"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
Showing posts with label UK GARAGE REVIVAL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK GARAGE REVIVAL. Show all posts
Jack Marlow's debut album was titled 2002, but the follow up is called Tastes like the 90s, so he appears to be burrowing back in time, before he was born
Talking of retro-UKG, Kieran turned me onto this one, which has a "Cape Fear" vibe to the vocal
An extensive and intricate piece on the resurgence of UK garage, by Gabriel Szatan for Resident Advisor A lot to take in Came away wondering just a couple of things - how big is this scene, or scenes multiple? - it wasn't clear to me, from reading it, if anyone was doing anything new with either the UKG 4-to-floor classic sound or the 2step template... if it's just a reiteration of those sounds, then it might well be highly enjoyable (sometimes I find myself in agreement with young Jess Harvell, who once declared that speed garage was his absolute favorite sound to dance to - to which I'd add only that 2-step, while more formally radical and interesting to the ear, felt a lot tricksier on the moving-and-grooving side... basically you have to be a much better dancer than I ever was to do it justice) but (and you know what's coming) a replay would be somewhat letting down the original push-things-forward, mutational spirit that led to UKG and 2step coming into being in the first place
from which light, the title of Szatan's piece rings ironic: Like A Battle: The Push For UK Garage's Future still - as recombinant repro-antique biznis goes, this choon (via Rudewhy at Dissensus) is really good whereas this is sort of the ghost of Ghost freezeframing that darkgarridge moment before Horsepower Productions galloped up a historical cul de sac lived it once mate! didn't love it that much even then (gimme the rude 'n' cheesy any day... the silly novelty tracks) yeah as a general principle sort of thing - even the most bandwagon-jumping, mercenary-minded, shamelessly derivative track from 97/98/99/2000 has more spiritual-philosophical-ontological integrity (for want of a better word) than the most scholarly, meticulous, well-informed and well-intended reproduction-antique effort from now because the former are participating (even if exploitatively) in a real-time wave of innovation as it unfolds, rather than going back and freezeframing that moving moment which is why you (meaning me obviously) can get a buzz off of a shoddy third-division tune from backintheday, that you simply can't get from the most immaculate recreation the buzz of historicity, of something happening for the first time, trapped in amber? i do believe so this principle applies to everything the other garage revival (punk) but also digi-dub, Detroit-venerators, you name it Still I expect I will wade my way through many of the names and labels mentioned in the Gabriel S piece, when I have a mo
but this tune, number 2 in the UK pop charts at the moment, doesn't sound particularly 2steppy to me
can't hear much bump 'n' flex there...
still, definitely a 90s retro-dance vybe
track sounds weirdly compressed to me, frequency range scrunched, like it's been mixed to sound good through a phone
number 2, up 26 places in a week! even in its much-reduced present state, that's one thing you can still say for the UK chart: it does let in some out of left-field, up-from-below stuff, unlike Billboard which effectively screens out anything that hasn't got a huge machine behind it....
then again, number #1 on Billboard, and in the UK pop charts too , is Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" and that's self-released
