Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Reynolds linked this on his blog, a very long and interesting opinion piece about post-dubstep/wobble etc. This whole ''wobble is the real hardcore genre'' argument makes me worry that I have dismissed it through snobbery and might look back and think ''fuck! shoulda gone to wobble raves back in the golden age!'' It's funny, though - this guy (I assume they post/lurk on here since they mention dissensus a few times) says wobble is incredibly exciting but I've always heard it (at least when it began saturating dubstep raves) as BORING.
Yeah, that was always kind of my experience. If anything, the newer chartbound stuff is less boring than all the Spongebob clones a few years back because it's a bit more fun and cheesy and a bit less earnest.

In any case, since I've moved to Cambridge I've mostly been out to avante / noise / drone / experimental / whatever type things, which is great because you can pretty confidently decide that whatever the true inheritor of the hardcore continuum is, this isn't it, and then get back to actually enjoying the music.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
pretty obvious that brostep and post-dubstep arent bona fide inheritors of the HC. trying to make cases for either seems pointless. you could make a much easier case for brostep, its antecedent being happy hardcore (brainless music to get off your tits to etc), and the fact its everywhere now, and soundtracking peoples clubbing experiences whether they know/care about dubstep or not. but if the HC means it must attract a multiracial crowd/sound multiracial (not sure this has to apply, though its sort of obvious that bro/post-dubstep attract mainly white clubbers, funky attracts a much more mixed crowd but one thats mainly black), it doesnt seem to work. the real contender then is still funky, but its been absorbed so much into everything else going on that its own importance seems dwarfed. tbh id say it just goes back to 'the conditions have changed' so there prob cant be a true inheritor. we should prob give up trying to find one at this point.
 
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4linehaiku

Repetitive
I love the way Corpsey critiques and undermines every statement he makes :D

Tentative Corpsey

This article argues that this kind self-deprecating this-is-just-my-opinion-but way of making points is the default setting for the internet, as “For our self-conscious generation (and in this, I and Zuckerberg, and everyone raised on TV in the Eighties and Nineties, share a single soul), not being liked is as bad as it gets. Intolerable to be thought of badly for a minute, even for a moment.”

Not true for the internet proper, which I would say tends more to the "fuck you" line of discussion as perfected by legions of youtube commenters, but I guess she's talking more about the rarified air of blogs and that, which obviously covers Dissensus. I notice it a lot since reading the article, mostly in my own writing but others as well. Lots of little signifiers that you know, this is just kind of a discussion, isn't it? Which is basically what K Punk stormed out over if I remember correctly. All the "pot-smoking dads" agreeing with each other.

In such a climate, any attempt to have a serious discussion about something like Scuba making misogynistic tweets will inevitably be met with plenty of people responding that you're getting worked up about nothing, and why can't we just chat about how we all like Grime, and like, stop kicking up a fuss. Which is a bit depressing I suppose. And not anything to do with Corpsey in particular I should add. Or that relevant to post-dubstep.
 

Bunj

Active member
I don't really have much to add but I do love a good pair of tits on a flyer and it will be a sad day when honeyz are fully clothed on promotional material.
 

SecondLine

Well-known member
This article argues that this kind self-deprecating this-is-just-my-opinion-but way of making points is the default setting for the internet

Really interesting article, thanks.

I agree with it on the main, though from a stylistic point of view I love the mixing of vernacular and ridiculously abstruse vocab. Just as long as it's not an enemy to clarity I guess.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
For the record, Wobble is so international it can't be a part of a UK continuum. I mean, first it was English based, but then the biggest stars were Israeli (Borgore), and then eventually Skrillex, who is American (despite his occasional awkward use of UK slang...); Wobble is much, MUCH less to do with the UK and anything that happens there despite being part of dubstep, so to say it's part of the continuum is dubious at best. If anything, it's an outgrowth.
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
How does it portray the scene? As being by blokes for blokes I guess which is a shame and I do agree with your other points.

yeah, don't worry though - it only becomes problematic when we've got no decoration at raves

Ory said:
lack of female producers/DJs has never been a problem for any scene. it only becomes an issue when they're not going to the raves.
 
