CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I remember hearing the Untold remix on radio at the time and assuming it was Joker doing another variation on Gully Brook Lane/Holly Brook Park.

Here, this is perfect, let me play the game.

I have two eternal gripes with the Joker saga which is Joker obviously being a Grime guy (supposedly he even had a production mixtape of his tunes with vocals that exists... SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD) and was discovered both by the Grime and Dubstep scenes. Obviously a time when the both were very closely related and not too disimilar; I think in fact I heard "Gully Brook Lane" with a JME vocal on a Plastician set not too long after hearing Joker on Mary Anne Hobbs which was my 'discovery' of him. Kode was of course the Champion for him and rightfully so because he easily proved more important than anyone else that set showcased. Without a doubt one of the last truly great Grime producers alongside Maniac, Dot/Zeph and Rude Kid.

But then there's the problem in that he's already been co-opted by Dubstep, which itself is not Grime. Grime had taught itself to function like the rap industry and load up the MCs with Beats for occasional pay/credit, maybe put out tunes featuring the MCs. Send your stuff to the DJs to play and have people spit over... Was that gonna work for a kid from Bristol? Hell, even guys who aren't coming out of East London are more or less fringey. But then you have Dubstep with its great money as a DJ, the remix work, etc. etc. It was a no brainer but it essentially robbed Grime of a vital star producer with a distinctive sound at a time when the scene needed an influx of distinctive production voices.

And then after that you get James Blake who takes so much of what made Joker great and makes it... as a lot of the thread is already saying, 'arty' and studious. Clean a little bit. The Rudeness of the G-Funk and the harsh tear-out baselines are now replaced by screeching synths with a treatment closer to those 'wonky' synths beloved by Flying Lotus fans and distorted gospel harmonizing. It's incredibly self-consciously too damaged to be a banger, but also just the right amount of not being too tasteful, he didn't make say Jazzy dubstep per se. And to this day the fact that people don't recognize The Bells Sketch as being wholly indebted to Joker is baffling to me.

Anyway the cool irony is the only producer in grime's last wave who did right by Joker & his 'purple' friends and reintroduce that sound to Grime was dark0. He clearly Got It (and that's also why he was one of the best in this retrospectively bad instrumental grime resurgence)

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KFOebcRoiks" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 

version

Well-known member
Joker & his 'purple' friends

I remember the three that were often grouped together were Joker, Guido and Gemmy but I dunno how much of that was down to journalists trying to force a scene/sound and how much was a genuine relationship between the three of them.

This one always stood out to me as one of Joker's best, reminds me of Ayo Technology a bit:

 

EmpressJess

Well-known member
Hey guys, this is my first post so play nice pleeeaaaasse. :D:D:D

Though I can completely sympathise with the notion that the art-schoolification of, er… well anything really can be disastrous, I don’t think that’s the case with most post-dubstep. Where giving something the St. Martin’s treatment fails is when it softens what was interesting about something or even goes so far as to miss the point completely. In terms of post-dubstep, Fourtet :)poop:) would be the best example of that happening. However, when done correctly an artistic tact can be useful in highlighting, emphasising and exaggerating the most potent components of music that wouldn’t be as prominent in a more populist setting. (Ooh look at me sounding all cleaver lol... Ok I admit it, I took a couple of days to write this).

For example Pangaea’s ‘Hex’ takes the ‘vocal science’ of Garage and exaggerates it to a level of avant-garde never attained by Garage itself.

There’s more rhythmic experimentation and eclecticism in Post-Dubstep and the soundscapes are more varied than in previous Hardcore Continuum genres, which gives it a wider emotional remit.

It’s worth noting that it was only Post-Dubstep out of all the UK genres that managed (or even attempted to) to integrate Footwork.

When compared to UK Funky, Bassline, Deep Tech or Bass House I’d argue that Post-Dubstep is the genre truly continuing in the Hardcore spirit of experimentation and pushing things forward.






Pew, I worked harder on that than my dissertation.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
However, when done correctly an artistic tact can be useful in highlighting, emphasising and exaggerating the most potent components of music that wouldn’t be as prominent in a more populist setting.

It’s worth noting that it was only Post-Dubstep out of all the UK genres that managed (or even attempted to) to integrate Footwork.

Firstly, welcome to the forum!

Leaving aside all the other stuff you said, I think there's a contradiction here:

1. Post-dubstep: 'exagerrating the most potent components of music'
2. It was the only genre to 'integrate' footwork.

But it's integration of footwork actually translated as taking most of the potency OUT of that sound by making it over formulated and leaden. You can't seriously tell me that ''Footcrab'' is anything LIKE as potent as footwork-proper.

What it did to footwork was make it more conventional. As you say, perhaps it played an important role in popularising the actual sound amongst ppl who wouldn't have heard it, but I don't think what it actually achieved with that integration was anything as exciting and avant-garde as what the Chicago guys did in the first place. Compare what jungle did with the breakbeats of hip-hop - not as revolutionary as sampling them in the first place, but certainly intensified.

