Slothrop

Tight but Polite
ooof

Surely Kode has put a lot more in. More two way traffic then Jenkinson

To be honest, I've never seen why this "two way traffic" / "putting something back" / "engaging with the scene" thing is such a vitally important thing, except where it gives people a hammer to bash people they already dislike with. It's like the way classic rock fans suddenly start caring about "meaningful" lyrics and standing up to misogyny when they're bashing hip hop. We celebrate loads of scenes that shamelessly jack from other scenes - it was a long time before jungle had any "two way traffic" with the 70s funk artists they were lifting beats from, or the US MCs they were lifting vocal snippets from. But that's alright because we like jungle. I'd expect artists to be inspired by whatever they find exciting and make the best stuff they can, not to spend the whole time engaged in liberal handwringing about whether they've somehow "earned the right" to slice a breakbeat or stutter a vocal sample.
 
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daddek

Well-known member
Although to be fair, the former pretty much applies to Squarepusher as well.

yeh i agree. i don't have any problem with squarepusher's adoption of the forms he used.
The argument, that any artist who used different forms is equivalent to squarepusher because squarepusher used different forms, is so absurdly reductional & hamfisted as to be not worth any serious consideration. But in reynolds-style nuum theory, to which kode largely subscribes, squarepusher is the archetypal idm vulture. So a lazy slur is readily available.
 

daddek

Well-known member
what Slothrop said re: two way traffic

basically this. Although, it gets sticky if the artist doing the appropriation presents their work as interchangeable to the original. More so if they present it as superior.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
basically this. Although, it gets sticky if the artist doing the appropriation presents their work as interchangeable to the original. More so if they present it as superior.

Yeah, there was a bunch of rhetoric around the early Squarepusher breakbeat stuff, including from the man himself, that came off as spectacularly dickish. I suspect he's mellowed a bit since then. But expecting musicians to not be dicks is also getting onto dodgy ground.
 

Gess

Member
i've got respect for kode 9 but he does tend to turn everything into a dirge with his own productions

I had to look up 'dirge', but that's probably pretty accurate.

"A dirge is a somber song or lament expressing mourning or grief, such as would be appropriate for performance at a funeral."
 

daddek

Well-known member
Yeah, there was a bunch of rhetoric around the early Squarepusher breakbeat stuff, including from the man himself, that came off as spectacularly dickish. I suspect he's mellowed a bit since then. But expecting musicians to not be dicks is also getting onto dodgy ground.

do you have a link / quote to the dickish things he said? maybe that would finally illuminate why he's used as a hammer in nuum discussions.
altho when i was a jungle obsessed teen i defacto hated anything that seemed a perversion of the true golden form. which made it impossible for me to listen idm. I couldn't offer a reasonable defense for why once i had that attitude, glad to be free of it.
 
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Slothrop

Tight but Polite
http://thewire.co.uk/in-writing/int...usher_mike-paradinas_luke-vibert_and-witchman

His response to the criticism that his and his contemporaries' take on breakbeat doesn't carry as much weight as 'true' Hardstep, because there's not as much 'at stake' in the music, is to point out the qualitative gulf that already separates the musics. "There's no conflict. It's more to do with my record or Luke [Vibert]'s being reviewed in the Jungle pages of a magazine: suddenly we're Jungle. But we're not. I don't have any lifestyle. Jungle isn't something I have anything to do with. There's room for both, because that's the nature of people and society. It revolves around people who pioneer and lead, and people who form groups."

It often gets paraphrased as "the difference between the jungle scene and me is that they're followers and I'm a leader" or something, but it's not quite as bad as that in context - it feels a bit more like he's getting at the difference between auteurism and scenius, albeit with the sort of pompous self importance that's not that surprising in a 20yr old nerd who's suddenly being hailed as a genius...

Still cringey, though.
 
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daddek

Well-known member
edit - just saw the bit about pioneer & lead.
yeh thats a little hairy isnt it. as evidence to warrent his eternal damnation amongst nuumists, its not very convincing.
 
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Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I think the reason he's quite such an absurdly exaggerated nuumological bogeyman is that while all the drill n bass guys were influenced by jungle but separate from it, Squarepusher takes it a lot further from the original ethos: u-Ziq and Jega and all that lot were still basically doing tracky, futurist, abrasively electronic stuff even if you couldn't really dance to it, whereas with Squarepusher, although he did do some of that sort of stuff, people tend to home in on the retro jazzy bits and the virtuosic "proper musician" side of things. Slap bass, particularly, was always going to be a red rag to a bull...
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
diff between kode9 and pusher and that generation is that idms a bad word now and kode would never say he was superior to footwork producers - he knows it would be stupid to and is too much of a fan. but journalists are likely to rate kode over footwork producers as its 'intelligent', conceptualised, and he makes great copy and is a good interviewee. always has been like that - yeah, goldie was a big deal but jungle producers were always seen as not being that smart. same old thing still going on today if people are honest. i get the 'they dont make great copy' angle but cant help thinking its just old prejudices playing out in slightly cleverer, subtler, better informed/reasoned ways.

footwork needs a mad mike figure.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
The best thing is I don't view it as a 'slur' the way you guys who tend to be nuum-based do, probably because I'm not from the UK. It's just the closest comparison I can think of that everyone gets, and it never ceases to amaze me how people will react as if I've called him a child molester or something.