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Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
i really admire the earnestness of both corpsey and tentative andy. i am very grateful for it.

Awww thanks man, I actually feel like my posts have been sliding unintentionally towards a more jaded and cynical style lately (see my last post on this thread), but who knows, maybe the rambling, earnest posts will be back soon.
I'm kind of avoiding getting into the whole debate that's been going on here, because it's a tricky one for me - I broadly agree with SL's article and admire him for coming forward and writing it, but when it comes to the general issues of sexism in dance music, esp deciding what are the biggest problems and what would be the ideal way forward, it's something that I can argue myself back and forth on for hours and still not reach a conclusion.
I for one am disappointed that it took me so long to realize how much of a nasty crank Ory is (I was already aware that Scuba had some nasty and crankish views.
Corpsey is the fuggin man obvs, and think his kind of self-questioning posting style is different from not having strong opinions on things or not thinking that anything really matters much, it's more an attempt to get at why we value and disvalue certain things in music, why we respond to music as we do - which is part of what the board should be all about imo.
 

FairiesWearBoots

Well-known member
For the record, Wobble is so international it can't be a part of a UK continuum. I mean, first it was English based, but then the biggest stars were Israeli (Borgore), and then eventually Skrillex, who is American (despite his occasional awkward use of UK slang...); Wobble is much, MUCH less to do with the UK and anything that happens there despite being part of dubstep, so to say it's part of the continuum is dubious at best. If anything, it's an outgrowth.

I think the 'net has stopped the 'nuum. it seems to me - a passed on spirit of UK dance music through sound systems & clubs, but the net has changed that, the clubs are no longer the place to find new music
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
If we're playing this game again, I basically think the idea that the nuum was the single strand that preserved all the essential things that made hardcore hardcore is basically wrong. It seems a lot more like a gradual stratification and separating out of the mishmash of social groups and cultures and tropes that were involved early on - the pirate radio, the duplate culture, the luvved up bonhomie, the East London thing, the soundsystems, the ruffneck stuff, the serious music for serious boys, the cheesy poppy stuff...

It's more like a bunch of branches from a common root. Asking what's the true next step of the harcore continuum is like asking which twig on a tree is the end of the trunk, and why none of the twigs is as big as the trunk was..
 

FairiesWearBoots

Well-known member
yeah, don't worry though - it only becomes problematic when we've got no decoration at raves

I'm not sure that's what Ory meant??
I took his point to be that when there aren't women at nights, that the 'problem' is that the music eventually ends up in a macho mosh fest (DnB, current dubstep)?

or did I mis-read your point Ory?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

The article you've posted actually relates to the way I've been feeling about some of my own writing for a while now. I notice how often I use words like ''perhaps'' and ''seemingly''. It can come off as very half-hearted and timid. I think when I'm writing about rap music in particular I feel as if I'm treading in alien land, being a middle-class white Brit and all, and so I'm worried about being too strident in my opinions. But actually the writing I've done that I'm most proud of HAS been fairly strident and unconcerned with offending or misreading music.

I'm like this in 'real life', though. A combination of low self-esteem and an over-analytic mind leads me to distrust most of my own opinions on some level. Conversely, I'm extremely susceptible to taking the opinions of others at face value: reading a negative review of music I like too-often leads me into thinking ''they're right, I'm wrong''. So it probably is a self-esteem thing primarily - a passivity and a ''need to be liked'' as per that Zadie Smith quote. On the other hand (there's ALWAYS another hand lol), I also think I've come to suspect my own opinions about music in particular because my musical tastes have changed so regularly throughout my life. I'm always particularly struck by the way genres I previously absolutely LOVED now sound terrible or just mediocre to me, and vice versa. I feel like if I don't like something other people like its obviously not a case of ''I've got superior taste'' but ''I'm missing something, or I've got different priorities when it comes to music now''.

