Leaving Earth's Taninian with a counter view of UK bass, or as he prefers, post-step, to that  argued by Musings's Dominic /Datwun

(it's a follow-up to a much earlier  this year post on post(dub)step - dude posts irregularly but at great length and depth when he does)

these two posts add up to a surprising ideological swerve (basically embracing the Harper/Muggs position) from a chap who even earlier (May) last year was enthusing so infectiously and authoritatively about wobble...  but then again I suppose there's no rule that you have to pick sides between brostep and post(dub)step - indeed while ideologically I'm firmly on the wobble-bro side, in terms of day to day listening I probably listen more to the post_ stuff (but as I said in the earlier post here, that's because it's more compatible with the way I use music, maybe)

still I hope he won't disappoint me further by penning encomiums to vapidwave and cloud rap ;)


To the claims ventured in the latest post, on behalf of the post-....      

the parallel with postpunk can only go so far, I think, because what This Heat, Pere Ubu, Raincoats et al had was an expressive intent and communicative urgency that is simply absent with this posteverything digitronica--  with the postpunk bands, that urgency relates to the individual vision of the artists (their personalities, temperaments, biographies), but also to the fact that even at its most extreme postpunk was nearly always a song-based and lyric-based form that could support "saying stuff".... also, further, it relates to the wider contextual Geist of postpunk as a movement and a cause, carrying with it a moral imperative to communicate, challenge,  oppose, etc ... and moreover its belief that this was possible (postpunk coming not just after  punk, but as its fulfilment / intensification / dialectical next stage)...    .

none of these things apply with post-step, which seems to be about complexity and convolution for complexity and convulotion's sake.... a very pure form of music, in that sense -- but what that means is that it stands or falls on A/  just how experimental /sonically mindblowing you actually find it to be, and B/ how much you value experimentalism/aural-weirdness for their own sake 

in terms of B/ when it comes to dance that's just one of several metrics for me, several considerations -- and in terms of A/ well i'm still processing his many many recommendations (man, the guy's a digger, a chaser!).... for now can't quite hear the  "uncontrolled upsurge of revolutionary modernism" he's talking about...  seems more like Lisa Blanning's verdict on Night Slugs as a mixture not a direction -- i.e. stuck in that zone of addition (this + that + the other) and never quite makes it to the multiplication stage (this x that x the other = ?!%#$?@!?!)

BUT some of the stuff -- taken as an aggregate of established power-moves -- is pretty fucking exciting


i do like the ravey swoops and smears in this 

and in this one 

which almost has a PCP gloomcore feel but with friskier beats -- that oddly and cleverly combine a feeling of monolithic and polyrhythmic -- the effect at once cluttered and slammin'

i think he sells it slightly short by calling it post-step - it doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with Objekt and Hessle and Kimbie and all that abstrusity

the stuff he's celebrated does seems to be constructed around a dancefloor of the mind's ear (whereas postdubstep is increasingly abstracted from any body/crowd scenario)

i'd be tempted to call it ravestep if that wasn't almost as lame a word as post-step

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...