Shawn Reynaldo's latest newsletter starts by asking what are the defining sounds of the first half of 2020s and then talks about how the current scene is dominated by revivalism, before reaching its reall subject (wait for it):
Yet even as dancefloors have warmed to a wider range of tempos and drum patterns, they’ve also remained stubbornly in thrall to the past. Recycling has always been big in dance music, and the 2020s have put that tendency into overdrive. Aside from the aforementioned revivals, the past few years have also seen large-scale flirtations with electroclash, bloghouse, trip-hop, progressive house, Eurodance and numerous other ghosts of dance music’s past, many of them from the late ’90s and early ’2000s. In purely aesthetic terms, Y2K-era cosplay has dominated the decade to date, and that, in combination with the current affinity for breakbeats, should have theoretically cleared the way for one specific sound to come steaming back into the dance music conversation.
That sound? Nu-skool breaks, which oddly doesn’t seem to be one anyone’s radar...
The readable-by-nonsubscribers bit ends there, which is a good cut off point, because
a/ it's where I burst out laughing
b/ it's a nice cliffhanger (have to wait until the whole newsletter becomes readable to all to find out what his argument in favor of nu-skool breaks having its moment in the retro sun would be)
It did get me wondering though
1/ What would be Shawn's argument in favor of nu-skool breaks having untapped revival potential?
2/ Has everything else that could be revived already been revived, in fact? What are the other things that haven't been recycled yet? (Thinking specifically in dance music, but could be a wider span).
3/ What things are unrevivable? That no one will ever touch with a retro bargepole?
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I have to say, I find the idea of the Y2K as a rich seam for revivalists to be a bemusing idea - here's a real-time Year 2000 piece I wrote about the slim pickings (nu-skool breaks glancingly mentioned) organized around the concepts of The Next Medium-Sized Thing and "plausible deniability"
11 comments:
Not only does he kind of try to make a case for nu-skool breaks, he also posts links to songs from the genre that he thinks are good. His weekly editorial usually borders on comically bad, and now by putting himself out there as a fan of nu-skool breaks, I understand why most of what he says is so bland and middling.
Some ideas for the unrevivables. Not so much because they are unredeemably terrible, but because society, technology and the business have moved on to the point that the ideas and feelings behind the music can never be recovered.
In that category:
1) Anything relying on extreme instrumental proficiency. Early Earth Wind and Fire, Billy Cobham’s Spectrum, Return to Forever, the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Goldie et al may have been big fans of those groups, but they didn’t really sound much like them. They loved Weather Report, but didn’t - and couldn’t - play like Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul.
2) Anything relying on massed vocal forces.In Sixties and Seventies soul you get those large-scale vocal groups drawing on church choirs and Broadway shows. But today it doesn’t seem like anyone in pop or dance music bothers to gather together those large groups any more. It’s like the way no-one will ever make a film with as many extras as the 1970s movie Waterloo: nowadays every large battle scene is done with CGI. In fact, even small vocal groups seem lost to history. Who would do a modern version of Blackstreet or Bone-Thugz-and-Harmony?
3) Anything with an uncompromising socio-political or ideological stance. Public Enemy, KRS-One, The Coup, Underground Resistance. There might be a little of this out there on the margins - Killer Mike is still making music - but it is hard to see it breaking through to even underground popularity.
Conversely, something I think is ripe for revival: the “positivity” aesthetic. A territory bounded by Lovesexy-era Prince, Daisy Age hip-hop from De La Soul to PM Dawn, and Dee-Lite. In fact, somewhere on the internet just a few days ago I saw the first Dee-Lite album World Clique getting a rave review as a lost classic. It’s happening!
I would love a positivity era revival - PM Dawn etc. Unfortunately it would be awfully out of wack with what's going on in the world, so I don't know if it would fly. whereas at the time you'd had the whole collapse of the Soviet empire thing. And there was another duo from a year or so ago who do the hyper-fusion thing, almost like jazz-rock meets drum and bass but played live. Domu and somebody, I can't remember. Kieran reviewed both of these groups.
About 1 - actually there is group who are rather good Flievel is Glauque (stupid name admittedly) who are totally like Flora Purim meets Stereolab, very chops oriented.
