"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had lived through it. What I was after was guts, and flash, and energy, and speed" - NIK COHN -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When the music was new and had no rules" -LUNA C
Via Droid, here's an 1989 pirate radio show on which Randall (RIP) talks about "jungle beats" - at about 3.55 mins into this clip.
The track playing is Renegade Soundwave's "The Phantom" - a beat later sampled by Omni Trio for "Stronger"
One thing I've found consistently is that whenever you think you can pinpoint the moment when a musical term or genre name gets adopted, you will always find an earlier example.... there's sort of new-word seep-backwards-through-time syndrome
It applies to almost everything
- grunge (used all through the 1980s and probably has earlier usages)
- grime (well, "grimy" was used by Onyx almost a decade earlier)
And don't get me started on "techno"....
Hell, I even found I'd coined neurofunk almost a decade earlier than when I affixed the term to a shit direction in drum and bass
Talking of funk... they used that in the 1950s, as a specifically musical term, in the context of jazz, hard bop and that end of the spectrum. (Obviously it had other meanings - including the completely non-congruent quaint-Brit Rudyard Kiplingesque meaning of "loss of nerve", "fearfulness" - as well as the connotatively proximate ones of body odour, sex-smell, etc)
"Indie" is another one.... color me surprised to see it pop up twice in Nik Cohn's Awopbop:
- describing
Apple Records, he says something that started out as the grand
Beatles dream of a free space for artists of all kinds, inventors, people
trying to do experimental happenings, etc, but then it shrank down to
being just an “indie record label”
- he
talks about Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Stones, starting his own
indie label Immediate Records. Admittedly quite a ways from what indie would
mean after punk – although only in his early 20s still, Oldham’s immensely
wealthy, a record business insider, lots of contacts, and through
Immediate signs up acts many of whom have hits. Doubtless it went through major label distribution too. So indie just means there’s
just one boss, the guy who founded it, calling the shots.
That said, I would be surprised to find if anyone used the term "arsequake" prior to the, well, Arsequake League
And I feel like "shoegaze" came out of nowhere, as did "trip hop".
The journalistic coinages seem to be more likely to emerge ex nihilo (not always though - post-rock as we know first used in 1967) whereas the ones that come from scenes and populations in an organic sort of way.... you will find more of a semantic prehistory...
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!
The gas mask / chemical warfare protection imagery seems to be a bit of a visual trope signifier thingy with this genre - wonder if it some kind of slippage of nerve gas / neurochemical
also fits the "military are the avant-garde of science" type vibe as clearly part of the fantasy self-conception of neurofunk producers (see quotes below in Exhibit 4)
Interesting to see that you can get samplepaks with all the drum sounds, bass tones and synth pads to get the correct neurofunk finish to your tracks. Even Industrial Strength - a gabber label - getting in on the action there.
Sinthetix and N.Phect strike me as the ultimate neurofunk names
Exhibit 3
A comp that 8 or 9 years later fulfilled my fantasies of Neurofunk Flavas, more or less:
DJ Step – Neurofunk Pleasures
Label: MacroVision Records – MV-169
Series: Drum'N'Bass Vision
Format: CD, Mixed, Digipak
Country: Russia
Released: 2006
1Unknown
Artist–Queen Of The Night3:22
2Rawtekk–Open Borders2:40
3Jade
(10)–Bitch3:46
4Amex
& Kaiza–Sourcream2:30
5Kryptic
Minds & Leon Switch–More Like You
(Unknown Error Remix)
6Current
Value–Mind Bullet3:44
7N-Phonix–Transfix2:08
8N.Phect,
Dizplay*–Outspace3:33
9N.Phect,
Phace–Confront2:07
10Mayhem
(7), Codex (9)–Conform?3:22
11Unknown
Artist–Untitled4:14
12Stakka,
Skynet* & DJ Red–9000
Series2:26
13Munk–Spearhead2:09
14Optiv–Circa1:45
15Silent
Witness, Break*–Hollow1:57
16Break–Catch Off1:45
17Afghan
Headspin–Stay Young1:56
18N.Phect,
Dizplay*–Brute Force1:56
19Gridlok–Fifth Dimension1:13
20Brainfuzz,
Kenei–Welcome To The Game1:56
21Prolix–Choke2:27
22Budoka–Whiplash (Remix)1:24
23State Of
Mind (8)–Money Train2:06
24Nico (4),
Rukkus–Smartbomb1:24
25Noisia
& Phace–Thrillseekers1:55
26Rob F
& Impulse (3)–Fallout2:31
Exhibit 4 - from the horse's mouth
From a UKFfeature by Dave Jenkins about how 2015 was a great year for neurofunk
quotes presumably from leading producers and/or deejays
"Neurofunk to me: you wake up, it’s 2pm it’s already dark, you get your breakfast and sit in front of a big computer. You don’t talk to anyone, all you can think of is yesterday’s frequency and you start working around it. It’s a lifestyle that’s similar to hackers; you’re surrounded by technology, you’re obsessed with searching. You’re inventing and you’ll never stop. You’re not social too much. You’re more of a scientist”. – Billain
"To me neurofunk is a way of life, since I’ve been producing it I’ve been no longer able to listen to the music in a “standard” way, you become a kind of scientist who analyzes and makes experiments in laboratory daily, you become the neurofunk”. – Maztek
also from the feature
Neuro: the church of sound design
The key characteristic of neuro: sound design. Noises you’ve never heard before, mixed at degrees of clarity previously unknown to producers before. We’ll let the masters explain why sound design in neuro is so exciting….
