Watchu talkin bout "urban"? Whatchu talkin bout "2-Step"?

...and like THAT, I'm way into UK Garage. Totally obsessing on it, pretty much all I've listened to the last four days. I love these random musical obsessions, where you hear something that maybe you've listened to a bit before and then all of a sudden you go "hot shit! this is great!" I have a feeling this might last a bit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is going to be a bit of a long one...

This current genre binge comes courtesy of two current musics indebted in varying degrees to UK Garage. Firstly dubstep, which I've been listening to a fair amount these days, as it seems to be getting a lot bigger these days, with the number of interesting releases rising accordingly (see my discussion of Burial below). Dubstep is directly descendant from UK Garage, basically rising out of the dark 2-step sounds of El-B, Zed Bias and others circa about 2001. (Terminology note: UK Garage is often also referred to as 2-step, though 2-step can also be used to describe the type of beat used in UKG as well as other UKG influenced genres such as Dubstep and Grime. I try and keep the genre "UK Garage" separate from the beat "2-step," myself). One of the interesting features of current Dubstep is the "half-step" beat, which features only one snare hit per bar instead of two, making for an extremely slowed-down, spacious beat that is perfectly suited for creating dread-filled bass monsters. Interestingly, I read a comment somewhere (probably lost deep within this thread) that to those who have listened to a lot of UKG, only the nearest hint of a 2-step beat--a single snare to a bar--is needed to recall the 2-step framework to mind, imposing its jittering rhythm on an otherwise empty soundspace. Firstly, I find this a really interesting comment in that it shows how strongly affected our perception and experience of music is by our experiences with prior types of music; a musical artifact is never simply experienced in isolation, but always in relation to other music one has heard. It's also a great illustration how emptiness can create structure and attract attention as much as things that are actually there. Presence-through-absence. (But that's a whole other story, minimalism...) Anyway, the problem being that to me, I couldn't really hear these empty echoes of 2-step. Missing out on consensual auditory hallucinations, no fair! As a treat, here's one of the first big half-step tunes, the very aptly named "Horror Show" from Loefah. Do not even bother listening to this without a subwoofer, there's simply nothing there otherwise.

Loefah - Horror Show

Hot Chip, whom I keep threatening to write about as I've been listening to their new album a lot recently, are the other reason I wanted to get more into UK Garage, really for similar reasons as above. I read one description of Hot Chip as a "post house/2-step beach boys" seemed to me like a ridiculously good idea. And it is quite good, but the problem is I'm just not hearing the 2-step influences! Blast. (I really like Hot Chip, though the first time I heard them I hated them. This is the track that I hated-then-loved which also has the 2-step influenced beat that keeps kinda slipping me by, maybe you'll learn to love them to by the time I get to writing about them: Hot Chip - ABC)

So all this preamble was largely to show that I was interested in listening to some more UKG, to see if I could catch this 2-step structure and more firmly root it in my mind. All I needed was a catalyst, and it came in the form of this mix, specifically the second-half El-B tribute (the first half is only so good). Though often cited (as I just did) as one of the forefathers of Dubstep, I'd actually not heard very much of his original work, as it is actually quite hard to come by (so I hear). This was thus an easy in, and oh what an in it was. Still clearly rooted in UKG's 2-step beats, but moving towards the darkside that dubstep would later wholeheartedly embrace, it's a lot more limber than dubstep often tends to be, still spry enough with 2-step's wobbled basslines, off-beat drum programming and desiccated r&b divas to stave of the hyper-masculine bassworhsip of dubstep.

Thankfully, I had gone on a bit of UKG downloading binge a while ago (almost a year, say the tags on the mp3s), but for whatever reason had not given the tracks a thorough listening to--turns out the bandwidth bottleneck is not between the download host and my computer, but in fact between the speakers and my ears; I just don't have the time to give full attention to everything I download. This does, however, leave me with little easter eggs hidden about my mp3 collection that can later reappear much to my pleasant surprise. As was the case for The Best Garage Anthems...Ever! and Garage Anthems 2005, which I had downloaded when I was more heavily into Grime and was interested in checking out some genres around it. Trolling back through these has really been enjoyable and definitely upped my appreciation for the genre.


