RIP J. Saul Kane

 

Well, it had to be this one I posted, didn't it? 

That macabre sing-song sample - "did you ever think / when the hearse goes by / that some day you are going to die?"

Also on the theme

Younger than me, by a half-decade...  sobering, eh? 

I reviewed Depth Charge  - or is it Depthcharge? - a couple of times in a Melody Maker Singles column, and each time the release brightened that week's rather barren haul

from October 1989

DEPTHCHARGE

"Depthcharge"

(Vinyl Solution)

     Inconsequential but captivatingly labyrinthine "dance" record that reminds me vaguely of Arthur Russell's bathyscopic odyssey "Let's Go Swimming". Over a bubbling cauldron of deep-sea dub bass, drifts a sargasso sea of sonic flotsam, sonar blips, smeared Kung fu samples, anemones and polyps.  If Sun Ra thought he was from Atlantis rather than Saturn, was into Adrian Sherwood, and had an obsession with martial arts, he might make records like this. (That's a lot of "ifs", I s'pose, but there you go...)

Kind of Renegade Soundwave-y, without the grating Guy-Ritchie-movie voices.... 

Sort of anticipating trip hop, but not really... 

 And in some ways also anticipating Big Beat. 

The other Depthcharge single I reviewed, from early 1990

Bit Wu-y in his predilections...  

Vinyl Solution label mate  with the also-departed Eon a/k/a Ian Loveday. He went quite a while back.... 

Anticipating darkcore

This even earlier tune has quite a darkside title, if not the sound or vibe really

I guess it's just the Pulp Continuum - video-nasty bizniz

Also as The Octagon Man, this has neat beats

Here's an obituary for Jonathan Saul Kane by Carl Loben at DJ magazine

He seems to have rubbed shoulders with a lot of people from that "DJ Records" moment in the late '80s - Mark Moore, Tim Simenon - and also the aforementioned Renegade Soundwave. 

Here's a reminiscence / tribute I've borrowed wholesale from Danny Briotet of RSW. 

"One upon a time in West London, in a place called Ladbroke Grove, there was a band of (very) young brothers that went under the name of Krew.

"Krew, multi-racial, comprised of MCs, DJs, breakers and graffiti artists and were one of the 1st hip hop crews anywhere outside of the US (we’re talking early ‘80s). 

"At tangents from Krew there were myself and a kid called Jonathon. Jonathon began DJing mostly at local hip hop jams on the manor, which often descended into mayhem and violence. Jon (sometimes wearing a black cape) was unphased by this – as well as having DJ skills decades before the term ‘turntablist’ was even thought of, he was also well-versed in martial arts (a theme than ran throughout his career) and could look after himself. 

"When I first knew Jon he lived at his mum’s in Powis Sq and had a massive scaffolding construction in his room to house his decks and records...

"By the mid-80s we were both playing at illegal warehouse parties in places like Shoreditch (then a barren wasteland with just a few Bengali families living there) or under the Harrow Road roundabout at Paddington. 

"Jon started releasing records around the time of the 1st RSW releases, on the Vinyl Solution label (the original shop was opposite my flat), first as Grimm Death, with MC Tony Tone from Krew. 

"Then Jon brought out the 1st Depth Charge record at the same time as we released The Phantom, and the 2 records would find themselves together in so many DJs' boxes, although they sped DC up to fit with 120 bpms of the Rave scene, (although Jon was always tea-total and never went anywhere near a pill). 

"We used to talk, at the time, about how we’d both done these tunes, completely independently of each other, but kind of coming from the same place. The Depth Charge records were massive, and it goes without saying how big an influence they were on the Chemicals, Wall of Sound and so many others in that amazing post-acid house period when alternative became mainstream.

"As things progressed, Jon and I would find ourselves on the same bill in all sorts of weird and far-flung places and he was often late – I remember sitting on planes ages after they were meant to take off, only for Jon to stroll on, record box in hand.

