quoted 3 lines allegedly confused
> allegedly confused
> American house-ster Todd Edwards 'invented' speed garage,
> right? How confusing.
'Allegedly confused' - I don't know what it means but it sounds good! :-)
Todd Edwards is actually really great, apart from when he sings. His bass
sounds are the fattest (phattest?) and what he does with chopped-up (or
minced, even) samples is just breathtaking.
quoted 5 lines Anyway, quite related to this is the fact that your
> Anyway, quite related to this is the fact that your
> friend and mine Vim! has been kidnapped by evil No'Mo'
> minions and forced to do a stoopid idm cut-up of 'two-step'
> Artful Dodger tune - 'Rewind'. It appears to have metamorphed
> into Vim! vs. Awful Dodgy - "Rehash" :)
I know this track was probably done as a joke, but quite seriously I
thought it was great, and it's just the sort of thing I'd love to have on
this compilation I'm planning.
quoted 5 lines i always saw two-step
> i always saw two-step
> as the whole armani-suit 'sarf' london well-dressed
> (over-dressed?) champagne ritzy club thang, rather
> than any big underground experience. or is two-step
> and speed garage not the same thing?quoted 4 lines So presumably what your saying is that 2-step IS a cultural force?
> So presumably what your saying is that 2-step IS a cultural force?
> Yer avin a barf aintcha? So going to a nightclub in yer beamer dressed
> in moschino, ordering champagne and partaking of a few lines of the
> white stuff is doing something that is a 'cultural force'?
Well, I think there's more to it than that. But this whole business of the
champagne-swilling 2-step lifestyle *is* a tricky one, no doubt. There's a
theory of 'oppositional hyper-capitalism' which holds that oppressed groups
fight back against capitalism by parodying it, hyping it up to the nth
degree, making it ridiculous. According to this theory, all those magnums
of champers and salt-cellars of coke are consumed for no other reason than
to produce a gruesome caricature of the supposedly exclusive pleasures of
the rich. I'm not sure I buy this idea, though - although there's
definitely irony in there somewhere, it's certainly not the sole purpose of
the exercise. Perhaps we should see it as a reaction to the anhedoniac,
puritan rigour of post-techstep d&b - introducing a certain opulence, a
certain glamour to hardcore clubbing (even if it inevitably fades in the
morning, when you have to go back to your mum and dad's house where of
course you still live).
quoted 6 lines I listen to the pirates every weekend and don't hear any musical
> I listen to the pirates every weekend and don't hear any musical
> techniques that haven't been employed by d&b producers. In fact, speed
> garage was more adventurous on this score because the extreme
> syncopation that characterised a lot of the genre appears to have
> mainly disappeared from the 2-step scene.
> Please put me right and name some if you think I'm incorrect.
It *was* drum & bass that pioneered all those techniques, but pre-'95.
After '95 the programming started getting simpler and more rigid, it lost
that freshness and sense of joy that it had had originally (perfectly
understandable really - when you start getting 64th note filtered snare
rushes on deodorant adverts it's bound to make you want to stop doing
them). What's happening with 2-step is not a return to the good old days
when people like T Power were really pushing the envelope of one type of
ultra-complex programming - instead a different kind of complexity is being
generated. It's to do with 'swing', for want of a better word. 2-step
producers use all of the resolution their sequencers provide in order to
shift their beats around by small amounts relative to one another. This
results in rhythm tracks which are extraordinarily nuanced, and which have
a kind of organic quality absent from most electronic dance music. It
always reminds me of the rustling of leaves...that sort of quiet, but
infinitely detailed rubbing and shaking and shivering which sounds
unmistakably 'natural' to us. Listen to Dem 2's remix of US Alliance's 'All
I Know' on my garage samples page (
http://www.geocities.com/qubit_records),
or Steve Gurley's version of Antonio's 'Hyperfunk'. Steve Gurley used to be
in Foul Play, by the way.
quoted 3 lines ...a 'phase change' in
> >...a 'phase change' in
> > methodology analogous to the changing of state in heated liquids
> > (i.e. when they turn to gas).quoted 2 lines Lets face it, this is the sort of over-analysing bollocks that helped
> Lets face it, this is the sort of over-analysing bollocks that helped
> to destroy d&b - lets not do it to 2-step as well.
I'm not sure it was the analysis that destroyed d&b, although I admit my
'scientific' metaphor could have been better chosen. IMHO, it was
over-exposure that killed d&b, and while analytical music criticism might
have been a part of this, it wasn't a hugely significant part compared to
the mountains of arse-licking grot churned out by rags like Mixmag. You
might even say it was under-analysis that killed it, as a refusal to
seriously consider content is essential for the capitalist hype-machine to
function.
--
Gareth Metford (Nonlinear / Qubit Records)
Email: gmetford@qubit.demon.co.uk
Nonlinear website:
http://www.qubit.demon.co.uk/nonlinear
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