***


Great, well I've circled around the topic long enough, time to actually talk about Garage itself.

Garage is kind of an odd genre, with a long history of mutation and cross breading. I...shit I just balled up right there and realized i'm never getting through everything I want to say before I gotta go today, but I've already upped most of the tracks I was gonna talk about, so since the links only last 7 days, I should just post the damn things, and hopefully I can continue my Garagic rantings another day.



Sweet Female Attitude - Flowers (Sunship Edit)

Craig David - 7 Days (Sunship Remix)

3 of a Kind - Babycakes

So a lot of UKG is heavily influenced by r&b, often sounding like a housier r&b with more interesting drum programming and bass. The above three tracks are all beautiful examples of this, sexy, sophisticated dance music. A lot has been made about how UKG is a very adult and feminine music, especially compared with a lot of the much more male-dominated rave genres. Because of course the interesting thing about UKG is that despite its sometimes r&b trappings, it is actually a direct descendant of several rave genres, specifically jungle Garage House (which came out of New York). Thus we get tracks like the below, which venture into darker and more abstract territories. In these songs the tension between the pop tendencies of sexy vocals and the darker bassive tendencies of jungle and rave produce interestingly disorienting results. (I just made that word "bassive" up. I like it :) ).

Encore feat. Stephen Emmanuel and Eska - Coochy Coo

Zed Bias - neighbourhood



And this is not even getting into Garage House and all its earlier permutations which are also excellent and will be posted about sometime, blogging gods permitting.

trying to remain cool...

I know it's a beautiful day heading into a beautiful weekend, and I hope you all have as happy a weekend as can be but...this (and this) puts the final lie to Israel's war on Lebanon and Palestine: it was, in fact, the Israeli's who first abducted two Palestinians, a doctor and his brother. The abduction of the Israeli soldier in Palestine was a retaliation for that (in the likely hopes of a prisoner swap)--and thus the escalation began. Not that had the case been as the media has reported it (with the abduction of the Israeli soldier being the starting point), it would have at all absolved Israel of the blame for the massively unnecessary and cruel punishment of the Lebanese and Palestinian people. The Israeli government is waging a war of (not on) terror against the Lebanese and Palestinian people. End of story. Israel and/or the US could stop this war in a second if they wanted to, but they do not.

Check out Lenin's coverage of the war over the last week or so, the man is blogging fire.

carry on in the sunshine...

jah love

matt b - city too hot mix

Just grabbed this beauty of a dub reggae mix off a dissensus thread here. I've re-upped it so as to not steal his downloads, but the track listing is over there. Matt complained from downstairs that it sounds like some sort of "weird tuba music." I suppose an echoed bass-only version of this music might sound a bit odd, but it IS echoed bass music, reggae with the bassline pushed WAY forward. ahh dub *sigh*

Reggae is one of those hugely imposing genres with such a massive back catalogue and history that I've never been able to make a proper inroad into it, merely sniping bits and pieces that randomly cross my path. And I almost universally love all of it.

95% Music-Free Post

Two songs of pure unadulterated joy. Weirdly both very similar (beats + female vox = joy) and completely different (teenpop != happy hardcore)

Amy Diamond - What's In It For Me?

Bang - Shooting Star (Bonkers Remix)



So the other day I had this dream that was a fully narrated nature show about birds that ate a kind of bulbous green fruit. The weird thing about it was that my dream was the tv show. I wasn't dreaming of watching the TV show, in fact I really had no sense of embodiment at all, it was like I had a TV inside my head that was playing a nature show with typical male narrator-style voice going on about the habits of this little bird (which was somewhat hummingbird-like). And I just accepted that there was a TV in my head playing nature shows. There's some parallel between dreams and television that makes their combination oddly disquieting. They're both fictions that reflect our inner desires and worries, both experienced with a kind of detached passivity, both...? This is really pushing my brain-buttons right now.