"Jonathan’s approach to DJing was same as his approach to life – uncompromising. He didn’t suffer fools lightly and it wasn’t hard to lock horns with him over anything from samples to football, which he loved – when I first knew him, he played in a team of local Arab kids.

"I woke up this morning to see Zaf’s post about his passing, and I was deeply shocked and upset – it’s a strange sign of the times when you learn on social media of the death of someone you’ve been friends with for over 4 decades, and whose life ran parallel with yours in so many extraordinary ways. I knew he was ill, and only bumped into him very rarely – he became reclusive. I got a message from a mutual friend just now, that said they saw his house getting cleared out a while ago but didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I also heard he’s been gone for months, and no-one knew – well, tragic though that may be, I can’t help the feeling that Jon might get a chuckle out of that, as the enigma continues to grow. Respect, brother, really."

The Ravers

 

I love this whole other meaning the word "raver" had in the 1960s - basically a sexually wild 'n 'free young woman

The solicitous, condescending tones of the interviewer in this Man Alive report are something else 

Simon Dupree and the Big Sound was the pop-psch band of Ray Shulman (A.R. Kane producer / mentor ) and his brothers  - which then turned into the ultra-prog outfit Gentle Giant

This was SD & the BS's big hit

The Associates, under an alias - 39 Lyon Street -  covered it

It's Different For Girls (Auto-Tune)

Following on from the "my kind of rap" post with its coda about Auto-Tune and ad libs.

Here's something that's been puzzling me for a while...

Q: Why have female rappers not embraced Auto-Tune to anything like the same degree as their male counterparts? They tend to have naturalistic sounding voices. 

(possible) A #1 - Because the pop associations of pitch-correction - melodizing the rapping, turning it into something between rapping and singing - are something to avoid for "real MC" cred reasons?

(possible) A #2 -  Or is that the androgynizing effect A-Tune has on gruff male voices is not equivalently transgressive when applied to a woman’s voice? 

Below some further thoughts on this - originally an unfinished blogpost from 2018

Migos, "MotorSport"

The ethereal effete wafting of the backing track has an almost systems music quality to it: that chiming tuned-percussion pulse, the flutters of  strings.

There's the contrast between the floaty, angelic, half not-there-ness of especially Quavo and Offset, and the super-potent, marauding, phallic-woman cameos by Cardi and Nicki. Which are so overpowering, so in your face, they topple the mood of the song. Such that listening, sometimes I will actually skip the two female tour de forces, cut straight from Offset to Takeoff, to preserve the dreamy ambience.

Playboi Carti - No Time 

Vocal-texturally (as well as backing track texturally) this reminds me of Orphan Fairytale's hypnagogic instrumentals or the fluttering, twittering vocal counter-melodies that Liz Fraser does in back of her main vocal on Bluebell Knoll / Heaven Or Las Vegas era Cocteaus. 

I hallucinate the line as "I draw my penis out"

And then the baby voice and foetus voice  stuff - completely regressive, emasculated, dreampop-chillwave melting-of-self. 

Jump to 1.18

The virtuous dominated the end o' year lists (but then they always have played well with that constituency - remember Arrested Development)

The decadent, though, had - if not the best tunes - the best swoons. A monopoly on jouissance.

For me all other metrics fell away  - importance, innovation, resonance, significance etc - and I fell back on, fell into, bliss - as the inarguable - a category I started out with in many ways as a writer 

Although it is innovative and original, and possibly not devoid of significance or resonance, the Migos sound above all distinguishes itself through the flooding insistence of jouissance.

And it is about jouissance - this is its subject, its subjectivity in fact - how many times do things flood or drip in these lyrics? These are selves that are melting and brimming and bubbling and overflowing.

Culture the first has higher heights - "T-Shirt" and "Slippery" but Culture II is the one I've listened to many times more. It goes further into jouissance, deeper into a deliquescing subjectivity.

I started out liking the bangers most - "Narcos" and "Auto Pilot". 

