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"This time machine has been built for us by 2 Bad Mice, the original nutters"

FACTmix by the mighty 2BM

little celebration of 2BM i wrote last year

2BM's ardkival trove of a website

via idiot's guide

if Bukem is the Derrick May of hardcore (so sayeth Rob Haigh)

then Dillinja must be...


the Jeff Mills of jungle?

tasty new(ish) old skool blog Drumtrip -"where it's 1994 everyday"

very good year and very good choice of name

indeed could only be improved by the addition of II after it

Muzik magazine - nearly every issue archived on the web

fair few bits in there by me, but my only cover story - Eminem / B-Boys On E - is one of the few missing issues bah swizz

Muzik had this house visual/photographic style, the cover below of Ballistic Bros is one of the less extreme examples actually, using digital techniques to create hyper-realism vivid 'n' supersharp photograph of fantastical or at least highly unlikely tableaux

it now has a certain period charm, like a lot of the flyers



the staple stuff of Muzik--the artists that made its cover and its multi-page features--is largely forgotten now isn't it, at least in terms of the canons and Official History of UKdance (Ballistic Bros, London Hooligan Soul--considered a totemic masterpiece in its moment, by some anyway... but would anyone under the age of 25, meaning hip/informed types, would they even have heard of the group/artist?)

i mean probably punters remember stuff like Dave Clarke and Slam and Laurent Garnier and Carl Cox and Sasha fondly--Muzik-type fare was always way more popular in terms of trans-United Kingdom dancefloor action than the kind of thing that makes up the canon(s) of FACT and Dissensus or the version of dance music history that Pitchfork or The Wire would subscribe to

see, the nuum end of things was only grudgingly, and belatedly, admitted into the Muzik/Mixmag world during the actual 90s

and in truth when you peek into that world such as it still exists (Mixmag just about hanging in there with circulation not much higher than the Wire), when they do their Fifty Best Deejays of All Time, as chosen by punters or chosen by journos/editors.... nuum end of things barely makes a dent.... Andy C will be in the list, but more on account of his post-97 career/stamina (i.e when d&B disconnects from nuum afaic) than "Long Dark Tunnel"

can't decide if this is the scottish 'put a donk on it' or the scottish die antwooord

via this dude who's got plenty plenty more

well i must say i really enjoyed that moombhaton mix that mad decent are putting out

reminds a little bit in vibe and sort of exotic-raucousness of funk carioca but more chugging/pumping than the electro-y feel the baile stuff had.. more of a house-y hypno groove going on .... cool combo of the moody and the ludic

here's a related mix with some of the same tracks

FIORUCCI MADE ME HEARTSORE

sampletext tribute to the centrepiece of this upcoming exhibition

those shocking, shaking days
the first mindless explosion
nationwide insanity
pirouettes through a dance of dynamite


endless and perfect and changeless beat
the music surges and returns and pauses
surges even while pausing
pauses and surges and pumps again
no distance or direction, only impenetrable light, the endless pump
pump and pound
pump and pund
selling England by the pund

annihilating rhythm
slaved to the rhythm
slaves to the rave
clocking in at the noise factory
a machine gone mad
(keep stomping you bastards)
repetition in the music and we're never going to lose it
i'm losing it i'm losing it i've lost it

lost in music
caught in a trap
dance yourself into a new constriction
rhythm as manacle
groove lockdown

come on let's submerge
somewhere in the lost zones
an atmosphere shaking with sound, charged with smoke and numinous

i've seen them move and it blows my eyes
the floor's an ocean and this wave is breaking
the sound goes round and we start to climb
inside the ride
a god dances through me
grace appears with zero consciousness or infinite consciousness - with the puppet or the god

fists of solid air
white darkness
shiversighs, rapt gasps
deep hurting techno
like being turned inside out, smeared, penetrated
tungsten glare
the fog of absolute proximity
an arched spine, a head thrown back
death ray riffs strobe your flesh
the sound that transfixes
air trembling with intangible fever

regressive secession
departure from duration

blips of oblivion
well out of that and into this
perforations in the fabric of time and space
death by a thousand cut-aways

all these moments
will be lost in time

see my face
not a trace
no reality

faceless faces
flat skin
foetus pallor
china white marble eye
pupils expanded, exploding

