Of Instagrammatology

Had Instagram for ages and ages but never got into looking at it regularly until quite recently....  the algorithm quickly learned to serve me up dance music, as that's what I'd linger on. So what I get is an endless succession of reels of deejays playing tunes, either in their living room, or it's clips of them performing at a rave. 

Occasionally there'll be one where a DJ or producer talks about a classic track,  either their own or someone else's - breaking down its sample constituents, naming its breaks, or talking about the gear used to make it. I also get a fair number of haggard record collectors type sitting in their 'record room' pulling out obscure library or soundtrack LPs, or Old Wave cult items, and mumbling about them.

But what follows here are some thoughts on dance music today informed entirely by the Instagram perspective.

TimeisNOTnow

I say ‘dance music today', but the first thing that comes across on Instagram is not-todayness: how dance music exists in a state of complete atemporality.  Tunes from decades ago sit alongside current tracks that are either incrementally different contributions to a long established and overcrowded tradition (techno, house, D&B, trance) or they are outright retro (with just a glisten of contemporary production polish sprucing up the time travel). Deejays draw from across these huge reserves of material, where the long-ago and the this-minute are equally valid. 

There's a tremendous awareness of history - a lot of clips are like ultra-brief history lessons, on a genre or a sound (like say Reese bass) or an auteur (DJ Zinc just today did a great little potted history of three key tracks by A Guy Called Gerald).  Yet offsetting that historical awareness, the overall effect of the platform interface for users is that chronology gets completely jumbled. There's little sense of a tune's original context (let alone adversarial context) or its place in historical sequence: the platform makes everything current.  

What has completely vaporized is the idea that anything is obsolete or passé. Everything exists in a permanent plateau of equal relevance - which has the side effect of making it impossible for any one sound (should an actually fully new sound ever emerge) to assert itself as supremely relevant and demanding of your undivided attention. Indeed, you could say that our attention is pre-divided, splayed across both an enormously expanded and accessible present and a teeming archival vastness that feels vertiginously limitless. Anything that is new and different, like say amapiano, has to fight against, fights its way through, all this quality music arrayed before our ears.

An example of how these syndromes play out.

The gentleman who calls himself Fish56Octagon - and who deejays in his front room wearing a dressing gown (I'm always expecting it to come open as he jigs about, genitals bouncing forth) and often is nibbling on his breakfast, which appears to be Weetabix bits in what looks like a dog's bowl -   played a nu-UKG tune on this label: 

Timeisnow

Sub-label of Shall Not Fade, specialising in UK bass-driven dance music styles.

Established 2019. Bristol, UK.

The record has a period-perfect title, Bubblers EP, and the sound is spot-on

According to Mr Fish, this labels and others like it have pushed nu-UKG to the point where deejays playing it are getting major sets at festivals all around the world.  

And this makes me queasy....  for all the reasons you can imagine. Like what happened to supercession? The dialectic of dance? Fanatical focus? 

(Mr Fish picks from a huge range of genres and as a working deejay either jumbles it all up in a set OR plays a set dedicated to a single genre but just as one arrow from his quiver)

Atemporality and historical hyper-awareness has some strange kinks.

Here's a nu-UKG label called Move Silent, and Keymag asks the man behind it why the name: “This is really giving up the secret. Years ago, I had this t-shirt that sold really well, and had the phrase “Move Silent”. It embodies how I operate in life. I’m a big believer in the phrase, “empty vessels make the loudest noises”. “

Which is funny to me because I would have 100 percent assumed otherwise it was a nod to  "Bad Boys Move In Silence" - could this dude really not know the foundational UKG track by A Baffled Republic? 

 (Mind you, I only just realised the line "bad boys move in silence" comes originally from Notorious B.I.G.)

Another label Shadow System, the guy behind first heard UKG from his dad playing it!

(Reminds me of another reel I saw recently, a young kid playing "hardcore jungle"  - and the text reads: "When ur dad’s in the crowd so you gotta blend in his favorite tune from back in the day")

Some of these nu-UKG labels are as far flung as Finland and Houston, Texas.  

So it's not just atemporalized, dance music, it's really postgeographicalized too - unrooted from any location socially and spatially. 