Exhibit 5 - Noisia - the most noisome sound in the world!
Noisia - Noisia - Split the Atom
Noisia - Mantra (Official Video)
How strange to think that a genre that once meant things like Dillinja "Sovereign Melody" or Code 071 "London Sumting Dis" could end up with this rank wank....
Exhibit 6: The Neurofunk Canon
The Dogsonacid dude Gilius's list of the neurofunk canon and the chronology of the genre's emergence and consummation
1997
Ed Rush & Optical - Funktion
Ed Rush & Optical - Razorback
Jesus Jones - Chemical #1 (Optical Remix)
Optical - The Shining
1998
Absolute Zero & Subphonics - The Code
Bad Company - The Nine
Calyx - Distopia
Calyx - Octane
Calyx - Reaction Time
Calyx - The Root
E-Z Rollers - Weekend World (Calyx Remix)
Ed Rush & Optical - Compound
Ed Rush & Optical - Slip Thru
Ed Rush & Optical - Splinter
Ed Rush & Optical - The Medicine
Fibre Optix - Sin
Optical - Can U Read
Origin Unknown - Sound In Motion
Psion - Reverse Engineering
Ram Trilogy - Scanners
1999
Acetate - Nyquest '99
Bad Company - 4 Days
Bad Company - China Cup
Bad Company - Morphine
Bad Company - Refuge
Bad Company - Seizure
Cause 4 Concern - Phat Cap
Decorum - All Mighty
Decorum - Contrax
Decorum - In Sanity
DJ Reality - Music Maker (Shimon Remix)
EBK - Vision
Ed Rush & Optical - Bacteria
Ed Rush & Optical - Funktion (Remix)
Filibuster - Don't Give Up
Fortran - Sardines (Bad Company Remix)
Fresh & Vegas - Meekon
Grooverider - Where`s Jack the Ripper (Origin Unknown Remix)
Grooverider feat. Optical - Where's Jack The Ripper
Hopa & Bones & DJ Phantasy - The Crow (Stakka &
Skynet Electronic Dub Mix)
Karl K - Synapse (Konflict Remix)
Karl K - Synapse
Kemal - Animation
Kemal - Mechanism
Konflict & Usual Suspects - Contact
Konflict - Bad Acid
Konflict - Cyanide
Konflict - Outpost
Konflict - Phobia
Konflict - Roadblock (Matrix Remix)
Konflict - Roadblock
Konflict - State of Mind
Kraken - Analogue Spikes
Kraken - Meatball
Kraken - Side Effects
Magnetic Media - Robotics
Matrix - Six
Matrix - Sleepwalk
Matrix - Temperament
Optical - The Shining (Ed Rush & Optical Remix)
Pantera - Fucking Hostile (Kemal & Rob Data Remix)
Pressure Rise - Let Go (Usual Suspects Instrumental Mix)
Pressure Rise - Let Go (Usual Suspects Remix)
Pressure Rise - Stranger (Bad Company Remix)
Psidream - Dystrophy
Ram Trilogy - Flip the Traps
Ram Trilogy - Human Future
Ram Trilogy - Iron Lung
Ram Trilogy - Snake Bite
Ram Trilogy - System Error (Y2K)
Ram Trilogy - Terminal 2
Ram Trilogy - Time Chamber
Shorn Doda - Merky
Shorn Doda - Red
Spy - Vapour
Spy - Z-Plane
Stakka & K-Tee - Synthesis
Stakka & Skynet - Pathogen
The Playboy Revolutionary - Burning Chrome (Matrix remix)
2000
4 Red Eyes - Signal
Absolute Zero & Subphonics - The Code (Usual Suspects
Remix)
Absolute Zero & Subphonics - The Code (Usual Suspects
VIP)
Accidental Heroes - Sirus
Acetate - Genetic Engineering
Acetate - Platinum
Andy C & Moving Fusion - Foul Mouth
Appleseed - Please The Keys (Rascal & Klone Remix)
Arkane - Fever
Bad Company - Brain-Scan
Bad Company - Colonies
Bad Company - Dead-Side
Bad Company - Navajo
Bad Company - Night-Train
Bad Company - Rotor
Bad Company - Sentient
Bad Company - Son of Nitrous
Bad Company - Trick of the Light
Black Sun Empire - Skin Deep
Black Sun Empire - Voltage
Boomish - Philly Steak (Matrix Remix)
