older guys to relate to these off-the-wall kids making totally new original stuff that, aesthetically at least, bears little resemblance to the genres that the ‘Nuum designates as their supposed predecessors?”)

Similarly, others take a slightly different tack by (gasp!) actually engaging with people involved with the scene.

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*Actually, another good parallel would be the way that some on the ultra-left drill down deep into every single economic crisis or workplace dispute – watching for the portents which will herald the inevitable upsurge in the class struggle, leading us all towards fulfilling our historic mission of World Revolution.

All of this, really, reduces human activity to mere data. Jumped up music fans aspiring to be weather forecasters. Standing in the rave, clipboard in hand. “Well this is all very well in practise, but how does it work in theory?”

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Other analyses are needed more urgently. Why is everything so miserable? Why is everyone so hopeless?

 

Naphta – Long Time Burning

This is the business.

Seriously – if the words “jungle” and “2008” fill you with bad thoughts, you owe it to yourself and to future generations to go and check this album. I would write a lot more about it but I have done a glowing review for issue 2 of Woofah.

There is a lot of very bad music about – you owe it to yourself to banish those demons. “Long Time Burning” will help you do that. Click on the image above for sound samples, ordering details etc.

Farewell Woebot

WOEBOT: Farewell

So it’s goodbye to Woebot – no more of them massive posts with huge amounts of scans and even more great comment, no more hugely ambitious projects like woebot.tv and well, all that.

I think it’s fair to say that in our little corner of the web a lot of people had been reading Simon Reynolds’ site, and then blog, but it was TWANBOC that played the bigger part in showing people they could do it themselves – Woebot just seemed a bit more accessible in some ways and proudly amateur in the sense of not being a paid journo / published author.

In his usual style, Paul Meme weighed in early with an arsey email.

The various interblog posts which followed from Heronbone, K-Punk, silverdollarcircle, gutterbreakz, the original soundtrack, skykicking (and my and Paul’s efforts) were in retrospect golden times for me and t’internet. Lots and lots of great blogs followed.

And when the sidebars all got a bit unwieldy, Dissensus came along…

So, respect where due.

have a crucial one!

Everyone’s having the time of their lives
Fighting with snowballs, not bottles and knives
Just like a snowman on a sunny day
White power hatred is melting away

Singing a song of holiday cheer
Drinking egg nog instead of beer
To every boy and every girl
Merry Christmas to all…
And happy new year!

Crucial Youth – X-mastime for the Skins

Have you met The Met?

My overseas readers are probably aware that English people have a reputation for being a bit repressed. What may not be known is that we have several cathartic rituals in our culture which allow us an emotional release. They include getting completely shitfaced on continental lager, making some of the best music in the world, and moaning.

One extremely popular ritual for couples is a pilgrimage to IKEA to buy various bits and bobs for the house. On the surface an entirely mundane activity, but in reality a shitstorm of repressed aggression rising to the surface. For example, my nearest IKEA is the Edmonton branch – a store whose opening was heralded by a near riot and stabbing.

I found myself anticipating our latest visit with some excitement. The day began well with my better half telling me to fuck off before we’d even had breakfast, but this was merely a glimmer of what was to come. We headed up on the train to meet my Dad and borrow his car. (It’s always good to involve as many family members as possible in these operations as it maximises the potential for disagreement and conflict).

Our train was a bit late, so we pegged it off the station only to be greeted by a wall of cops. They had kindly erected a portable metal detector so they could search everyone leaving for evidence of “weapons, or terrorism”. Which I guess is fine – no point in going to IKEA for an argument if some nutjob is about to blow the place up as a symbolic gesture against western decadence, right?

Only, they weren’t searching bags.

“We’re not doing that today, sir.”

“Are terrorists not using bags today or something?”

“I can’t really comment on that, sir, but we’ll be searching bags on another day”.

“?”

“Can I just take your names? We need it for our records”

We give our names.

“Can I also have your full addresses and dates of birth?”

Better half asks why, and tries to find out what the data is for/who will see it. This is pretty much stonewalled and we don’t want to make an issue of it for two reasons. Firstly, my Dad is waiting in his car somewhere. Best not confirm his worst fears and turn up late after an argument with the police.

Secondly, someone else who was on our train is making an issue of it and things aren’t going well for her – in fact some copper has started asking her all sorts of questions about whether she has a valid ticket for her journey, eventually removing her oyster card from her and going into the station to check. Because not having a valid ticket is a clear sign of being a terrorist, or course, bag or not. Just to help you visualise the scene, I will point out that she was black and virtually all the cops were white.

“Can you just put any metal objects in your bag, sir, and walk through?”

Both of us walked through the detector and set the alarm off.

My better half pipes up “Oh, that’s probably my belt buckle”. We show our belt buckles. They wave us on without any further searches, meaning we could have any kind of metal on us, or in our bags.

I have mixed feelings about the incident. On the one hand, I should have been much more arsey about it all – but I caved in as my role of designated driver over-rode my role as heroic defender of civil liberties. On the other hand, the whole thing was so comically pointless, that adding to it seemed a bit surplus to requirements.

After that, IKEA was quite dull.

But we did get some nice shelves.