faces
disfigured with love
G-force pressured
cheeks buckle and distend
gargoyle bliss

see those eyes
her eyes are blown
teeth cackle
shattering of faces in laughter and the return of masks

so earnest it's scary

record seizures
dislocation dancing
liquid semaphore
carving the air
electrocuted by syncopation
yearning delirium
farrago of sound
dark exultation
unspeakable pleasure-spasm
a terrible secret

happily we shiver
happily we shake

now I found a reason not to die - the spark inside
kindling the will
the will to nothingness

jagged time lapse
a thousand years of civilization fall away in a moment
ecstatic veneration of mental decline
stylized like the ecstasies savages go into beating the war drums
we didn't get a proletarian revolution
the only thing we got was style
styles of radical will

we are fireworks
burning shapes into the night
confound the dowdy flock
with our sharp honed verve
stiletto scorn
cold stares from old eyes in young faces
pride of the pack
painted birds
showing plumage on the terraces
glitter in the dark
twist and turn
burn burn burn

be-together around some Nothing
unity without aim
mobilisation without purpose
mission without meaning
propulsion without target
direction without destination

barmy armies
march into madness
madness is gladness
a ghost dance gathers
the last remaining zombie lumps of pop culture
moving at warp speed to nowhere

it won't change, it won't stop, it's incessant

(the sound switches off and all the dancing bodies collapse)

... if you listen to the interview bit at the end, and follow the lyrics, it's actually an anti-nostalgia song, about "celebrating going out dancing in 2011"

they're defiantly resisting ageing ravers with their "boring stories of glory days" off their faces in fields and warehouses

they're throwing off the weight of all that "precious history"

well then, perhaps they shoulda

a/ got some footage of people having it large and pulling mad shapes in clubs right now

b/ made a track that didn't sound it could have been recorded in the Nineties

>>>>hyper-stasis alert>>>>>

press release for a new compilation of Moonbahton:
"next in Mad Decent's 'Blow Your Head' series - "BYH V. 2 -Dave Nada presents Moombahton". They're putting these out to introduce new genres with the biggest artists from that scene Moombahton (sub-genre of Global Bass/Tropical) put simply is Dutch House slowed down to Reggaeton's 108bpm..."

zigzagging across archival space innit

(plus didn't New Beat do the slowing down house move back in the late Eighties?)

but i shall dutifully give it a fair listen, like i always do

[pause]

well i'm still dl-ing the comp but judging by this, which seems to be the foundational text....



it's kind of like funky house if it was made by gabbers rather than UKgaragers

it's.... alright!

brash and banging

what an odd convoluted genesis for a genre though: "When reggaeton left the islands and reached Europe, the Dutch sped it up and called it 'bubblin' which led to all the Dutch house stuff. Time goes by, and then you slowed it back down after it got 'housed' by Europe. So with moombahton, it all comes back full circle in a brand new light."

wait a minute though, that track's not 108 bpm... so that Afrojack remix, that's the bubblin sound (reggaeton housed up), and then Moombahton is the slowed down version of that... (i'm working this out in real-time)

i'll have to listen to the comp, but i would have thought that would be a bit... sluggish?

anyways a new twist, a new fold, eh?

the vibe of this tune



reminds me a little bit of this lost artcore classic




more gorgeous woozetronix from Maria Minerva's EP on 100% Silk

ruff beats

bumper crop of mixtape and ravezine shares at Deep Inside The Old Skool this week

proof that juke/footwork (the best bits of it anyway)really is the Son of Ardkore -

Omni Trio, "Renegade Snares (Philip D Kick footwork edit"

