glasshand

dj panic attack
has anyone seen this?


deep tech history from the house ent crew's perspective. some great rave footage in there from when this all started. didn't realise some of the internal politics going on in there for house ent.

it's weird, years later it still feels unreal to me that this was so big and was never really recognised in the music media. when I was watching this video and thinking about how few views it has, and how house ent has a small online following compared to the size of the raves, I almost didn't believe them myself even though I'd been to some of the parties.

it feels like it'll never come to light now that the virus has happened. conversations about blackness and racism in music are happening now amongst London music types, but this whole scene is still missing from them. I watched a group chat that scratcha dva moderated last week with kode9, boiler room vampire guy, lara rix martin, emily dust etc, and at one point kode9 was talking about how hyperdub's experimental club night zero that's been running in london for the past few years books black artists but doesn't really get black crowds in attendance, and the other white club people in the chat agreed and they all started coming up with ideas for how they could attract more black people - maybe it's the door staff, or maybe tickets are too expensive, etc. - but how much light could be shed on all this if someone just mentioned that there was a huge predominantly black music scene, self-sufficient without any media spotlight, that had been going on at the same time or from a few years earlier?
 
has anyone seen this?


deep tech history from the house ent crew's perspective. some great rave footage in there from when this all started. didn't realise some of the internal politics going on in there for house ent.

it's weird, years later it still feels unreal to me that this was so big and was never really recognised in the music media. when I was watching this video and thinking about how few views it has, and how house ent has a small online following compared to the size of the raves, I almost didn't believe them myself even though I'd been to some of the parties.

it feels like it'll never come to light now that the virus has happened. conversations about blackness and racism in music are happening now amongst London music types, but this whole scene is still missing from them. I watched a group chat that scratcha dva moderated last week with kode9, boiler room vampire guy, lara rix martin, emily dust etc, and at one point kode9 was talking about how hyperdub's experimental club night zero that's been running in london for the past few years books black artists but doesn't really get black crowds in attendance, and the other white club people in the chat agreed and they all started coming up with ideas for how they could attract more black people - maybe it's the door staff, or maybe tickets are too expensive, etc. - but how much light could be shed on all this if someone just mentioned that there was a huge predominantly black music scene, self-sufficient without any media spotlight, that had been going on at the same time or from a few years earlier?

Its almost as if it never happened. A lad who i used to work with used to go to loads of these and was starting to go to the afrotised (afrotized?) raves last time i spoke to him- it seemed like that was the direction the music was taking, but i would think corona will nullify that sort of momentum.

I was too old to go to the deep tech raves so won't necessarily pretend to know about them but it seemed from an outside perspective that the scene was fucking massive for a bit.

In all honesty, though, having seen london music get gentrified for years (and having partially been part of the problem), maybe its a good thing this stuff never got co-opted into the middle class lads who like black music sphere.
 

Dimensions

Active member
they all started coming up with ideas for how they could attract more black people - maybe it's the door staff, or maybe tickets are too expensive, etc.

Or maybe it's because they prefer to go to different nights? You can't manufacture the demographics of a night. People will like what they like.
 

Dimensions

Active member
I consider myself to have contributed musically to the scene this thread is about. If we are talking skin colour, in some raves I played at / attended, I might have been in a minority, and in others, in a majority. Never once did it occur to me that either was wrong or needed changing.
 

catalog

Well-known member
this is the thing, it devalues something when they start talking in this way. and like glasshand says, just acknowledge that there's other stuff happening. it's this thing of assuming the role of spokesperson.
 

version

Well-known member
this is the thing, it devalues something when they start talking in this way. and like glasshand says, just acknowledge that there's other stuff happening. it's this thing of assuming the role of spokesperson.