Budoka - The Unseen
Calyx - Catapult
Calyx - Decompression
Carlito Ft. Rascal & Klone - Like it Like That
Cause 4 Concern - Angel Dust
Cause 4 Concern - Develop
Cause 4 Concern - Epox (Remix)
Cause 4 Concern - Future Funk
Cause 4 Concern - Just Cause
Cause 4 Concern - Projection
Chris.Su - Angel
Chris.Su - Time Warp
Decoder - Bountyhunter
Decoder - Defender
Decoder - Scissorhands
Decoder - Silent
Decoder - Tag
Drum Kru - Thin Air
E-Sassin - Wireframe (TeeBee's Total Transformation Mix)
One of my more successful coinages - strangely - is neurofunk. Unlike the even more flourishing post-rock (a term that existed for decades prior to me repurposing it) as far as I know I came up with that term whole-cloth. And what's more - I discovered recently - I actually came up with it almost a decade before applying to a phase of drum 'n 'bass. In this live review of Meat Beat Manifesto from 1989.
"The neuro-funk ideas of the early Eighties" - well, that makes sense because one of the things that I said about neurofunk the drum 'n' bass substyle in The Wire nuum-piece is that its dank fixated aura, its clinical feel and (f)rigidity, reminded me of Cabaret Voltaire, Front 242, et al...
So the term must have lodged itself in the back of my brain after that one use in '89, waiting latent to be reactivated when it was next needed.
Once re-loosed into the world, the term achieved traction. And still has currency even now - I believe there is a forum dedicated to the genre online; producers make neurofunk tracks; exponents and fans debate what's neuro and what's not neuro.
Yes, I'm as surprised as you are.
Take this discussion at the Dogs On Acid forum. This fellow Gilius wants to get a debate going on what defines the genre kicks off with the parameters of the style as he sees them. A key one is that true neurofunk expunges the Amen breakbeat from the music completely (Amens had continued to be an element in techstep, the immediate precursor to neurofunk)
"In late 1997 Optical - considered by many to be one of the greatest DnB producers/pioneers - began experimenting with what we now know to be the Neurofunk style of DnB. And it's worth mentioning that he was one of the few artists at the time to have been producing DnB music without amens since around 1994.
"Optical appears to have been the only artist to have produced Neurofunk in 1997 - perhaps in collaboration with Ed Rush. The first Neurofunk track is often considered to be To Shape The Future (or it's remix), but I personally think that only The Shining (released 10/11/97) and Funktion (released 16/12/97; with Ed Rush) qualifies.
"What is interesting about the early history of Neurofunk is that contrary to Techstep only a few artists appeared to have had the technology (what exactly?) and perhaps skill(?) required to produce such cutting edge experimental electronic sounds. This fact alone means that Neurofunk is a cut above Techstep, and so it should be easy to differentiate between them...."
There follows a long list of exponents, year by year emerging in increasing number, as well as the key tracks ... but we'll skip that as the music is almost certainly deadening shite, and get on to the interesting bit, which is when the commenter takes issue with, well, with moi - only the bleedin' coiner of the term!