I think this is what post-dubstep (whatever that is) did with most of the genres it integrated - smoothed them out, made them homogenous, reduced entire aesthetics to cliched motifs, etc.

I also don't buy that the post-dubstep take on uk funky, for example, was anywhere near as interesting (even leaving aside how life affirming) as crazy cousinz/ill blu etc.

There are some producers who would be labelled post-dubstep who transcended these failings IMO but they were comparatively rare.
 

EmpressJess

Well-known member
Thank you Corpsey ❌.

I haaaaated footcrab. It sounds like an armpit.

The Jungle-Juke tracks didn't feel watered down to me. Do they count as Post-Dubstep?

Machinedrum's 'She Died There' is unique and strange in a completely different way from the proper Footwork dances, but you would get from some arty guy listening to Burial.

Radically recontextualising music can be just as inventing new music. It's often how it's done.



 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
oh some of it is undoubtedly great music, pev, girl unit, early pangaea, ramadanman, 2562, etc.

The problem was when it became its own thing so you'd have post-dubstep/future garage producers who would reference other post-dubstep producers and it would become a circlejerk. A bit like what happened with idm when it got big in the US, people listening to Autechre without out knowing about Man Parrish or Juan Atkins.

This is why i always went to nights that were kinda on the outer edges of that scene like Colony, who would play banging techno, pan sonic type harsh noise bits, and book jungle purists like Equinox sci wax amongst the UK bass mutations.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy

The RIP remix - I like the idea of fusing jungle breaks with footwork and its well executed but at the same time - it often just sounds like jungle to me - because jungle already cut breaks to shreds

The other tune - I mean, it's not bad, it's well done, but again I just don't think it's as palpably exciting and weird as, say


It's smoothed out, made tasteful

I don't think it's a case of these producers acting in 'bad faith' - headhunter e.g. was clearly a huge fan of footwork and more so than i've ever been or will be. So that's an interesting question to ponder - why is what these genuine fans of genres produce often so sterilised? Is it because they fear doing a direct pastiche? Or is it because they've learned Cubase or whatever in a certain way where they can't stand having the less than perfect mixdown? Or because the unwritten/unspoken rules of european/british dance music culture says that X is tasteful and Y is tasteless and even when we want to abandon those convictions we don't quite have the balls to... E.G. DJ Nate dropping in an Evanescence sample. Nobody from the underground 'cool' scene in the UK would dream of doing that, they'd be cringing too hard in the studio...

I do ponder this because I've been in the same shoes myself, when I tried making music. I'd try to replicate the feel of UK funky or whatever and I'd be constantly pulled by my inner chinstroker to add dubby chords or whatever - i couldn't have made something as sparse and bolshy as a crazy cousinz tune. I had to consciously attack my own instincts.

It's very interesting, what influence your personality and your culture has on what you can make, even more so than on what you can appreciate.

Perhaps this is all O/Topic now, I appreciate your defence of post-dubstep, but I still think of it (whatever 'it' is) as a sort of parasitical genre, not the 'real thing' that uk funky was (albeit in the view of many less so than garage, grime, jungle, et al)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
What I didn't touch on just then was the other obvious major influence - THEIR RECORD COLLECTIONS

Machinedrum obviously listened to dubstep before making footwork

He shouldn't hide that of course! But there's an interesting question of how these influences coalesce (or fail to)
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i think there's a tendancy to get too hung up on tastefulness/tasteless authenticity dichotomy in these discussions.

which is why some of youse got a boner for deep tech just cos it was something for middle class people to get all sociological over. Like it's just the other side of the coin of the post-dubstep guys being too purist. if it wasn't presented as something coming out of UK funky rather than being euro tech house u lot would cuss it out massively.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Actually when I first heard deep tech I didn't like it at all, in spite of knowing where it came from - it took a while for it to click

But you're right in the sense that I hear music differently according to what I know about who makes it - and all the narratives that build up around it from going on forums and reading essays on it and all that

One of the many lamentable things about the internet, I suppose, a surfeit of information blocking out sensation
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
sure that was a bit of a rhetorical flourish but thats what i do.

i like Crowley's description of James Blake being too cloyingly tasteful.

How do we differentiate between something that is tasteful (jazzy jungle, jazzy dubstep) and something that is overly tasteful? thats where i wanted to drag the discussion tbh.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
like we talk about something that is genuinely extreme and dark and something that is cartoon extreme.

But cartoon tastefulness isn't rly what Blake is. It's worse than that.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
an observation: imo whites have a tendency to analyse & dissect. that's often their way of interfacing with attractive foreign cultures. whereas non white cultures seem to be more about getting on with the creating and thus tend to evolve and move on a lot quicker to new things. often leaving whites behind, catloging, nerding over and trying to keep the 'authentic' thing alive. like 90s hiphop in europe right now.

when these people then try to replicate the thing they're nerding over you find it ends up sounding like a lame quotation rather than something that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the source.

wide brush strokes. definitely not exclusive to whites (e.g. japan) and it's obviously exploded worldwide with the internet.
 
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