Other things pushing my brain-buttons right now (on the politix front). Bush administration suddenly on Wednesday declares that it will abide by the Geneva Convention for treating all of its prisoners of war, including the detainees in Guantanamo. Front page headlines everywhere (well New York Times, at least). Finally! I think to myself. But then I also think to myself "wait, let's withhold judgment until you find out what they actually plan on doing." And sure enough, the very next day it turns out the Bushies are looking to get congress to define a set of limitations on how the Geneva Convention applies to detainees (fuck it, PRISONERS, "detainees" is fucking propaganda talk, plain and simple) in Gitmo. It's annoying how easy it is to fall for the soundbite, "oh they're going to follow the Geneva Convention, great!" and just carry on and never follow through and get the rest of the story. And these fuckers know that, know if they just say it loud enough and enough times it will slip past enough people's radar that it will become the de facto truth--the great "common sense" opinion of the "people" that no one actually holds, but everyone refers to.

Also the whole Israeli incursions into Gaza and now bloody Lebanon are SCA-RY. For gods sake's they're bombing the runways of the godamn public airport in Beirut, and apparently trying to claim that Hezbollah is attempting to smuggle the kidnapped Israeli soldiers to Iran. Hol-eee shit. Way to escalate things. And of course they haven't gotten any of the soldiers back yet, because those soldiers are clearly quite low on Israel's priority list. I mean, bombing the public airport in Beirut is helping get back their soldiers how?

Finally, Lenin on point about the treatment of the Mumbai train bombings in the media. Go you media machine, you.


Well I'm off to Swift Current, Saskatchewan for a Medieval themed wedding! See ya'll peeps on Monday. Oh yeah and if you want any of the tracks whose link has expired, just give me a shout and I'll re-up them. And would it kill you to leave a comment? I demand feedback!

What IS in it for me?

Apparently I need to blog more. A keen audience awaits. Who am I to disappoint?



AMY MUTHERFUCKIN DIAMOND. Everyone's favorite 13 (now 14) year old Swedish pop sensation is back with a new album Still Me Still Now. Even Stylus is pumped, but bloody hell it's hard getting a hold of it. I've been unsuccessful tracking down a good torrent for it so far, and soulseek is coming up with bollocks, but thankfully there's myspace--ugly, ugly myspace. Why is something so poorly designed so popular? I don't know, but Amy's myspace page has four new tracks for download (not just streaming, score!). Pick of the litter is probably "My name is love" whose chorus is really uplifting and airy in the way only Swedish pop sung by teenage girls can be; the chorus has this really classic, ageless vibe to it, like it could have come from anytime from the 50's to now. Lovely. Also good is "Don't Cry your Heart Out" which is probably most reminiscent of Diamond's ABSOLUTE BOMB "What's in it for me?" from her first album (which if you haven't heard SHAME ON YOU! go here and watch the video for it and then download it when I post it this evening). The lyrics for "Big Guns" are also ace. Pre-teen politix rox!

In other music news (I think I'll post something non-music-y this evening) I was really impressed with this review of Peaches' new album. It's crazy the way a well written review can pique my interest far more than a high mark for an album can. Pitchfork gets shit on in a lot of places for being an indie-nerdish, knowitall bunch of "cool" gatekeepers, able to make or break a band with a single review. There is certainly some truth to this (The Arcade Fire would pretty much not even exist without Pitchfork), but thankfully Pitchfork has now expanded into such an all consuming beast of internet music criticism, that beneath the surface of pretentious reviews of generic indie-rock bands there's actually a very good site about alternative musics. They now employ about a half-dozen of the best writers around, guys like Tim Finney, Phil Sherburne, Jess Harvell and Nistsuh Abebe (among others...might be more than 6 people really), writing about techno, house, grime, dubstep, dancehall and all sorts of other interesting little nooks in crannies of the music world. Just ignore the indie rock :)


(Note to self: these days you seem to know as much about the music critics as the people making music. Is this weird?)