Well not completely  - in the Keymag article, one of the Finnish nu-UKG dudes (the label is Polar Dance) says: 

"I’ve been cutting icicles from roofs because when you snap it off, it makes an amazing sound rhythmically. There is a traditional Finnish instrument called a kantele, which is like a sitar. I've been trying to use it on some tracks as well."

The Keymag writer Nathan Evans notes of the Houston nu-UKG bods: 

"Aside from the way they literally went back in time with a black mask and comically large knit sack and stole from the Nice ‘N’ Ripe mixing desk, what struck me about Houston’s UKG is how there is even a label pressing limited-run vintage garage vinyl at all. It speaks to shockwaves of the revival, that’s enough to traverse space and time simultaneously."

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Another new-to-me genre  has popped up in these reels - not the living room ones but the (usually female deejay) playing to a big room.

The name of this genre is schranz. It designates - I assume onomatopeia-cally in German - a sort of hard, fast, banging techno with a scrapy, dirtily abrasive sound. 

I looked it up and was surprised to learn that the term has existed since the late '90s, albeit very much a local-to-Germany term, associated with Chris Liebing… and it appears to have crept forward gradually to some kind of larger semantic currency without ever really taking off. 

I listened to a Chris Liebing associated album (Metalism) the other day and  thought it was rather good - and then with a shock realized it was over 20 years old. 

The female deejays playing hard as nails tekkkno brings me to InstaGrammatological observation number 2

DJ as showman not shaman

The hyper-visibility of social media and the influencerization of dance has turned deejaying into a performance style rather than a technical craft - or rather the craft aspect of working the deck has itself become spectacularized.

In these clips - at home alone as much as in front of a crowd - the deejays are really working those mixer controls. They are dancing while mixing and whooping it up -  as if the jock was a punter rather than a punter-pleaser. The etiquette of deejaying has vastly changed from back in the day when jocks were still figures, impassive and grave as they went about their work, their sobriety in marked contrast to the abandon of the revelers,  as if to say "this is serious work, I'm a professional."  Deejays never danced; their job was to make others dance. But nowadays deejays performatively flaunt their own pleasure, erasing the distance between the professionals and the crowd. If female, they are usually glammed up and often scantily dressed - blurring the roles of deejay and podium dancer.

Male or female, these deejays work the mixer frenziedly, fussily tweaking the EQ knobs and finessing the fader. There is a kind of performative rhetoric where the arms are tensed as they reach for the knob and they pull away the hand and arm after tweaking it with a dramatic flourish. All while jigging around sinuously and often drawing on a cigarette (tense business, deejaying)

But... as far as I can see,  little of this flaunted physicality is really necessary - the exertions are extraneous to the modest physical effort that is actually required.  It’s all for show - and in that sense similar to, indeed possibly inspired by, the rock guitarist’s gestural repertoire, the expressive pantomime of “guitarface”. You can make massive, devastating noises on the guitar with very small movements, thanks to amplification and effects. You can make them sitting down, as Spacemen 3 proved, without all the strutting or headbanging. And so it used to be used to be with deejaying (often the deejay was nowhere in sight, tucked away in some alcove).

I have seen a few Insta reels that prove my point: here the deejay goes against the norms of hyper-visuality and goes about their work in a low-key sort of way, minus the histrionics. Instead of all that mixological performative hoo-hah, the jock - usually filmed in the domestic space - is subdued, limply moving their arm to tweak the knob and then withdrawing their hand slowly, without any flamboyantly flecked gesture that says "decisive mix move just made"

Also - this happens with the tracky techno and house above all - more often than not I cannot hear any substantial difference made by these decisive moves to change the EQ or cut out a frequency band. It all chugs on much as before without a dramatic change - certainly not a wrenching shift that would require such gestural flourish. Perhaps the very smoothness and seamlessness of the transitioning erases its own achievement?  

DJ tools-y techno seems to me to be the most static of artforms, really unchanged in its fundamentals since the late '90s.

Archives Fever

Here's Kieran Press-Reynolds at Pitchfork on Silence Is Loud, the debut album by Nia Archives

Love the Columbo sample!