(tip courtesy Sir Michael Paradinas)

a new issue of theory-rave journal Dancecult

features include: Disco's Revenge: House Music's Nomadic Memory-- Hillegonda C. Rietveld; Hooked on an Affect: Detroit Techno and Dystopian Digital Culture-- Richard Pope; Maintaining "Synk" in Detroit: Two Case Studies in the Remix Aesthetic-- Carleton S. Gholz; Festival Fever and International DJs: The Changing Shape of DJ Culture in Sydney's Commercial Electronic Dance Music Scene--Ed Montano;
Nomads in Sound vol. 1-- Anna Gavanas; Special Section on the Love Parade with Where is Duisburg? An LP Postscript HTML -- Sean Nye, Ronald Hitzler - Party, Love and Profit: The Rhythms of the Love Parade (Interview withWolfgang Sterneck)-- Graham St John - Pathological Crowds: Affect and Danger in Responses to the Love Parade Disaster at Duisburg -- Luis-Manuel Garcia

wise words

few months ago FACT posted a news blip on some new Joy Orbison tune... and i'm listening and thinking, hmmm it's nice... nice enough.... but this vaguely early 90s piano house pastiche, does it really, in 2011, cut the mustard? and how about this "new-old" effort shortly forthcoming under the even more queasy-making moniker Joy O?

well the retro-virus seems to have struck post-nuum in earnest judging by these recent comments on that increasingly heated Dissensus thread on the going-nowhere-frenetically postdubstep omni-zone *

Man Like Wise: "the current vogue that's spread from Addison Groove's Juke influence and Instramental's electro thing so now you've got all these tracks that sound like Radioactive Man from the early noughties.Bok Bok's recent FACT mix is a case in point,whilst I enjoyed it it just sounded so retro.Well made clones of great music but clones all the same.Maybe i'm just a bit too old now. I'm sure it's great fun if you haven't heard it all the first (or second or third time round)"

Man like Tentative Andy: "I do feel that some contemporary djs and producers (not all) tend to gravitate towards the blandest and safest interpretation of 'house' possible. It's interesting, from playing on Pirate Revival over the last few months and checking out the other djs on there I've really been getting into classic house from the 80s (Chicago, NY, early UK bits) and that stuff just sounds a million times fresher and more exciting than most of what I hear from, say, the daytime house djs on Rinse"

Man like mms: "alot of post dubstep does seem to be about just releasing tracks that are genre workouts in a way, outside of dubstep - things that people have done better over the years but without the atatchment to dubstep, its as if people have just gone sideways into music they always really liked but were never really part of as a 'movement' - almost as if its music people have got into thru youtube explorations or something"

Man like muser: "I've been a bit tired of hearing sets fall into straight-up house.. Joy Orbisons set last night for example seemed to consist of around 90% average sounding house."

Man like wise: "I don't have a long list of producers that I think are being ignored in favour of this stuff, i'd just rather listen to great old music than new average music. That Jaques Green track... sounds like fairly mainstream balearic house from a few years back to me. Maybe this is gradual drift into complete mediocrity is what the scene needs for a new wave of rawness to rear it's head and bite back. I certainly hope so."

then on another a different-but-related topic

Man like Bandshell: "I find the whole "neon synth" thing (for want of a better term) really grating.... I think it might be down the the production as well. All that sort of stuff is very clean and plastic. I prefer grit and lofi textures."
to which
Man like Sickboy replies: "it was so tantalizing when people like Joker and Rustie were first using it - it brought really exuberant and shimmery textures... an element of ecstatic joy... But now it just seems like it has just become de rigeur for the old man contingent of dubstep to include it in their sound pallete in order to make their tunes sound "refined" or "progressive." What I'm getting at is that what is achieved is the same as what is achieved whenever someone consciously tries to make sophisticated, urbane music: the absolute removal of any kind of joy whatsoever."

Man like Fundamental: "My problem with bass music at the moment is that it is slowly turning into boring progressive european techno. This is not a case of the scene cybernetics moving into negative, shit wobble or violence, it is a worry that it turns dreary, 'intelligent' or progressive."

Man like Gumdrops: "most of these guys are horrendously weak at programming drums. either that or they just dont like anything 'obvious'. or theyre too concerned with trying to make something 'intelligent' and 'emotional'."

