stalkerish feverish (Thirdform's neurofunk recommends)

In a recent comment in an older post, Thirdform sez that  Neurofunk is not a completely barren zone 

These are his recommends for "stalkerish feverish" killers.

 

Gloomcore-ish title there! Bass-design is like Jaco as Terminator2

More "pretzel" precisionizm

"The Black Son Empire turns it into a cyborg switched up monster." 

"Cusp of gabber" bizniz

It's odd, probably in '95 and '96 and right through into '97, I was following d&B more fanatically than ever - buying a huge number of 12-inches, blagging every compilation and album going, going out to clubs every week. 

But (unlike the 92/93/94 stretch) I rarely revisit those tunes.  

The pirates tapes I have from '95 onwards, which are plentiful (mostly taped in a frenzy while back in the UK on a trip or vacation) - I never ever play. Nor do I seek and acquire the many pirate sets from post-94 that are out there to be nabbed. (Partly it's cos D+B gets too professional - the nutt-E-ness is gone. But it's also the kind of the tunes in the sets.)

Tune-wise  - there's some things from '95, fewer from '96, almost nothing from '97, that I'll pull out (and the ones I do, they'll tend to be on the smoother, more cinematic side of things - or full-length album statements)

So I'll rarely play techstep even though No U Turn et al was absolutely a moment when my faith was floodingly restored. And a phase that resulted in some of best nights out ever in NYC. Not sure why - if I was to put on "Squadron" or "Metropolis" I'm sure it would be as mindblowing as ever. But the urge never comes. 

The one tune I probably do give a spin regularly over subsequent years would be "Shadowboxing'" - just IMMENSE.

Then neurofunk is really when most things I loved about ardkore / darkcore / jungle / early artcore - these things just go  AWOL. It's like a whole new culture almost. It becomes a form of techno again - but not techno in the Belgian sense, or gloomcore sense. 

Perhaps the stuff leading up to neurofunk doesn't appeal because I can tell where it's going - it's a hindsight-taint. Disappointment ahoy!

Rudewhy for years (that's why they call it a continuum, folks! pt 203048372)

Not just a titular nod to A Guy Called Gerald (with inflation effect on "28 Gun Bad Boy" - now up to 42, or is it 32 as the label of the record actually says?), but also earlier-still bleep-era samples from Unique 3 (right?)

This tuff tune via Rudewhy's triffic Speed Garage Top 100 thread at Dissensus, where this track stands at  #15. As you go higher up the chart, he starts writing some nice commentaries on some of the selections - how he found a certain record, the quest for elusive tunes, what it sounds like, strange collisions of influences.

In this list are some  Nuum-nodding tunes I'd never come across, joining the company of well-known refixes like the "Hurt You So" remake "Oh Boy' by Fabulous Baker Boys, the "Truly One" garage update by  Strictly Dubz IV ("Small Step") et al

This one nods not just in the sample from "Euphony (Just 4 U London)" but with the name - Bodysnatch / Bodysnatchers, haha




Omni Trio love shown




"Whatcha Gonna Do" / Da Intalex reflections



"Long Dark Tunnel / Valley of the Shadow" echoes in this one.



Rudewhy's focus is very much on speed garridge, not UK garage (so very little in the tasteful and deep-deep-deeper zone) and the selection cuts off before the 2step sound takes over. So it's a sweep across a sound-strand that lasts a bare year, maybe two years top  (although bassline oop North carries on doing the Double 99>DJ Narrows line and 4-to-4loor tunes pop up here and there on the London scene even after the overall sound-of-the-pirates has switched to the less banging, bump 'n' flexy 2step, with R&B flava battling it out with house vybe for control.

I downloaded all the tracks, plus a few other Dissensian suggestions, and played them as one huge bloc. It took me two and a half days! (Had to keep taking a break - after about 4 hours of this heavily scenius-not-genius, functional floor-filler in a single session, onset of diminishing returns as it all became a bit of a blur!)

It's crammed with slammige - but what surprised me was that nearly all of the selection were unknown to me. That doubtless reflects me being in NYC at that time, where only a smatter of speed garage 12 inches dribbled over to record stores, because there was zero scene for it in the USA. The junglists hated speed garridge and only later on did some of them come around to 2step; NYC house bods were not having it AT ALL. I did get my mitts on some good tunes on vinyl import, but mostly my access was through CD compilations. Tape-wise, I have hardly any speed garage 1997 ones, whereas later I have a shitload of the 2step era pirate tapes. (Gonna be digitizing and sharing to the commonwealth those soon actually).