Another highlight acc. to K P-R

The name "Archives" - her chosen artistic alias, how bizarre would it be if it was her actual birth name! - is intriguing given the historical nature of the genre she has brought back to delicious life. 

Here's what I said about her in my 'Faves of 2022'

A contemporary artist! But one whose work puts into question the whole idea of "the contemporary". My kid Kieran put me onto this. I'm slightly suspicious of my own enjoyment, given that (like PinkPantheress) this is a young woman making jungle and drum & bass -  a genre-era I’ve investments in, you've probably noticed. Beyond my own nostalgia, there’s also a lingering doubt about whether it’s a healthy development for youth today to be making music whose historical heyday was 27 years ago. Even the thing of having her own smoky vocals and songs weaving through it isn’t a totally fresh development (hello Nicolette).

But it is absolutely gorgeous stuff – my favorite is probably “Forbidden Feelings” but it’s all very enjoyable. You can hear the whole lot of it here on this YouTube playlist  I made or with better sound and in chronological sequence (although she's only been at it for a little over a year as far as I can tell) in my Tidal playlist (I don’t think you need to be a subscriber)

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O.G. G-Man cameo co-sign at the start of this tune:

 

A book almost nobody seems to have a clue what it's about (hint: it's not really about archiving, libraries, data storage etc)

mad for ads

A tweet from Death Is Not The End saying that the cassette version of London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993 Vol. 2 is shipping out tomorrow reminded me I said I'd run the full chat with audio archivist Luke Owen here. So here it is: 

How did you get interested in pirate radio in general and in pirate radio adverts in particular?

I began tuning in to pirate radio from my early teens in Bristol in the late 90s - there was a lot of action on the dial back then and I was sucked in. It was a portal into the drum and bass/Full Cycle stuff happening in the city when I was too young for the clubs, and it also nurtured my love of reggae, dub and Bollywood soundtracks at a relatively young age. The ads were often infectious and endearingly DIY, and some were memorable to the point of fever loops, I can still remember one or two word for word. 

I came upon the Pirate Radio Archive website a couple of years back, and there I found a trove of recordings from across the 80s and 90s through which I could transport myself back in time to some of those broadcasts I had been brought up on. I had been running Death Is Not The End since 2014 as a record label and NTS radio show focused mostly on "deep digs" into early gospel/blues/folk, field recordings and various archival finds. Coming across these recordings I was immediately stuck by the desire to do something with them, and put together a mixtape for the Blowing Up The Workshop mixblog and subsequently released it on DINTE as a cassette. It was a bit of a left-turn for the label perhaps, but being both archival and field recordings I thought it fit. I'm interested in "folk music" having a broader contemporary remit, and what it can mean in context. To me, recordings like these pirate radio broadcasts can represent archival folk music of sorts - they are raw, impromptu and communal musical experiences. 

For me, the appeal of them is multi-leveled – there’s nostalgia, there’s period charm, there’s the amateur nature of them, some of the comedy ones are genuinely funny…   But I also think they provide a valuable and historically important archive of subculture and British ‘lifeworlds’, especially minority populations (e.g. you have the Greek salon ad on Vol 1 ).

Yes, a lot are hilarious and some to the point of being genuinely a bit unhinged in places... A big part of the uniqueness of pirate radio is in the ads I think - it reflects the alternative culture through the lens of local business and events in a way that often contrasts with the staleness of "commercial" radio as much as the music itself. The whole thing often just seems to thrive on amping up the madness a bit, because they can. The London Pirate Radio Adverts collection was also intriguing from a local history perspective. I've always been interested in the changing landscape of areas, the previous lives of buildings, music venues, long gone record shops etc. By chance a lot of the adverts I collected for this happen to be for clubs and bars in places in South East London and East London that I've come to know quite well since moving here in the mid-noughties so that's another facet of it for me. Also, Immigrant communities making use of pirate radio as a means to supply an essential community service is an inherent element to pirate radio as a whole I think.