The massed vocal thing - i think the technology (Harmony Engine) allows you to chorus up a single vocal in incredibly complexity and 'mass'
Kieran on Fievel is Glauqe (stupid stupid name) https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fievel-is-glauque-rong-weicknes/
Kieran on Domi and JD Beck - https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/domi-and-jd-beck-not-tight/
There's also that Geordie Greep album which if not quite jazz fusion is certainly reviving slickness and swank of that order and magnitude
Thanks for those! I will check them out. I was in an ultra-hip Brooklyn restaurant the other day - very unusually for me - and they were playing one of those late-period Stereolab albums where the jazz-funk/D&B/Brazilian influences were coming through. So maybe that should have tipped me off that those are in fact cutting edge reference points once again.
You are right, though: those are all terrible names. Very much don’t encourage further investigation.
As a subscriber, I can summarize his argument as - yep this stuff is naff and has a terrible name, but so did a bunch of other genres from y2k that got revived, so why not revive this crap too?
The best part of the essay is an aside where he mentions the name “nu skool breaks” is a bit of a cautionary tale for those currently promoting “new school jungle.”
Let's see, of the main sounds around the Y2K era:
Trance - 2023 seemed like the peak of the revival, was massive in the commercial space, Calvin Harris spending weeks at UK No.1 with ‘Miracle’ (seems to have cooled off a bit this year however)
Hard house - massive revival currently, every other Boiler Room set and small-medium sized London event is playing hard house (saw Club Caviar and Lisa Pin Up at Planet Fun the other week, mostly very young cool/arty/alt folks with a sprinkling of OG hard house veterans, everyone gurning like it’s Sundissential 1999). Artists like Simone, Kettama & Ben Hemsley massively popping atm, ‘It’s That Time’ one of the biggest genuine crossovers.
Disco house (Junior Jack et al) - 2018 was the big revival year, with artists like Denis sulta and Mella Dee becoming household names
Garage - has regular revivals in various forms, hardy perennial at this point
As for sounds from that era that haven’t been revived but could… it’s slim pickings indeed. I’d personally enjoy a So Solid/More Fire/proto-grime revival, perhaps from within the Drill scene? (altho drill seems extremely resistant to any kind of influence, so highly unlikely).
Perhaps a deep house revival in the style of Rui Da Silva / Goldtrix? Unlikely tbh, the last deep house revival was only just over a decade ago and everything is super hard n fast atm.
Clownstep? Sambass? I don’t see any of these happening soon, DnB is in rude health in all of its current forms right now.
As for Y2K Completely Unrevivable:
Progressive. The stuff that Sasha and John Digweed used to play. Utterly bland, tedious and vibeless. Will never be revived imo. Rightfully forgotten.
Aaaand…
Nu skool breaks. Was actually discussing this the other day with someone, about how this is one of the most forgotten styles ever. Garage without the sex, rave without the substances and psychedelia. Big beat without the beer. Just makes me think of sweaty student lads (i imagine this was the audience, a kind of proto-dubstep vibe? I was too young to experience this first hand in clubs). So absolutely baffed as to why Mr Reynaldo thinks this will be up next.
Genres that get revived tend to be fun, and have a pop(ulist) sensibility. Often disparaged by the cognoscenti at the time but revered decades later. This is true of all genres: look at nu metal for example, hated at the time by critics and taste makes, but now adored by the metal scene and influences many current metal bands.
Whereas the critically acclaimed stuff, while lauded at the time, is almost always tepid and and insignificant in the rear view mirror.
Wake me up when someone decides to revive microhouse. Do producers of popular dance music do extreme / ostentatious intricacy anymore? I miss the busyness of albums like Vocalcity. Is that just fastidious and prim now?
I notice this especially with jungle. If interesting production used to be—in part—a question of reining in technical ability (of not making breakcore, basically), it seems today many producers aren't interested at all in flexing their production chops, if they have them. This is my impression from sampling labels on Bandcamp, anyway: I don't see artists relishing that sort of thing so much these days. (Sully's Swandive is an obvious exception.)
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