Great beat and the production takes the terraced voicescape thing even further - main rap, ad libs, wordless backing ripple of Gregorian gurgles and droning moans and then that mysterious incantation intoning deep in the cavernous background - a sample? I could almost believe it's from Popol Vuh. 

But then the initially overly subdued-sounding  second side bloomed for me and I realised that the second half of the second side  - traditionally where a double album starts to run thin and run out of steam -  was the most creative, unusual and different stretch of the album.

From "MotorSport" through "Top Down On Da Nawf", via "Moving Too Fast", "Work Hard", "Notice Me", "Made Men"  (skipping the misconceived "Too Much Playa", and the inessential album coda / finale / reprise)

"MotorSport" is an example of how far Migos have come from their own earlier mixtape incarnations. Before, the hyped-up jabber - sinewy and shouty -  emphasized how hard they work for their success. Now, from "Slippery" onwards,  their feel is imperturbable nonchalance, gliding serenity,  basking in glory.

That spring-heeled buoyancy was captured perfectly by writer Jordan Rothlein when he described hearing his own Auto-Tuned voice through headphones: “I immediately felt superhuman. The best comparison is walking through an airport and stepping onto one of those conveyor-belt walkways, where suddenly you’re walking twice as fast as everyone else with the same amount of effort.” Which is why on “MotorSport”, Quavo raps “I feel like I can fly”, while Offset goes further, declaring, “No human being, I’m immortal”.

Migos, "Moving Too Fast"

Serenity creased with melancholy - "My heart is so numb /I cannot cry /I don't got feelings"

Migos "Work Hard"

Except they don't sound like they're working at all - and that to me is so much more interesting, unusual - this almost effete rapture - what Stubbs and I would once have called "the ghostly unbody"(in reference to the likes of A.R. Kane) 

Migos, "Notice Me"

Migos, "Made Men"

Very musical track, that

Migos, "Top Down on Da NAWF"

"I'm home... I can never get lost"

Again, cruising-in-the-car serenity creased here and there with pain and sorrow

In the intro, that sample -is it the little girl from Poltergeist trapped in the TV saying "please help me"?

And then the cracks in the armored fortress-self - "for some reason I can't cry-cry"

But the words are saying the opposite of the music - or rather the music (and the vocalisation style - fey melancholia) is undercutting and contradicting the lyrics

The lyrics are like a residual element, a hollowed-out signifier of rap-as-was

But the truth of the music is the woozy gaseous vocal texture - the listless wistfulness

These vocals have more to do with PM Dawn or A.R. Kane

The discontinuity between the two elements - lyrics and vocal grain / affect / mode - can get pretty jarring

This serene elegaic mood of instant nostalgia is set up and then it ends with the mood-dissonant line "she got my kids on her face"

Yet as hard-hearted and cold-souled as the lyrics seem,  the fluidity of the vocal interplay and its ecstatic texturizing speaks to something else: a vulnerability to bliss.  Quavo and Offset and Takeoff seemed entranced by themselves, lost in an auto-erotic swirl, draped in a jouissance that seems to seep out of their bodies as mist of Auto-Tuned droplets, a self-swaddling canopy of shivers and moans, fluttery-shivery wafts....

Quavo, so phonetically proximate to “quiver”, is the perfect name for the Migos MC who is the most ecstatically merged with Auto-Tune technology, to the point where he’s a virtually a cyborg, inseparable from  his vocal prosthesis. 

The lyrics are the usual alpha male, warrior male, gangsta, hardest working me in the rap biz stuff - but the vocals are saying "I surrender"

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Not a blissy one but hark at that fractured, halting structure, the way the ad libs are almost as prominent as the main rap. The effect is almost like a trap equivalent to roundelay or canon singing.

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Twelve months of Migos over-saturation were bookended by this (the purring glow-moan back-lighting "this is how it's sposed to be" is like a fluorescent marker pen)

And then that was it... nothing else really of note from the Migos camp, solo or the main group (Culture III, idiotically deemed a return to form by some after the supposed squib of Culture II, is utterly barren, from the pointless sampling of "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" on the opener onwards)

Still, in hindsight, their sound remains one of the most original, unexpected sounds of the past decade. 