"In 1999 Techstep began to change as Amens were dropped from most productions, but that did not mean every Techstep track automatically became Neurofunk just because they had funk sounds without Amens. Most tracks in the Simon Reynold's article (in hindsight) simply do not qualify to be called Neurofunk
"The laymen's definition of Neurofunk might be Techstep with funk sounds albeit coupled with a few more clauses:
*A whole new quality of sound compared to the "tinny" sounds of Techstep, with specially engineered bass
*An engine of "rolling" (and not so much "stepping") that is very consistent from start to finish instead of just momentary injections of funk sounds
*Predominantly non-amen
Dude then starts going into this whole golden age of neurofunk that starts when the already neuro-Euro-sounding genre gets taken up by European producers:
"It's around 2002 that Neurofunk suddenly starts to gain tremendous popularity - coinciding with Russian (and other European) producers appearing on the scene after TAM record label was established the previous year, etc. These guys contributed so many ideas to the experimental aspect of Neurofunk, with tracks described as "Future sound", and (one might argue) too ahead of their time to even be considered for release by mainstream record labels. We are talking about artists like..."
Again we'll skip that list and later lists too:
"With so many producers on-board globally and with greater separation from Techstep than ever before, the number of productions began to soar exponentially in 2003 onwards, leaving behind a treasure trove of forgotten dubplates for the period 2003-2010 (if they were not lost to hard drive crashes).
2010/11 is considered to be the golden year of Neurofunk with tracks like "The Hammer" by Catacomb, Morebeat & Kantyze - but that would not have happened without the Eastern European involvement IMO in the years leading up to it - and it would certainly not have happened without Corrupt Souls from the US, formed out of Sinthetix, who came on the scene in 2004. The rest is history!
Note: after 2011 Neurofunk sadly began a steady decline, but there are still producers out there, and the sound has been described as evolving further into Energostep/Electrotech (unofficial terms for now).
Energostep - good luck with that one, mate! (Although neurofunk is honestly not much better)
Of course, I hadn't noticed any of that - the waxing and waning of neurofunk. Its prime occurred long after I stopped paying attention. I wonder if any of it could possibly be worth hearing? I'm almost tempted to check it out... but nah!
See the joke of it is that I fastened on the off-putting clammy-sounding term - which resurfaced in my brain and seemed like an all-new word that had come to me, but clearly not, as I've discovered recently - in the anticipation that some label would promptly issue a Neurofunk Flavas compilation and this would help to hasten the supersession of the sound, which left me cold, and that everyone would move on to some other direction hopefully more to my liking.
Instead, neurofunk only goes and prospers, propagates, enjoys another 13 or 14 years of vigorous and fecund life. Pah!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
As it happens, someone recently asked me about neurofunk for a project they were doing - here is my memory of how it came to be and what defined it, in my eyes / ears.
What were the key stylistic differences between
neurofunk and techstep?
Techstep, in the No U Turn sense, was a more bombastic,
blaring sound - something like “Squadron” is archetypal techstep. Doomy
and with this simmering sense of latent explosion.
Nico the maestro / engineer of No U Turn fed the bass
through a guitar-distortion pedal and some of their tunes actually remind me of
the apocalyptic postpunk / Goth group Killing Joke, particularly their
sound circa Revelations.
Neurofunk evolves out of techstep – the chugging, simple
beat is the same – but in neurofunk it becomes more rigid - the way it
makes your body move is like jack-knifing at the waist. And the whole feel of
the music is more neurotic and inhibited. The archetypal track would be Jonny
L’s “Piper”.
Neurofunk also had this kind of scientific aura – you
could see that shift come through in the artist names and track littles –
Genetix, Virus, Wormhole etc.
If techstep has an aggressive punk energy (as well as K.Joke's doomfunk I also think
of Black Sabbath, the Stooges etc), then neuro is closer to the danceable
side of industrial and Electronic Body Music – groups like Cabaret Voltaire,
Front 242, etc. Lots of cold, slimy electronic textures.
I feel like techstep rocks out, whereas
neurofunk is more repressed and clinical. The ultimate neurofunk name is
Technical Itch. That perfectly captures the mentality of the makers of the
music, and how it makes the listener feel.
How much was neurofunk's formation and evolution away
from jungle a representative of changes in society and the community that it
grew up around?
