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)