The old man the boat.

Rereading that last post, I keep trying to figure out whether my last sentence is one of those garden path sentences, y'know like "The man who hunts ducks out on weekends." It just sounds weird in my head, oh well.

So like I promised (hahahahah TO MYSELF) here's the Acen track that vaguely reminds me of that Kode9 track (btw, I've decided that the vocal snippet is saying "A stone'll be thrown at the state/A stone'll be thrown at the church" agree? Seems like an appropriate activity to be soundtracked by the song. That or throwing out HEADBUTS OF DEATH. Double btw, latest scuttlebut is that Matterazzi called him the Italian version of the N word, and then said he was a "son of a terrorist whore." But it's okay 'cuz Matterazzi's best friend is black...Alright, parentheses OVER). Now what about this Acen track? Dark crazy oldskool hardcore rave from '92, I do believe this actually charted in the UK. Oh those crazy Brits. The part with the James Bond sample comes in about half way through, blows my mind every time. Kode fer sure knows this song, it's extremely famous; I wonder if he was at all consciously thinking of it, or whether I'm just needlessly making connections...

Acen - Trip II the Moon (Part 1)

Yes, I realize it's part 1, not part 2. Minus 10 points of music-geek cred for me.

Working hard? Or hardly working?

Well, obviously the latter. I knew it would come to this sooner or later, and sooner it came--blogging from school! Anyhoo whilst determining what to listen to while working (a process that often takes much longer than the actual working) I stumbled upon this recomendation in Ian Penman's blog (yes I read way too many music-related blogs). But holy shit was he right! Go here to Kode9's myspace page and listen to 9 Samurai. Jeebus, those horns! Real meanace to the track, percusions, base, creepy vocals--all on top form.

Remind me to post whichever track off Acen's Trip to the Moon trilogy with the orchestral sample from James Bond that this rather reminds me of. I think it's "Trip to the Moon Part 2" Go horns!

How To Spend Money, Part 325

It had been a while since I had purchased any music, so I felt the bug yesterday and made my way over to Zulu for a little binge...just a small one, really! Anyway, the haul for the trip: two 12" and two CDs--keeping the analog/digital divide well fed.


Maurizio - Domina 12" (M-3)


Maurizio - M4 12" (M-4)


You know you're dealing with some pretty heavily canonical shit when you consistently get compliments from record clerks at cooler-than-thou trendy record shops when purchasing records. I'm pretty sure this has happened 90% of the times I've picked up some Basic Channel or affiliated release, and it was no different again when I grabbed these two last night. But there's a good reason, Basic Channel/Maurizio/Rhythm & Sound are a bloody church of the deepest, sublime dub-techno out there, and their converts are everywhere. I'm really happy that they've finally repressed all of their old records, meaning I can build up my collection without ordering everything in from Germany. And with these two purchases I now have all but "Lyot" from the M series! The difference between me and a six-year old collecting baseball cards? Errr...about 18 years...


Kaito - Hundred Million Lightyears (Kompakt CD 49)


Man do I love syntheziser. And so does Kaito. He also loves trance. I don't love trance that much, but Kaito makes me want to love it like a fucking care bear. Deftly skirts the line that would turn this into touchy-feely new-age diaper-trance (one of the tracks is called "Holding A Baby"), instead it's just warm, enveloping, vaguely propulsive sky-trance. I use too many adjectives.


Luciano - Sci.Fi.Hi.Fi Vol 2 (Soma CD 46)


Spur of the moment pick, Luciano's new mix in this series after Ewan Pearson's, which was also quite good. Decided to take it in place of Keith Fullerton Whitman's Lisbon as I doubted I'd see this one again in a local record store, while KFW ain't goin' nowhere. So yes, Minimal. It dropped the house and/or techno and moved from genre modifier to genre of its own. Congratulations Minimal, you're all grown up now, your own genre! That's a big step. Anyway, I like this, very boompity-clickity beep ping swoosh--as all descriptions of Minimal tend to go these days. This is serious plateaux music, it works better under the longer stretches where you kind of forget that you ever listen to other music that doesn't have a four-four beat. Then all of a sudden all the little micro-flourishes make perfect sense and you can see so clearly all the hidden structures and melodies they were always outlining. Minimal is shockingly big right now.

