Nuumology and Nameology

For quite a while now, my thinking about the Nuum is that it doesn't really exist anymore, at least as a generative culture-engine....  The new formations stopped coming a while back. Probably the last full-blown paradigm was Funky (although there's some who would say Deep Tech). Many factors here, but the main one would be the eroding away of the infrastructure that supported the heyday succession of sounds - pirate radio, vinyl, record shops. Nowadays music propagates itself immaterially, through internet and social media channels, and the audio is ever more wedded to the video (making it pop, in potential at least, rather than underground). 

What remains of the Nuum is: 

1/ musicians who came up through earlier phases and are still actively making music informed by that phase and/or drawing on other heyday phases.

2/ Nuum as a site of nostalgia and memorialisation (producers making jungle-replica tracks, auntological ardkore etc.... Back to 92 or Back to 2003 events.... this blog, even!) 

3/ half-life traces of Nuum rhythmic patterns or other sonic hallmarks (some argue you can detect these echoes in 2010s-onwards London street sounds like UK drill)

Having been thinking along these lines for approaching a decade now, how surprising it was to see this  sign from the window of a bus in London last month!

What struck me was how utterly Nuumy most of these names are:

Supa D, Coldsteps, Loyal Squad, Dezy B, Wigman, Spidey G.... 

These could easily be UK Garage era names from 25 years ago. 

I looked it up online and the lineup for this Notting Hill Carnival after-party appears to be largely Afrobeats. 

Which would be one place where the "road" audience went in the 2010s.... another would be drill... . 

I don't hear Nuum-traces in Afrobeats particularly, on a sonic or rhythmic level...  

Yet clearly, in terms of  "vibe", there is a continuity, a persistence....  

Assumed names of artists; track titles;  the names of clubs and raves and record labels.... On the face of it, these would seem to be peripheral elements...  yet for me they feel essential and archetypal 

I smiled with recognition, seeing that sign. 

Despite all the infrastructural shifts, the influx of new sonic influences, the sheer passage of time... something is perpetuating itself.... 

the Donae'O dada

just 4 u london

that tune and the two videos got me thinking about the tradition within the nuum of songs about London or repping for specific bits of London - here's a backwards lineage  (suggestions of flagrant omissions please) where it's either in the title, the main vocal lick, or in the lyrics



(late addition via Sadmanbarty)



(ditto)



(ditto)



















"Love for the London Streets" is the title and vocal lick of this 2 Wisemen tune



(with Stamp Crew, wait for the vocal lick at 47 seconds in and repeatedly after)




intro to this ruffhouse monsta divides the city into four quadrants and hails them all











missing in this london patriotism lineage are contributions from two significant phases - I couldn't think of a deep tech or a funky anthem that references london or london massive or even a specific area of the city ... is that because both styles were already succumbing to digi-era delocalisation? Funky if it references anywhere at all it would be a vague Africa. And deep tech is the least London-y of all these sounds.

prehistory to the nuum's London-love








postscript: a suggestion of the illustrious Selectabwoy



perhaps slightly outside the lineage


STOP PRESS/ LATE SUGGESTIONS AND ADDITIONS

a funky example, from man in the comments



dissensus bods suggestions (ta lads)

afropeckham

(via Luka at Dissensus)



in this vein, gorgeous




sequel / semi-remake to this





another Luka fave, but via Woebot  - this one less lyrical and undulant,  more strutting and boombastic



and it has an Africanized version of that crazed choked backing vocal whoops thing you get so much in the rap music nowadays