Well, it feels fairly obvious and undeniable that the
music was becoming whiter. You had the dropping away of any reggae element in
the music (no more rolling roots reggae basslines or dancehall bouncy kind of
B-lines), no more samples from Jamaican singers or ragga MCs. But also
hip hop gradually dropped away, in terms of vocals samples. The breakbeats got
simpler and the whole feel of the music was linear. You also didn't get the
very musical syncopated relationship between the half-speed basslines and the
breaks anymore.
“Linear fastplod” is how I described it on my blog
once. The feel was less internally turbulent and polyrhythmic, and more like an
endless chase scene. Words like “rinse out” and “mash up” no longer
applied, that feeling of collapse in the music.
I think this must have something to do with the gradual
demographic shift with drum and bass picking up a following among students. It
also became more of a nationwide scene in the last years of the ‘90s. Before
that it had been clustered in London and a few other cities with a multiracial
population – Bristol, Coventry, Leicester, etc. It started to become an
international phenomenon too. So you get this kind of feedback process – the
DJs pick up on what the audience is responding to, and this governs both the
productions they make themselves, if they produce tracks, or the kind of tunes
that they make into dubplates when offered tracks on DAT by their coterie of
producers. It costs money to make a dubplate, you’re not going to bother if it
doesn’t sound like a track that will work in a dance. And the audience, by
their reactions, govern what tunes get repeat-play. Plus it affects sales too,
which is another form of feedback that influences labels in their A&R
decisions and what tunes to make the A-side of a release. So it becomes a
kind of cycle -a gradually whiter audience, leads to a whiter sound, which then
draws more white people (and pushes out black listeners, who might drift into
other scenes that still value groove, syncopation, diva samples, licks or
tonalities derived from ‘70s fusion and 80s soul-funk etc – they migrate
to UK garage, broken beat, R&B etc).
How much has neurofunk's evolution from the late 90s to
the present day been a representative of the technological shift in terms of
production that the music industry has seen?
I haven’t been following drum and bass very closely in
the 21st Century so I couldn’t say anything about that. It does
seem like generally with electronic music, the level of intricacy in
arrangement and production has gone through the roof, and there’s a huge
emphasis on sound design – a lot of beats that feel 3D, like the kind of sounds
you get in CGI-heavy movies or in videogames.
I am just surprised that the term “neurofunk” has stuck.
I came up with it partly because I needed a name for the piece and I wanted to
capture what I felt was the defining quality of the music – this neurotic,
anxious,compulsiveness. While I could recognize the technical
accomplishment of the music and was really impressed by a few examples of it
(Jonny L’s stuff, a few things by Grooverider, Optical) for the most part I
didn’t really care for it as a direction. I think semi-consciously
I hoped that someone would rip off the term and do a compilation with Neurofunk in the name – and it would help to hasten the end
of that direction!
I guess Bad Company were kind of a move away from
neurofunk back to a more aggressive, riff-based sound (a bit like No U Turn but
less blaring and bombastic) and the fact that they shared their name with a
‘70s rock megagroup that played arenas seemed really appropriate. But
generally it seemed like by the early 2000s your choice was either the linear
fastplod sound with increasingly baroque basslines OR a much smaller scene of
pretty tepid sounding liquid funk Fabio type d&B. There was a little
micro-scene of “back to chopped-to-fuck breakbeats” that recovered my interest
a little, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere. Oh and running parallel but really
a different scene altogether, there was breakcore – but that was just mostly
too daft to dance to.
Although
being founded in London, why more than any other sub-genre of drum and bass,
has neurofunk found such a global appeal, particularly in Europe, while in
England its appeal has stagnated?
I’m just speculating here but the fact that
it's a whiter sound and connects with the sound palette and vibe of other
genres like industrial, hard techno, even trance to a degree, would help to
explain why it’s become international. In a similar way, dubstep went
international when it gradually lost most of its sonic connection to roots
reggae and dub. It became this cold, hard sound with these blasting basslines
that sounded very inorganic and 21st Century.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
an earlier post of mine marveling at the uncanny persistence of Neurofunk (showing my own static churn maybe)
Jonny + Andy chewed up D&B, swallowed the good bits, spat out the rest - and turned it into supapop for the Y2K. So potent that Posh Spice wanted to get on board.