I have more to say about minimal, micro-house and electro-house and the strange flux they all seem to be in right now, but that'll have to wait.

I Really Love Bananas!

Alright, so we're here to write a blog, mostly about music, but much other things are sure to crop up once in while. Hopefully this will be a space for me to vent, enthuse, discuss and otherwise blab aboot whatever shiny object has currently caught my attention. I'm intending this to be read mostly by close friends, acquaintances and/or enemies, so I'll try to keep things reasonably accessible, but really, this is largely a solipsistic endeavor on my part, which means no complaining about big words! The four-letter-word rule is definitely not in effect...This blog is largely an effect of my thesis work not being overly busy right now, and an over-engagement with music criticism, philosophy and politics that currently is currently lacking outlets, so we'll see how this goes.

One of the main things I figure I'll be using this whole monkey blog to do is post mp3s and links to songs that are currently kicking my ass, similar in a way to the emails I sometimes send my bro. So first off, via the all-mighty Woebot (and this partly to see if I can pull of the nifty embedded youtube linky-thing) is some strange Italian italodisco-pop thing from the late 70's. Don't know anything about it beyond that, but I want to point out two things. First, the disco-violin section is obviously awesome, seems up there with the start of Abba's "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" that Stuart Price sampled for "Hung Up" in terms of sheer kick-ass danceability. But what I really like is the warm synth pads that come in at about 15 seconds. It sounds very pre-techno to me, and I always enjoy spotting little precursors to house and techno in pieces of music that pre-date the trend. Give the slow vocal interludes a chance, they'll grow on you too, I swear. That was the second point by the way. Also, as Woebot points out, man has a massive nose!





Hrm, while on the theme of woebot, I might as well point out his imposing 100 best records of all time list, complete with cover scans from his own record library. It has definitely lead to me to some real winners over the last year, especially in terms of krautrock, which I'm just beginning to really appreciate. You wish your taste was this good.

In order to not make my first full post here not just some big fellating of one of my favorite music critics, I'd better post about something I didn't get hipped to from woebot (watch out for upcoming posts on Hot Chip, and "Beatles for Sale"). So then what to do but fall back on my old friend Kompakt, king of modern-day techno labels. For today, we're focusing on Kompakt sublabel Kompakt Extra, whose Speicher series has been laying down the dancefloor-ready burners for a while now. This track by the Rice Twins is a bit atypical for the series, in that it's a much lighter, trancier affair than the usual dark techno speicher is know for releasing. Perfect summer time neo-trance for living the good life in the sun.

The Rice Twins - For Penny and Alexis


Well yes, why don't we post some summertime music, given that it's DAMN HOT outside and the sunshine is just beggin for some sunshinin' music to go along with it. So how about some Aphex Twin? This one, taken off of the tail end of his otherwise quite nasty "Come to Daddy" EP, is just so filled with glorious late-afternoon amber light that I had to rip me an mp3 of it off of my own copy of the EP. Sit back and enjoy some lemonade...

Aphex Twin - IZ-US


And when the sun has set and the streets are still muggy with heat radiating off the sun-baked pavement, put this on and contemplate overheated empty city blocks. Shattered dubstep for urban isolationists...(this shit's been hyped up the wazoo 'round internet way, just in case yer wonderin).

Burial - Gutted




As always, your mileage may vary and the descriptions given may or may not sound anything like what you hear. Don't expect all blog posts to be this epic...just settling into the groove...



So yes. Well. Peace. And welcome.

What is this thing?

Is it a blog? Well, yes, we hope.