Without every going into the zone of tediously testing the listener, striving to be frenziedly challenging or difficult - staying within the ear-erogenous zone.

The sheer pleasure-principled orientation of the music hides how out-there it can be - there are moments in "Auto Pilot", "Top Down on Da NAWF", "Bosses Don't Speak" - shivers and shudders and dilated moans - that seem to be cut from the same cloth as Tim Buckley's "Starsailor". A song I once described as being like the 'space' of orgasm expanded into an environment, a maze you can walk through.

That's what the Migos backing gurgles - or Playboi Carti at his heights - or the entirety of Young Thug's vocal in almost anything  - or Lil Yachty on "The Ride" -  or Future at his most groggy and reptilian - that's what it sounds like: coming, endlessly stretched out.

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Going back to how this started - virtue versus decadence  - the electric lure of the dissolute, of dissipation and the reprobate...

Migos could be contrasted with another Atlanta-based artist whose latest mistresspiece is far more feted

The latter is - like all her previous ones - an essay about Afro-Futurism (with a tick list of progressive stances). It's woven almost entirely from what was once genuinely futurist in its day but is now a stifling tradition.  Rendered in insipid melodies and a rather small voice.

Migos, Carti, Thug, Future - these simply are Afro-Futurist without having to declare themselves as such  (although Future kinda nods at this with his "Future Hendrix" talk). This is  a new thing that is out there in the world, on the radio, on YouTube, streamers. 

The sentiments are the opposite of progressive - in fact, they are psychologically and socially regressive - but they are also hallucinatory, psychotic, hyperreal - the leaking id of the Simulacrum - and symptomatically revealing of the contemporary moment.

The lyrics are like some terminal hyper-decadent state of gangsta-thug-playa-izm - beyond even rap in its hair metal phase of the 2000s - just fleeting fragments of triumph, flaunting, disdain, glory, etc - barely any continuity from line to line. 

Compelling on that level - but what's really fascinating is the disjuncture between the lyrics and the "message" of the music itself. 

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“Writing aloud is not expressive; it leaves expression to the pheno-text, to the regular code of communication; it belongs to the geno-text, to significance; it is carried not by dramatic inflections, subtle stresses, sympathetic accents, but by the grain of the voice, which is an erotic mixture of timbre and language, and can therefore also be, along with diction, the substance of an art: the art of guiding one’s body….

"Due allowance being made for the sounds of the language, writing aloud is not phonological but phonetic; its aim is not the clarity of messages, the theater of emotions; what it searches for (in a perspective of bliss) are the pulsional incidents, the language lined with flesh, a text where we can hear the grain of the throat, the patina of consonants, the voluptuousness of vowels, a whole carnal stereophony: the articulation of the body, of the tongue, not that of meaning, of language.

"A certain art of singing can give an idea of this vocal writing; but since melody is dead, we may find it more easily today at the cinema. In fact, it suffices that the cinema capture the sound of speech close up… and make us hear in their materiality, their sensuality, the breath, the gutturals, the fleshiness of the lips, a whole presence of the human muzzle (that the voice, that writing, be as fresh, supple, lubricated, delicately granular and vibrant as an animal’s muzzle), to succeed in shifting the signified a great distance and in throwing, so to speak, the anonymous body of the actor into my ear: it granulates, it crackles, it caresses, it grates, it cuts, it comes: that is bliss”

Roland Barthes, The Pleasures of the Text

Auto-Tune, Melodyne, Harmony Engine etc complicate the idea of "the grain of the voice", Barthes's "carnal stereophony"  and "language lined with flesh"- but I feel this passage still captures what's going on with this music and its reversal of priorities. 

Further reading on related topics. 

The kid on "Astral Squeaks" and Playboi Carti.

