Blackest Ever Black

paolo

Mechanical phantoms

e/y

Well-known member
yeah, really enjoyed every release so far. the Regis and Tropic of Cancer ones from last year were among my favourites. they've put out some good mixes - http://goo.gl/PHxbH (well, i think they're very good, but not normally stg I listen to, so...) had the Raime FACT podcast on repeat for a while, too.
 

SecondLine

Well-known member
Have slept on this label in a shameful way. Cheers for the reminder/headsup.

That Raime FACT mix is brilliant. Every now and then you get a reminder of just how incredible jungle was at points.
 

Gombreak

Well-known member
It seems to have done that thing some of my favourite labels do of having particular thematic references but be pretty diverse. The Mixtapes are good too, worth a download.

Blackest Ever Black - The Dissapointment Engine
http://blackesteverblack.blogspot.com/2011/11/paypal-safer-easier-way-to-pay-online.html

Blackest Ever Black - She Died With Her Eyes Open
http://blackesteverblack.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-post.html

Interesting they're actually remastering and rereleasing music as well as simply being 'inspired' by a certain period too
 

SecondLine

Well-known member
Interesting criticism of dance music in that interview:

"I suddenly felt nauseated by the dance culture I hitherto considered myself a part of, one whose sense of its own forward-thinking masks a top-to-bottom conservatism and a fear of the mildest idiosyncrasy, let alone unabashed personal expression. There's no risk or transgression, not right now, in calling your track "B15587" or, you know, "Wad," however good the music might be. Nobody grills a house or dubstep producer on what their music is actually about, because we know from the outset it's not about anything, and nor do we expect it to be. But after a while you begin to crave content, don't you?"

Those mixtapes look great, copping now
 

Aww Nein

Wild Palms
not on the label, but definitly feel its in a similar vein.... anyone checked out Vatican Shadow? project from Prurient, war on terror themed dark techno ambience.... just listening now, some really nice stuff
 

e/y

Well-known member
didn't really feel the earlier Vatican Shadow releases (EPs, I think?) but I've liked bits of the Kneel Before Religious Icons album that I've heard.
 

Gombreak

Well-known member
not on the label, but definitly feel its in a similar vein.... anyone checked out Vatican Shadow? project from Prurient, war on terror themed dark techno ambience.... just listening now, some really nice stuff

I like the Pakistan Military Academy release by him


This whole dark serious techno-inspired thing that some of this stuff slots into (often coming from an experimental/noise angle e.g Pete Swanson, Container, Kplr) is kinda interesting. There was an article in MNML SSGS recently that highlighted some intriguing stuff, not had a chance to listen to much yet though. It seems almost dilapidated, broken down and sandpaper rough, kinda makes me think of Andy Stott's 'Knackered House' coining.

Edit: http://mnmlssg.blogspot.com/2011/11/ripping-it-up-and-starting-again.html
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
Yeah, I'm loving KPLR. Has some of the raw punk vibe that I've not heard from much electronix in a while. Need to check some more of those names, but yeah this tangent is a good thing in my books.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
And yeah, I guess I pretty much agree with the point about most dance music being conservative. I guess maybe that's why I don't listen to too much these days. I'm sick of that same fucking bass drop looped up a thousand times. Lifestyle party shit in the worst, most nihlistically hedonistic way possible. Of course that's just one side of it, but whatever.
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
lack of 'content' (reduced there to visual/verbal descriptors of the music rather than anything specific about the music itself) is one of the ways dance music lends itself to so many varieties of communal experience and engagement

prurient said something in an interview also conducted by kiran sande about his work being a way to explore selfishness and personal obsession without the constraints of genre or audience. although i like the music on blackest a bit that ethos couldn't be further from what i look for in dance music
 

Local Authority

bitch city
At the same time, a lack of 'content' leaves something to strive for and allows the music to degenerate into something that essentially stands for nothing.

There's a bigger discussion to be had on this, something I don't have the time for.
 

Local Authority

bitch city
Yes you could, and I'm entirely aware that the 'content' of a song is given to it by the person listening and the producer writing it.
 

SecondLine

Well-known member
lack of 'content' (reduced there to visual/verbal descriptors of the music rather than anything specific about the music itself) is one of the ways dance music lends itself to so many varieties of communal experience and engagement

prurient said something in an interview also conducted by kiran sande about his work being a way to explore selfishness and personal obsession without the constraints of genre or audience. although i like the music on blackest a bit that ethos couldn't be further from what i look for in dance music

This. My dance music epiphany (and I'm pretty sure lots of other people's) in part involved realising that music can have a 'function', and fulfilling that function can be a major preoccupation for the people who make it, without that somehow making it 'inferior' art. What Kiran Sande might call conservatism is, from another angle, just a far tighter set of formal constraints within which innovation can occur. For me the fact that dance music, by definition, has to consider its audience is partly what makes it so compulsive to listen to/dance to/make. Obviously Kiran knows this too, or did at some point, but has I guess become jaded, which is his prerogative. Not saying that's the only valid way of doing things of course.

Also uncomfortable about using the word 'content' here, as what people are referring to is extraneous content i.e. articulable concepts, cultural reference points outside of music. It's stuff that's hooked up to the sonic reality of the music, thereby adding extra dimensions to it, rather than something that is 'inside it'...I don't think you could argue any music is somehow sonically 'contentless' as it involves fluctuations in air pressure. Maybe that's pedantic but I think it's an important point. Implying that music w/o a message/meaning which can be expressed in words or images is 'empty' is a subtle way of replicating a kind of rock/pop-centric 'anti-dance' discourse.

As Ben was I think hinting at the functionalism of dance music leads to a kind of communal engagement which can actually have a very concrete social/political 'use'.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
As a recovering goth, I like that goth can mean something more than being a melodramatic anorexic Doors fan. At least musically.
 
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