It was a moment of generic-but-good churnage and monster over-supply....  mercenary opportunists jumped on it but still came up with the goods....   Scenius principles rule i.e. "positive unoriginality" syndrome aka depersonalizing alignment to the state of art.

All of it  - first-division, second-division, third-div - imbued with the magic of that Moment.

Still,  it's interesting how rarely the Rudewy selection overlaps with what would generally be considered the canon of that year-plus  - and almost never coincides with my own quirky faves.

Below is a messy list mixing up obvious anthems and personal peccadilloes. Almost entirely excluding 2step, except for a few edge cases. Approximate descending order, toppermost at the start....

Gant -- "Sound Bwoy Burial (187 Lockdown Dancehall Mix)"/All Night Long"

New Horizon, “Find the Path”

Lady Penelope & Abstrac, "Deeper (Part 2)

Giselle Jackson, "Love Commandments (Loop Da Loop vocal mix)

KMA, "Cape Fear"

New Horizons --"Slamdown" off Scrap Iron Dubs No. 1 EP

N ' n'G featuring Creed - "Liferide

Soul II Soul – "Pleasure Dome (Booker T Dub)"

Double 99 "RIPGroove"

Scott Garcia feat MC Styles, "It's a London Thing"

A Baffled Republic, "Bad Boys Move in Silence"

Smokin Beats feat Lynn Eden, “Dreams”

KMA, "Kaotic Madness"

New Horizons - --"It's My House (Bashment Mix)"

Ramsey and Fen – “Desire”

The Corrupted Crew / MC Neat - "G.A.R.A.G.E."

Napa-Tac "Dibby Dibby Sound"

Angel Farringdon + Lil Smokey, "Clean Riddem" 

Same People, “Dangerous”

KMA,  “Blue Kards” (Recon Mission EP)

Skycap , “Endorphin”

Dreem Teem, “The Theme”

The Heartists’ “Belo Horizonti (Ramsey and Fen Remix)

Double 99 , "Jump"
Ratpack, "The Clipper"

Corrupted Crew - "G.A.R.A.G.E. (DJ Narrows remix)

Ramsey & Fen, "Underground Explosion" (on The Off-Key Experience EP)

Fabulous Baker Boys -- "Oh Boy"

Da Stylus, "Crazy"

Ramsey & Fen,  "Love Bug"
187 Lockdown, "Gunman"

Soundscape, "Dubplate Culture"

Strictly Dubz IV, "Small Step (London Dubz)"

Underground Distortion, "Everything Is Large"

 

+ honorary Brits

Sneaker Pimps, "Spin Spin Sugar (Armand's Dark Garage Mix)

Nu Yorican Soul "Runaway (Mongoloids in Space)

Roy Davis Jr featuring Peven Everelist, "Gabriel"

new blogs with a focus on electronic music and dance culture

New blog of note #1 - The Priapean Logs. Started by Dissensus contributor Sadmanbarty, a young fellow with a bulging sackload of ideas about 21st Century music.  (And earlier music too - he's a drummer by trade, knows the intricacies of rhythm). Check out these posts on the Haze as an analogue-era production aesthetic now replaced by something sharper and frostier, and on Wu Tang Clan's Forever.

New(-ish) blog of note #2 - Aloysius. Started by Dissensus contributor Mvuent, from Minneapolis. Check out this post on "reaching the far lands as an aesthetic goal" for experimental music. Never having played Minecraft and only barely glimpsed it, the concept of "the far lands" goes over my head. But my son - who practically lived inside the game for a few years in his mid-teens - says it's spot on.

stepping to the front in '95 - DJ SS + Formation

in sideways tribute to Man like Droid's Dissensus thread which argues for 1995 as jungle's imperial phase -  when jungle was most like itself and unlike anything else, as he puts it -  and strews many, many gems to prove the peak-year thesis... here is a vintage '95 featurette about one of that year's most imperial producers plus an album review of a compilation of the cream from his label Formation. 