And it got to #2 in the UK pop charts in the late summer of 2000 - back when the pop charts meant something - how cool is that?
Never heard anything else by the True cru
There's this, which got to #6
Dane's B voice (esp at the chorus) sounds like how his faceflesh looks in that video - grey-white plastic googunk
Oh yeah, this was a hit - a small one - too -
And (who knew) a whole bunch of other bits
Now tell me, is this the only example in the entire history of Nuum remakes of early nuum-phase anthems (e.g. UKG revamps of ardkore or jungle tunes), where the remake is remade by the original maker?
Ah now this, this, is interesting - it could just be taken as 2step cover of SOS Band's Eighties R&B gem "The Finest"....
But really - for those who know - it is obviously meant to signify as a remake of ardkore classic "Finest Illusion (Illegal Mix)" by Foul Play, since that more or less swallows whole the vocal from the SOS Band tune
Funny thing, only two years or so before going 2step and Top of the Pops, Jonny Lisners was doing tracks like this
A sub-style that people in the D&B scene called two-step and which became utterly and deadeningly dominant
It is the same beat as the more basic 2-step garage beats - but the feel is completely different - unsexy, unrelenting, no swing, no sensuality - like a nail gun
Powerful in its way - I was quite taken with this direction at first - but ultimately nullifying
Why's it called "Piper"?
Your guess is as good as mine
I'd like to imagine it's a tribute to the wonderful PiperLaurie
It's almost certainly not.
That video is the perfect distillation of the neurofunk spirit
Oh yeah I forgot - he did a second album in the neurofunk rigor mortis mode - Magnetic
What a canny leap from the dead end of D&B in 1998-99, to the lissom (and more lucrative) pastures of UKGstep
Jonny L was a bit of a shall we say nimble shifter though - for instance when the ardkore tide went out, he moved from doing things like "Hurt U So" to things that were more like pop trance or progressive
Actually that is not unpleasant at all - and in fact a bit proto-Daft Punky
But definitely straying from the nuum track.
As is this
Also much more Euro in feel
One of the tracks on these EP even has some Harthouse involvement in the production
But let us wipe all of that from the memory screen and remember "Hurt U So"
This one pulls off a pretty neat trick of sounding flurry-fast and slow-and-low at the same time
not quite so won over by this one, which apparently Doc Scott thinks is the best track he's ever released on his label. it has the slow-and-low bit down, but not the flurry-fast aspect, so it's a more monodimensional. Good though in it's cold, dank, neuro-ish way.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
i'm not too surprised at the persistence and wide dispersal of the term "post-rock", it's sufficiently vague and elastic and evocative to lend itself to many purposes
i am a bit surprised at the half-lives of the term neurofunk, another of my creations (i did coin that one, as far as i can tell; post-rock as a term goes back as far as 1967, but it was me that affixed it to its 1993-onwards meaning, although that has since drifted some way from what I envisaged)
yeah but neurofunk -- that was always, well, if not quite a joke, then certainly there was an undercurrent of malice
i
disliked that direction in drum and bass, it left me cold .. up to a
point i could appreciate some of the production and the
atmosphere-sculpting but it just didn't give me the rush i got from
"Renegade Snares", "Terrorist", "Helicopter Tune", "Supersharp Shooter",
"Shadowboxing", "Squadron", etc etc
it had turned into something else, something that required a name
so I tried to come up with as unappetising a name as possible
ArtCore
and Ambient Jungle has become compilation titles, so I really hoped
that some label would heist the term and (as with Artcore and Ambient
Jungle) hasten the acceleration of the sound away from that direction,
make it as short-lived as possible
or even kill it off
of course that didn't happen and as this shows, the style abides as basically the dominant strain in drum'n'bass
what
i get from this video mix of landmark tracks in the genre's evolution
from 1997 to round about now is not really "the evolution of neurofunk",
but a sense of stasis -- not only does the style not appear to have
made any giant leap forward, it often sounds like more or less the same
bassline (certainly on a timbral level, but even the way the B-lines are
patterned), and the same basic beat, in all these songs
the main evolutionary leap seems to have been from what I was talking about in that December 97 Wire piece
(more clinical Optical/Jonny L) to the Bad Company sound at the end of
the 90s. and then it doesn't seem to make any leaps as such
(BC who i briefly rated as the Motorhead of D&B but in retrospect seem more like the Judas Priest)