Man like slackk: "I know about 3/4 of the stuff getting made by producers who I guess could be collectively grouped in this thread is just fucking dull... the amount of lifeless, far too tasteful stuff with no bass or bite with stilted 2-step drums is a joke. Honestly the state of a lot of stuff in this "nascent scene" is just dire. And really I don't agree with the idea of this being a new genre either, it's just loads of people making house.I think it was Luka who said on here recently that London music seemed a bit corny and fake to him lately and I don't know about that but I do kind of feel the same about this end of it"


dare i conclude from this convergence of opinion that (whisper it softly) i was right all along

not bad for a guy in his late forties who now lives even further (five thousand miles as opposed to three thousand miles) from "the action" and steps inside a dubstep-ish club about twice a year

not bad at all



* what Blackdown in this thread takes as
"controlled zig zagging within these close quarters" arguing that it is "just as fruitful as having one confined genre with lots of internal differences"

a feature package at literary webzine The Nervous Breakdown on me and Bring the Noise, which is out imminently in the US on Soft Skull... elements include excerpts from BtN on the voice in pop music and on crunk, plus an auto-interview about changes in pop criticism during the 25 years since I started doing it and getting paid

The US edition, with some bonus material added, out next month on Soft Skull. Has quite a bit of techno/jungle/2step/electronic related stuff in it, despite the overall theme of indie versus hip hop.

i just knew photek would come back and come back making dubstep



so he did paranoid 'n' clinical drum'n'bass (neurofunk, he was its King, its founder almost), then he did house, then he did hip hop (or is my memory playing tricks with me there?), then he did drum'n'bass again (and wasn't it supposed to be really pandering-to-noughties-knucklehead sensibility d&b, it even had a name -- thug ' n' bass?) and now he's doing dubstep

question is: will he be speaking in his real accent?

over at the collective Nineties blog an excellent riff from Culla on the utopian promise of rave and the differences between the 90s and now,

"As even Livy knew, the true Dionysian instrument was the drum. Greece was not a percussion culture compared to Egypt, where Osiris's celebrants were far more polyrhythmic. But the tympanon, which generated a deep thump from a single animal-skin side, always came out for Dionysus, as did giant castanets called krotala."--Robert Christgau's archaeology of the Dionysian spirit of music and "liberation through ecstasy"

ruff beats producing the bass







(the altered natives one i really wanted to post was "lamb to the slaughter" which you get here in this freebie bonanza a history of silence)

think this is mis-identified, it's actually the great sinister protodarkside rmx by Ray Keith right?

whereas this is the Acen version, it's got his signature all over it

Droid -- Honorary Member of the League of Sample-Spotting Saddos -- points me towards this track, which I'd never heard before



the source of at least two hardcore classics



and




check out also the Slipmatt Ninety-Free rmx of "Incredible Base"



and the Foul Play rmx of "Sound of Music"

sample spotting saddo, pt 346




the dreamy bit at 2.07 onwards is this right



or is it someone else's version?









or even the original?

also velodrome

also mercury rainbow























talented geezer

but did he actually release anything last year?

the story of Goldie never ceases to amaze me

the story of what he did after this

and

the story of what he did and what happened to him before this

but in the end


this --and this and this and this and this -- and this and this and this and this -- are the Apex

even if only a relative few -- the "those who know" cru -- will ever hear them

hell, it's more of a legacy than almost any of us will achieve

digging-in-the-crates photoblog Dust & Grooves inspects the amazing record collection of deejay DB of NASA/Sm:)e/Breakbeat Science fame

this shit really is the son of ardkore

or grandson

like 93 darkside fueled by DMT rather than bad E

(via found objects)

labrynth footage

fragments of a night in what i'm guessing is 93

for full E-ffect of being there, click play for all 9 segments simultaneously




















-----

another night from a year later

late 94, by this point it had gone happy hardcore










^^^^^^^^^^^



agree with that sentiment

^^^^^^^^^^^^

this one before my time, before Labrynth settled at the Four Aces in Dalston, when it was a peripatetic warehouse rave.

in 89 i was too busy listening to the bleedin' telescopes and stuff like that





^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
during 92-95 went to Bagleys a bunch of times but never to a Labrynth rave there i don't think, at one point the parties were called Double Dipped I think







^^^^^^^^^^^

Tasco Warehouse?!?!









---------

never got to the Roller Express



or Innersense at the Lazerdrome

if only this were a real coffee table book!

the cover art of Reinforced Records

the record sleeves start out thrillingly stark and aberrant, get more fussed-over and convoluted, and then start to look pretty putrid

mirroring, i suspect

a/ technological advances

b/ what was happening with the music


(via blue lines revisited)