DJ SS

Melody Maker, 1995

by Simon Reynolds

                

1995 was a banner year for DJ SS. 25 year old Leroy Small dropped a bomb-load of  monster tunes-- "Hearing Is Believing", "The Lighter", "Smoker's Rhythm", "The Rollidge", "95 Rampage"-- that tore up the hardstep dancefloor.

Then again, there's never really been a slow year for SS. He's been at the frontline of  hardcore since 1991, both as co-founder of Leicester-based hardcore label Formation and as a prolific tunesmith operating under myriad aliases (Sounds of The Future, International Rude Boys, Rhythm For Reasons, MA1 and MA2, etc). As Formation's in-house producer, he's had a hand in all but 5 out of the 65 releases to date.

SS started DJ-ing at the age of 13, working his way up through school discos, soul, hip hop, early house, in a "natural progression" that took him to hardcore rave. "In the rave scene I saw so many hooligans I knew that were happy and dancing". This rave-revelation co-incided with SS's alienation from hip hop: the British rap crews weren't really happening, while "Public Enemy and NWA were preaching the wrong things, harking on about past crimes against black people, captivating the audience in the wrong way. Recently I've got back into the more groovy stuff in rap, like Wu Tang Clan, and I've always had hip hop flavour in my music, with the breakbeats. But I don't like the gangsta element, that's too like the ragga gunshot thing".



Ragga-jungle is something that Formation have consciously distanced themselves from. "In '94, the ragga thing was big but I wasn't  into it. I took the basslines and a stab of ragga vocal but I refused to do a full-on ragga chat over my tracks". SS doesn't like the vibe ragga creates. "Jungle just got too dark, too intimidating. There's been a lot of trouble in the Midlands, shootings. People don't want to worry about treading on someone's toes or giving someone a funny look. It's the promoters' fault, they should bar them kind of people from coming to their clubs, but they're just interested in money. DJ's and producers are to blame too, for putting gunshots in tracks."

Definitely no gunshots, then, but boombastic B-lines, eerily warped vocals, portentous hunting-horns and shlocky intros of classical music all figure as hallmarks of SS's style. "Hearing Is Believing Remix" and "Rollers' Convention", in particular, brilliantly reconciled avant-garde edge with crowdpleasing groove-power. As such, SS is a prime exponent of 'hardstep', Grooverider's term for the purist drum & bass style that cuts a middle path between rudeboy ragga and 'intelligent'. "Hardstep's got no ragga in it, but people step hard to it," says SS. "See, my only qualms about intelligent is that musically it's wicked but often it's sounds weak on the dancefloor. Formation tracks have got to be rolling." As his hardstep peers, SS gives the nod to Roni Size & Krust,  Dillinja, Hype, Andy C, Pascal, and Ray Keith ("his stuff is so simple, but it works!").

That said, SS is looking for Formation to get more "musical" next year, with real vocals and songs, as with the forthcoming cover version of "Free".  "People buying our stuff know what they're getting, we've got a little predictable and it's time for a change". Okay, but don't get too 'musical', SS, please! Because right now Formation have hit their stride with a perfect blend of complexity and minimalism, which can be heard on  Highly Recommended, a compilation that revisits and drastically remixes highlights from the label's brilliant '95. 

"Highly Recommended" is out now on Formation, new SS tunes "Free" and "Sense of Direction" are set for early 1996 release. SS's remix of DJ Krust's "Set Speed" is out now on V Recordings.

VARIOUS ARTISTS

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Formation

Melody Maker, 1995

by Simon Reynolds

DJ SS, in-house producer of Leicester's Formation label, is one of jungle's

most undersung figures. 1995 was a banner year for both SS and Formation. They

dominated the drum & bass dancefloor with a series of killa trax--MA2's "Hearing

Is Believing", Sounds of The Future's "The Lighter", SS's "Rollidge" and In

Between The Lines' "95 Rampage"--all SS-produced, and all revisited/revamped on

Highly Recommended.

"Lighter" starts daftly with the rinky-dinky melancholia of top classical

piano tune "Fur Elise" (better known as "Theme From 'Love Story'"), then drops

into a ragga-tastic swagger and pummel; the VIP remix injects a feverish stutter

and stammer into the rude-boy "lighter!!" chant. The LP mix of "Hearing Is

Believing" adds a squelchy bass-drone that mimics or maybe even samples "Public

Enemy Number One" from PE's debut album. The original's portentous

hunting-horn fanfares are timestretched so they wilt and waver like Salvador

Dali's melting clocks, while the irresistibly surging bass-flow has been

displaced by a metallic, sproinggg-ing B-line, like a bouncing, giant-sized ball-

bearing.