I like also the range. You have the slick-aspiring ads (with a tiny bit of Smashy + Nicey about the patter,  quite common with pirate deejays before ’92 when it got a lot more ruffneck and hooligan in vibe -  or they’ll hire that voiceover guy that also appeared in cinema adverts, the one with the incredibly deep voice,  he pops up a few times on your tapes). And then the much more amateurish efforts.  

Redd Pepper? I'm never quite sure whether it's him or an imitator... He sure must have gotten a lot of work around this time regardless. There's another guy who seems to have been the voiceover guy for a large portion of reggae & dancehall/soundclash events in the past couple decades (this is him @ 5.40 on Side A) and is still going strong. I'm going to do my best to track him down, I think I might have a friend of a friend who hired him for an ad once.

I think there's sometimes a conscious effort to get someone with a posh accent (or affecting one) for some of the dances that are billing themselves as classy & exclusive affairs. Then you've got some hilariously oddball voices, and a really bad Scouse impression that I have no idea what it's trying to achieve! I think pirate radio in general is prone to jokes and reference points that only the small group of listeners (or more likely mates of the station and the DJs) are "in" on, and this can bleed through to the ads as much as the chatter.

They often seem to like putting FX on the voice.

Yes, the use of delay on pirate radio station voiceover and adverts seems to be a point of reference that's bled in from sound system culture. I think it also helps the adverts "pop" and the feedback has the handy effect of papering over cracks where they may often sound too muddy and amateurish otherwise. I've also added tape delay here and there to aid with the transitions from one track to the next - the idea was initially for this to have the flow of a mixtape as much as possible.

Most of the ads on pirates were for raves, clubs, records shops, occasionally a compilation or a 12 inch release … But  it’s interesting that quite a few of them are for non-music-related businesses -  there’s one I came across for a bakers, you’ll get ones for hairdressers or a restaurant.  Or on Vol. 1 the shop fittings ad for Trade Equip  and the one for Fidel’s Menswear.

In a way I find the non-music related ads as some of the most intriguing and charming. It shows that the stations were often genuinely part of a thriving localised economy, and not just for soundheads. It seems a bit mad to think of a small high-street business advertising on the radio these days, and I suppose with the advent of social media marketing we're probably seeing the last of small businesses in print advertising to a large degree - it's just not attractive as you don't get to monitor the traffic it's generating and target your audience down to the minutiae, but it leaves a document of that business that can be preserved from a local history perspective (whereas when a business folds their online presence will likely disappear with it).

Even on the music history level alone, though, they are  valuable – there’s a sort of established history of rave where certain legendary clubs get mentioned  over and over (Rage, Labrynth, Innersense) and the same applies to the raves, labels, record shops. But these ads capture just how many clubs, raves etc there were, in all different parts of London or UK… many that have been forgotten or only ran for a short while. And there are addresses, times, prices mentioned.

Yes, the provision of full addresses, and often bus routes and the general specifics for the clubs and venues always gives me a pang of nerdy excitement. The addition of local landmarks, "under this flyover", "next to Tescos" etc. gives me extra info with which I can go sleuthing on Streetview and look at the ghost of the club mentioned in the advert (and for extra nerdery I can swipe backward in time on street view to see it's former guises too).

The raver’s dateline courtesy Chillin FM advert is very interesting and surprising!

Yes I was surprised to come across so many ravers datelines! I wonder if this is something you had come across before? Hooking up and meeting potential partners never struck me as a priority to pilled-up ravers but I must be mistaken... It was relatively before my time, and I suppose it's easy to be swayed by the dominant narrative of early rave being a drug-fuelled oasis away from meat-market bars & clubs, but there was clearly a market for it! I can't help being reminded of Father Ted's priest chatback line whenever I hear it, also.

I think you mentioned in that Crack interview how most people paused the tape when the ads came on…   so there’s a limited number of ad breaks that have survived intact.

Yeah I guess it makes sense that the music is what the majority of the listeners are there for, and the ads can do one - or indeed be edited out later. The sources I had were pretty much all online, so I suppose you could say that a portion of those who have ripped/digitized their tapes didn't stop their recordings when the ads came on, and rather they have cropped them out in the process. But in general it's the same principle as to when you would record a TV show on VHS - a waste of valuable magnetic tape space. 