I definitely see him making the attempts in the mixes, but you can't say that juke itself can be in the 'continuum' of his work, as it has nothing to do with anything he's been doing since 2003 other than the distant ancestor of 'house'. Since's he's grown bored of funky's tempo what, now he goes to borrow his ideas from Americans? And what happens in 2016 when something else is going on, we wait for Kode to do the 'experimental' version of whatever's popping up then?

I'm actually a huge fan of the man, so this isn't baseless sniping and vindictiveness. But I do continue to believe that he could've pulled his influences into the field of where he was. I mean, the reason we have a 'dungeon' sound is because the only persons cultivating the 'what we used to be' attitude in dubstep are the draining half-step people. Obviously the wobble type producers joined the arms-race, but Kode was always able to pull new things into that world and grant people the idea of 'Hmmm. Maybe we can alter things so it all doesn't sound like one track.'

I don't get that in what's a blatant footwork record. The Funky stuff worked a lot better because it was a more gradual transition from the late singles to 2 Bad to Black Sun (and of course, the mysterious Frankie Solaaar 12") all made a certain amount of sense from him. It's too clean a break for me to say he's doing anything beyond just getting caught up in something he's in love with. More power to him, he's allowed to want to have fun, but I can't say it fits with his past.

And juke definitely needs more Mad Mike figures, but what are you going to do with those? Half of their second generation is trying to be Chief Keef right now, because their city's in the middle of an urban music boom. It seems so much more logical and profitable to be making trap beats or do auto-tuned numbers than make those sort of tunes anymore. It's a shame, because nobody in the dance media cares about asking these producers about themselves, they'd rather talk to "TRAP EXPERTS". I mean shit, RBMA had DJ Toomp do a lecture 6-7 years ago or so. You mean to tell me they haven't had the nerve to ask someone like Lex Luger or Aarabmuzik or anyone in that field since? Or are coveted members of Wu-Tang dusting the blunt ashes off their fading t-shirts while they talk about a culture they haven't contributed anything worthwhile to in over a decade and a half really so more valuable/
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i agree with all of that. i think this convo was had a while ago when we were debating whether kode 9 was a 'good' kind of hipster or not. but yeah, hes obv just working with whatever hes into, so i dont think hes a vulture or anything, but it can look a bit hollow, when he has to attach his own signature style onto a diff sound so regularly. reinvention is good and everything, but yeah, i think i would rather hear him doing a kode 9 version of brostep than footwork (and its weird he downed brostep so much but is now playing bauer). or actually, not feeling he HAS to find the newest thing and kode-9-ize it each time. it would be okay i think if he decided to just do him. id be interested to see what would come out of that if he did. otherwise its just going to be about seeing 'hey what dyou think kode 9 would do with _______?' each time something new appears. i havent even heard his latest footwork tracks but i can already imagine just what its going to be like.
 

daddek

Well-known member
but yeah, i think i would rather hear him doing a kode 9 version of brostep than footwork

that would make no sense to his project whatsoever. footwork is going to have deep resonance with anyone interested in, or artistically invested in, rhythmically and sonically innovative "hood" dance music (excuse dropping the h word). which was what all of hardcore, jungle, grime, and even, in its very early stages, dubstep (believe it or not) were. A uk-orientation on that theme is what kode's consistently been in to. The only real change is his recent shift of focus toward american innovations, which is understandable given the UK's recent lack of. And not in itself a treachery of principle.. there is no immaculate conception of uk rave music, at least half the foundations of hardcore were imported from US via house techno & hip hop.

whereas it would be an utter betrayal of principle to try and work with edm-brostep, which has nothing to with the themes above. bro sonics are what led him & everyone else to abandon jungle. remember he used to be heavy into jungle before grime/dubstep. if he followed the framework imposed by the critical arguments against him here, we would find him stayed loyal to jungle now, and currently struggling to innovate within clownstep 2013.

why would anyone want the artists they follow to stay trapped within genres that they never pledged lifelong allegiance to. For what purpose? What principles are we asking artists to follow here. i think its enough to ask they maintain some consistency of their own evolving principles & themes, and utilize whichever form expresses those best, and hopefully navigate all this with some grace. i think overall he's doing that.
 

paolo

Mechanical phantoms
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/W41imzGAhE4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Pearson Sound has still got it. Also Livity Sound continue to be amazing
 

jimitheexploder

Well-known member
Livity Sound was a highlight. Alex Coulton and Batu on the sub label are both wicked too. Kowton had a killer year on his own too: TFB was TFB! New one on Pale Fire is on that tip too. Shuffle Good, Signal Life, the Hessle thing all big too. The Punch Drunk stuff was good too, Hodge is coming into his own with his last 12" and the Pev collab.

Hessle where pretty quiet really but what they did release was qualiuty: Joe, Pearson Sound and the Pev & Kowton. Pangaea and Elgato had good stuff on their own smaller imprints too.

Fade To Mind and Night Slugs didn't really put a foot wrong.

Keysound just killed it but thats all in the 130 thread innit.
 
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