The revamp of "Rollidge" is astonishing; the breakbeats ripple and undulate

like they've been liquidified, and the original's reversed-diva is slowed and

processed 'til it's like a baritone drowning in the bath.



Even more startling are the voice treatments on "95 Rampage", where the diva-vocal is extruded into a long thin streak of laser-intense light, then a single syllable is isolated and

oscillated into a spasming percussive tattoo. 



Less familiar tunes are also given a vicious going-over.  Black's awesome VIP Mix of "Black" features some ear-confounding dub-FX--a snatch of MC chatter is shattered into syllables, each

of which is scattered through a sonic hall-of-mirrors.

While 'intelligent' drum & bass (Goldie, Photek et al) seduced the ears of

non-junglists and music press readers, Highly Recommended is an essential(ist)

document of where the real action was in jungle '95, i.e. the purist

strain of drum & bass known as 'hardstep'.  This compilation's title says it all.

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

Scattering of gems from the Formation / SS back pages













Formation tunes feature heavily on this great DB selected-and-mixed compilation of 1994 as one of the UK's  Big Five hardcore/jungle labels alongside Moving Shadow, Suburban Base, Reinforced, and Production House

Dissensus's Datwun, aka Dom in Japan, aka Musings of A Socialist Japanologist - aka the dude who enthuses infectiously about Jackin' Bass -- with a well worth reading overview of the year in music -  funny, lotsa cool audio-video clips,  and crucially, correct.

(well i find myself in substantial agreement with it, anyway!)


highlight passages from Datwun/Dom's overview:

on UK Bass

"For London producers working under the 'Bass' umbrella this year, not a single gun finger was busted. Postmodernism has not treated UK dance music well, and the atemporal, internetty, vybless music coming from the capital - a mush of vaguely dubsteppy bass, house rhythms, washy synths, 808s and AALIYAH SAMPLES MADE BORING HOW DO U EVEN DO THAT?!?!? - has lost all sense of FWD progression and all sense of fun....


"Wake me up when London artists stop talking like critical theorists and when somebody, anyone makes a BANGER."

[Feel a little kindlier towards UKbass hessle hemlock etc than he does, but perhaps only because I'm getting mellow and quite enjoy having weirdbeat-ige on in the background while working on my computer - in a club, i'm sure i'd be TEARING MY HAIR OUT IN BROCK-BLOCKED FRUSTRATION!]

on Footwork

"Imagine what music/culture would be like right now if footwork didn't exist? It's a truly depressing thought. For musical modernists, footwork is pretty much all that that stands between us and the end of history"

"for the first time in musical history the UK has responded to an American innovation by tempering it"

[Yes, exactly. Problem with footwork is a bit like the problem with all those global ghetto groove sounds, in so far as it can't be adopted wholesale as a culture by non-locals because it is so territorialised, bound up with specific rites and  in situ dance-functionalism. Unlike jungle in the mid-90s, it can't really be responded to in the "energy signal / summons to action" way i.e. scenes for footwork sprouting up all around the wall. It's not an identity (i don't think anyway) that can be embraced, signed up for, as a mode of conversion and plighted troth.  In the absence of that, then, footwork seems likely to have its effect as an influence, which tends to lead to ungainly fusion, or dilution, or quirkification -- the drill'n'bass etc scenarios. Or (again cf carioca, cumbia etc, as a flavor in hip-dj favour, dropped into sets but not really catalysing anything long-term... I]

On Jackin

Which gets hailed as

"a topography of a specifically Northern British dance tradition - evoking everything from bassline to Northern soul, via organ house, speed garage, happy hardcore, donk and jungle.... The difference between this music history in a blender and the internetty mush I decry in London-centric UK Bass, is that Jackin is the response to a specific Northern tradition, it's not a random assortment of influences gathered from soundcloud and youtube... but local influences absorbed into the music through a regional IRL scene, and absorbed through the memory of other local scenes. Simply put, jackin is exactly what you'd expect Northern rave music to sound like in 2k12, and it's strong because of its basis in The Real.