Reynolds actually influenced me in this regard - the way he writes about maligned genres like Gabba, seeking to understand why this apparently tasteless music makes thousands of people go crazy, what it appeals to in them, what qualities it has as music which is lacking in more 'tasteful' genres like, say, Deep House. Then, of course, it works from the other direction - what is it about Deep House which is appealing to people, what does it have which Gabba doesn't have, even if its comparatively staid and pedestrian.

But then, Reynolds obviously isn't like some sort of music-crit ultra-liberal: he has a very strong viewpoint on music and is always quite polemical about it, really. This is also a very appealing part of his writing, the passion that lies behind the reasoning, and I worry that this is something my writing lacks. I tend to write about things I like, perhaps to avoid this issue of having to hold my hands up and say ''I think ____ is shite". Restricting myself to what I like sort of leaves judgment out of the equation and lets me get on with describing WHY I like it.

I'm tempted to ask if there is a similar tentativeness at work in this whole post-dubstep landscape - a leaning on established conventions + an attitude of ''there's something to please everyone here'', which helps make it a) difficult to get a handle on and b) a little bit tepid and inoffensive. I mean, I remember UK Funky (the 'cheesy' vocal-heavy side at least) got a lot of peoples backs up - it was too cheesy, too ''wine-bar'', too girly etc. Whereas with 'post-dubstep' complaints often seem quite vague and (again, relating to that article) bewildered. ''I can't quite put my finger on what this music ISN'T doing, but that's why I don't like it''. Maybe the problem is that the music, as disparate and varied as it is, doesn't have many identifiable POSITIVE qualities. People don't chafe against it as much as feel indifferently towards it. Dubstep's another example - when it was (in my view) at its best a lot of people HATED it: it was 'too slow', too lacking in energy and so on. Now, this is all well and good but at least you could say that dubstep was an identifiable sound which people tended to either love or hate. I'd imagine the same was true of grime/garage/jungle.

In fact, a lot of the argumentative anxiety/half-heartedness on this thread probably emerges from the insubstantial nature of 'post dubstep' as a genre - the variety on offer doesn't allow you to really position yourself in relation to it without making caveats all the time (''I like this producer but not this producer'' ''obviously this isn't true of...''). It's almost like the perfect genre for creating endless hand-wringing discussions about musical quality/ideology or lackthereof and so on. How meta (and therefore how fitting) - a genre which doesn't know what it is being discussed by people who don't really know what their opinions are.

DISCLAIMER: I do/do not believe in anything I wrote above.

Thanks to Luka (one of my favourite strong opinion holders on here/the internet and a perfect example of somebody with an unrepentant stance on things cutting through the timid bullshit), Andy, Wise etc. for the props btw I love y'all too and y'all know it.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Jesus, I just wrote an essay.

If you can't be bothered to read that (and who could blame you), I'll sum it up:

''UHHHHHHHMMM''
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One last point (hah) - one reason why I'm quite unsure as to my opinions in this thread in particular is that I'm not engaged in dance music much anymore. I don't really go to events, I don't buy records, I don't even keep up with mixes/tunes online for the most part. Yet I feel compelled to discuss it all as if I am involved. Sucks for me.
 

Ory

warp drive
I'm not sure that's what Ory meant??
I took his point to be that when there aren't women at nights, that the 'problem' is that the music eventually ends up in a macho mosh fest (DnB, current dubstep)?

or did I mis-read your point Ory?

well that too, but mainly because noone likes a sausagefest.

my other point being that it makes zero difference whether a man or woman is behind the decks. there's no "female perspective" on a DJ set, which is why i always laugh when people complain about lack of female interest in music tech, producing etc. we don't need to recruit anyone, it's not the fuckin army.
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
in that case im interested in hearing why you think there's such an imbalance? if it's irrelevant why are there so few female producers/djs/label owners, and why is gender always discussed when the few successful women are interviewed or talked about
 
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