Anon in Comms reminds me I forgot to include this blissy bubble - "when I take drugs I go to the Moon"

my kind of rap

 

Noise, energy, blare, blast - and voice and words as just a joyous shout of self-assertion 

What I've less interest in: lyrical rumination, inwardness, reflection

What I've no interest in: didacticism, messages, uplift 

I like tracks that are like engines with the foot on the gas... unflagging... jets of steam shooting out from underneath

The kind of rap I like is in fact rap where the rapping is not that important as semantic content, instead it's all about the the sheer pumping flow-motion of it. Another form of rhythmic thrust dovetailed with the track .... the voice completely merged with the dynamo of the beat....  an adjunct to or constituent element of the groove.

I suppose human beatboxing would be the ultimate extension of this idea, but - fun as it is - it's a step too far beyond the semantic into purely rhythmatized vocalism. 

What thrills (more on this below) is a dance between sense and nonsense, a battle between lyrical meaning and the demands of rhythm.

Okay, now this next example does have great writing but what matters is the swing and unflagging pump-action of Rakim.

But in case you think it's all old skool, stuff from three decades ago

That tune contains within it the "engine" / foot-on-the-accelerator idea.

Now this one - it's a "Loose" for 21st Century

I have no idea what Kanye is on about here - what gets me is the sheer aural thuggery, it hits me like Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Pt 2"

Languid is fine so long as it's pure feline sass  - again, the words play their part but above all it's the grain and tone of his voice that makes this seductive

This now forgotten fellow was my early Platonic ideal of rap - "annihilating" sense in the cyclotron of rhythm madness

I wonder why Mantronik didn't just invite T. La Rock to be the MC in Mantronix? 

(MC Tee is a sweet presence in the sound, but he's overmatched)

"Push It" belongs in this company but my fave Salt N' Pepa is this:

Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Skinny Boys...  some Public Enemy moments...

Latterday exponents: Onyx, DMX, Lil Jon 

For sure, the writing-as-writing is often great - DMX especially, LL and Beasties too, Chuck D obviously

But primarily it's about energy and vocal force and command 

I feel that whenever you have to concentrate  - when there's wordplay, allusion, meta-reference - or even where there's picture-lyrics that appeal to your visual and imaginative faculties.... this is detracting from the pure musicality, the insistence of rhythm.

I'm with Nietzsche here: his distaste for the Italian style of opera in which musicality is distorted by and suborned to the requirements of the libretto - the result being “semimusical declamation” from a “singer who speaks more than he sings” and appeals to “the listener who desires to hear the words above the music” 

(My rap version of this would be going to see El-P (supporting Cannibal Ox) and finding the too-many-words thing really aggravating - and even more so the way that fans in the audience would rap along to the too-many-words that they'd learned by heart, all of them). 

Against this unmusicality, Nietzsche exalted the folk song, where the primordial incantational force of melody and rhythm overrides the text:

 “The continuously generating melody scatters image sparks all around, which in their variegation, their abrupt change, their mad precipitation, manifest a power quite unknown to the epic and its steady flow.” 

This might seem a paradoxical expectation of rap, which is nothing if not speak-sing.... but I guess I'm saying the "sing" - rhythmelody - and other non-semantic vocal aspects (grain, intonation, etc), these are more important than the "speak" (meaning communication).

My favorite rappers makes me glaze out, dip in and out of lyrical-focus, catch words here and there

Just like the Rolling Stones, like the Fall -  like most great rock music in fact

The golden rule with pop and rock overall is that lyrical sense is fairly low down on the list of virtues...  it's not absent, it doesn't contribute nothing to the pleasure and power, but it's far from the be all and end all.

You can have great pop and rock with lousy words

But no lyrical cleverness or poeticism can salvage music that is sparkless. 

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The ad libs era of recent trap was a massive re-irruption of exactly-what-I-like - vocal noise, non-semantic energy-bursts, voice-as-logo, onomatopeia, voice FX, gimmicks - purely rhythmatized speech and non-speech - made all the more delirious through being filtered through Auto-Tune and other processing technologies. 

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Talking about folkmelody, image sparks and mad precipitation, Nietzsche would have loved these surely