 

"Apart from this Jackin succeeds where UK Bass fails not only because it takes itself far less seriously... But because it is a scene which corresponds to a sound. Whereas if you say a song sounds like UK bass I have 0% idea what you might be referring to - in regards to its rhythmic pattern, its sound pallet etc. - if you tell me a song has a jackin bass then I know what to expect from the bass line."

 

[Have to say the scene defining innovation that he identifies as "hollow-donk-warp-owl-bass" is delicious but it doesn't quite sound like enough of a New Sound to really conquer the outside-world nonaligned dancefan's default stance of scepticism ("isn't this just a slightly new twist on house / uk garage?"). There remains something of a recombinant plateau / hyperstatic aura about the sound, as irresistibly slinky and nubile as it is]

 

[In classic scenius-don't-mean-there-aren't-auteurs having-your-cake-and-eating-it mode (i'm a repeat offender obviously) D hones in on the werk of Lorenzo, aka 1/2 of Cause & Affect ]

 

That is basically jungle house...  which is to say, speed garage, slowed a bit, and given some 2012 digi-polish

 His tune of the year

Love the donk/Blackout Crew echo of "that's sick"


(D's overview then debated over at Dissensus from this page onward... the back and forth having a shall we say deja lu feeling about it)

Dom at Musings of A Socialist Japanologist with a really interesting post on the sound that's usurped (yet also evolved out of) bassline in the North -- and which he characterises as the nuum (South Yorks/West Midlands division) ruffing up electrohouse as the nuum (London division) did with funky house

more detailed response to it over at Blissblog 

(seems like Bassline-fiend Continuum did start a Dissensus thread on it a while back, but the response was disinterest / derision from the assembled Dissenserati)

(what is the etymology of this term Electroline then?)

love the MC element, reminding me of those bassline-meets-grime (with a Northern accent ) tracks by people like Bonez

("hands in the air if you think you're hardcore")

and also the MC-ing (live on the set and also as featured artist on some of the tracks) in this bumpin mix by Marcus Nasty




some ace tunes dug up by Dom/MoaSJ including this one



and this delish bootleg refix of Chaka's Ain't Nobody

here's a couple of others I really like

in a funny way reminds me just a bit of moombhaton, in the sense of fresh/buzzy yet also a reconfiguration of known elements where it's hard to spot the newness. and also with the slip down in tempo c.f. the precursor sound, bassline.

and finally SWAG - a hilarious Jackin' House and Bass blog that Martin Blackdown spotted, which at first I thought had to be a spoof of some kind...

what's with all the references to ket and cat?  do people really wear little spoons around their necks? if so, puts a different angle on bumpin beats

SWAG AS FUCK takes me back to my youth this un getting ketty ont dancefloor cos the girls love bass lol ;) x

^^^^^^^

here at swag HQ we are all still onit from weekend. been having a reyt time like, one of us mates went under and lost his clothes, cat, geebs and his spoon! hes proper gutterd... you can even see his cat dick on pic...hate it when that happens but its orite we used our new special program to hide his identificaton.

We all gettin off sesh soon so we save some dollah to get him a new spoon

Nuff luff swagsters!!! 

Keep it swag and Sesh on xxx

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

We bet you cant wait to wrap your noses round these unreleased beautys, solid gold and look how shiney they are (wont be shiney when they are brimming with my boom cat :P) we have been busy makin these spoons over the past 2 weeks sorry if we havent been around much bt spoons come first as u all know, whats the point in going out if u dont have a spoon on?

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

KET, SEX & DC10 NEED I SAY MORE!!!

What a sick tshirt - 3 of our favourite things here at SWAG blog! For those who do not know what DC10 is, its the home of jackin electro house in Ibiza. Its got red walls and fit lasses walk around in bikinis giving out free cat all night long while you dance the night away to mucky wobblers and deep bouncey chicago electro house beats. Its just round the corner from Cafe Del Mar (Where that song was made from kevin & perry) and the world famous OK Kareoke Bar. Personally i've never been to ibiza but me and the boyos plan to smash openings this year, tom's gonna put half oz of cat up his arse before we get ont plane so we can join the mile high cat club hehe naughty :P

I cant wait for all the ket, sex and kareoke, this lass has got it nailed on with this tshirt, if your wearing something with DC10 on it then you are the definition of SWAG...