IDM Mailing Archive

From: wells <s0ewoliv@titan.vcu.edu>

quoted 3 lines why do people try to MC over jungle? it sounds so lame. more specifically,

>why do people try to MC over jungle? it sounds so lame. more specifically, >why do stupid white kids who can't really say anything more intelligent >than "drum and bass in 98" try to mc? l-a-m-e.

I'd agree inasmuch as what draws my attention in this music is mostly the rhythms and timbres, so even good MC'ing is not likely to make much impression on me. If it *works* in a club setting, though... who knows? There's a great difference between listening at home and being at a club surrounded by people, being swept up in a vibe. Music that would bore me to tears at home can sometimes get my ass *shakin'* at a club. Why should this be regarded as somehow inherently less valuable? Or, why should home listening be privileged over a collective experience at a club? Is it really more of a "pure" aesthetic experience? The advantages and disadvantages of each ought to be thought through explicitly, rather than being assumed and some hasty evaluations being drawn from that. Also, there's a killer track on the Jungle Sky vol. 2 comp--"Dis Soun'" by (I think) Rock Stone Foundation--heavy, dark, apocalyptic reggae- tinged jungle with a fair amount of talk-over, fragments of which get time- stretched and looped in odd ways, at one point turning the sound of a simple vocal interjection into a frightening little contortion. Maybe I'm more interested in the transformation of natural speech into inhuman utterance than in the talking-over itself, but this track is major- league--the point being that MC-type stuff *can* be made to work. J ________ \ / | "Who's Martha Stewart?" H. James Harkins | "She writes picture books about gracious living." jharkins@acpub.duke.edu | \/ | - from _Jeffrey_ "If we keep our attention focused on the present, we can be sure of one thing, namely that whatever we are attending to in this moment will change..." -- Jon Kabat-Zinn