What number did you accumulate before you started winnowing them down?

Maybe 100 total? It's been a bit of a blur to be honest. At some point I think I was losing it a bit.

It’s good that you have ads that aren’t just rave / hardcore / jungle, but others kind of music that were big then – like mellow house and progressive house etc.

It's easy to imagine pirate radio as exclusively a place for jungle, hardcore, reggae and dancehall etc. but yes it's refreshing. I particularly am interested in the popularity of rare groove and how that fits into the mix. The Under 18s Disco advert strikes me for it's mix up of styles - 'ragga, house, rap & swing'.

What is your favorite ad out of all the ones on the two cassettes?  Or top 2 or 3.

I think probably the Videobox rental shop is up there, it's the faux dialogue that just makes me smile. The Rolls Royce & A Big House in 89 is just fantastic for the list of celebrities who have "been invited", and that you simply need to go into your local hairdresser for £1 tickets.

the archival shortfall

I noted the other day that there were so many pirate tapes online that they start to blur into each other

And there are a lot

But in some ways, you can't help thinking, there ought to be a lot more

Take for instance Don FM

My favorite station. The source of many of my all-time fave tapes.

Its signal was loud and strong on account of coming from Wandsworth - and I was living in Brixton at that time (I didn't know it was based in Wandsworth then, I didn't know anything about the station at all.).

But mostly it was the deejaying (especially the Lucky Spin crew) and the MCs (especially MC OC and Ryme Time).

Just recently I went on a little jag of hunting down Don FM tapes from 92 / 93 and adding that trawl to the ones I'd already scavenged off the internet in previous years - it came to about 30 hours of recordings up there and out there.

Let's say I've missed a few -  round that up to 40 hours

I also put up there about three hours worth from my own tape archive

So that's about, let's say, 45 hours of Don FM from 92/93 captured on tape and shared on YouTube, mixcloud, and various blogs like Hardscore

45 hours seems like rather a small amount, don't you think. That's less than a hour per weekend over the course of a year and a bit.

The period I'm talking about is from when Don FM launched November 92 until the end of 1993.
(The station carried on into the early months of 1994, before going off the air March 28th voluntarily while pursuing a license, which it got, and then... well you can find out the story online).

Like most pirates, Don FM was on all through the weekend. My possibly unreliable memory is that stations would start up about 7pm on Friday (get everyone warmed up for going out), sometimes earlier...  and then would go all night on Friday and Saturday (and all day in between - often a bit mellower - sometimes even a bit of garage). Then they would wind down probably 10 PM or midnight on Sunday.

I seem to recall Don being on some weekdays here and there (producing some of my fave tapes on these days actually). But let's just stick with those weekends of continuous broadcast. 

Nov 92 to end of 93 - that must amount to some 3000 hours of Don FM transmissions.

So if there's 45 hours of it online - that means just 1 out of every 66 of its hours of broadcast in that period is archived publicly.

I'm sure people must have taped LOADS more than that. The deejays and MCs themselves must have taped a lot of their shows. But punters at home too - it was the main way to get hold of the music and have to play during the week, because so much of it was dubplate or prelease.

That suggests the ageing ravers either

-  are holding / hoarding

- played the tapes at the time until the tape wore out

- put them in a box and forgot about them, or threw them out during some big clear-out, or they got damaged through poor storage conditions

- can't be arsed to digitize them and share

- or, or, they like the idea of keeping it just to themselves, a snatch of time that they alone have access to. That's always a possibility.

Of course, not all of the 65/66ths worth of undigitized / unshared /unarchived will ever have been worth being digitized / shared / archived

I have quite a few undigitized tapes of  Don FM of my own and they are not all gold by any means. A lot of pirate shows never quite ignited, just chugged along. Probably I have around 20 tapes that fall into this category. There is a certain redundancy with the same tunes getting played in different sequences.

Still there's got to be some great sessions out there that people are sitting on and either have forgotten about or just can't be bothered.

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Here's a Don FM sesh from ninety-free that I have freshly digitized and offered to the common wealth  - with some Eruption FM bits at the start and then into a full-on session with MC OC