... strikes me as similar to the hall of mirrors. Once you sit down and start taking stock, trying to force things, you end up losing energy and confidence.
 

vvvwwwv

Well-known member
did try to watch that doc but got bogged down in the personal politics. most of the big guys went trad, ibiza sound, some of it went afro like antony ranz, perch and them are still doing it but it's definitely more tech-leaning than ever before



 

glasshand

dj panic attack
Its almost as if it never happened. A lad who i used to work with used to go to loads of these and was starting to go to the afrotised (afrotized?) raves last time i spoke to him- it seemed like that was the direction the music was taking, but i would think corona will nullify that sort of momentum.

I was too old to go to the deep tech raves so won't necessarily pretend to know about them but it seemed from an outside perspective that the scene was fucking massive for a bit.

In all honesty, though, having seen london music get gentrified for years (and having partially been part of the problem), maybe its a good thing this stuff never got co-opted into the middle class lads who like black music sphere.

that sounds like a cool development in the direction, will be a shame if it is nullified but hard to imagine anything other than an intermission in club sounds for now. It would be/would have been sick if there was more crossover with Amapiano too. I've heard some of those DJs playing bits from that sound, to my ears it's a bit like the South African analogue of deep tech, with all the focus on that resonant log drum/bass instead of on the drums and space like in gqom.

I agree that it's a good thing it wasn't coopted, and it managed to exist perfectly well financially outside of it all. I think it was the shutting of some of the venues that might have changed things a bit (pre-corona), like the Coronet. the guys in that video talk about venues shutting a bit. This has obviously been a running theme throughout this thread, but the only concern is the element of it being forgotten from the cultural history, so in conversations like the one I mentioned, it's not even a feature of the London landscape that anyone can acknowledge. And I would say as well that it's never too late for something to be 'rediscovered' and coopted - like "old school garage" getting a gentrified reboot around 2012.

did try to watch that doc but got bogged down in the personal politics. most of the big guys went trad, ibiza sound, some of it went afro like antony ranz, perch and them are still doing it but it's definitely more tech-leaning than ever before

the personal politics were a bit of a distraction yeah, thought it was quite weird for them to be posed questions around what they thought of the guy running house ent, on house ent's own doc... would love to hear something like this from the Audiowhore guys and other crews too
 

not saying it's all new or even always brilliant but stuff like the tunes in this from 25:30- if things started heading in that direction i would be well into it. loads of those afrotized mixes knocking about are really good. parts of the one posted above are mad @vvvwwwv

i guess a lot of it is indebted to the idea of dubbage/circle/yellow etc but this isn't as house cliche really. anyway...
 

glasshand

dj panic attack
this is the thing, it devalues something when they start talking in this way. and like glasshand says, just acknowledge that there's other stuff happening. it's this thing of assuming the role of spokesperson.

it was a cringey conversation, although it wasn't kode9 throwing out all those ideas, think he just mentioned issues with door staff at corsica studios. the spokesperson thing was weird though, it was being brought up by people in the chatroom to the conversation too (it was on Twitch). I think it's part of the position people who are essentially small cultural business owners are expected to hold - this 'conscious capitalism' position where a large part of your cultural capital comes from how much you're centring/supporting/promoting minority identities. then you end up putting yourself forward as, or being interpreted as, a spokesperson. In this situation where racism as a structural problem is being discussed, it seems like (mostly white) people can only come up with small time individualist ideas, that wouldn't change things too much, maybe subconsciously because they've got their own place in the industry to protect.
 

glasshand

dj panic attack
anyway don't want to derail things, love Antony Ranz so I'll get that mix on. the dubbage/circle/yellow sound seems to be back around more in general and I'm all for that
 

gremino

Moster Sirphine
That Afrotized thing sounds like UK funky house before UK tunes. This time it's techy instead of soulfull. Is it UK productions?
 

luka

Well-known member

not saying it's all new or even always brilliant but stuff like the tunes in this from 25:30- if things started heading in that direction i would be well into it. loads of those afrotized mixes knocking about are really good. parts of the one posted above are mad @vvvwwwv

i guess a lot of it is indebted to the idea of dubbage/circle/yellow etc but this isn't as house cliche really. anyway...

been listeing to these mixes back to back for hours now. sounds great today. might hate it tomorrow
 
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