Thirdform's List!

[thirdform]

me and luke were chatting about your list the other day.

he pointed out that me, him and reynolds have a relatively pop view of the nuum. celebrating bangers. venerating anthems. championing the 'flava' (to borrow si's vernacular) side to it rather than the techy end of the spectrum. sound collages not songs.

luke points to this list as a counterbalance to that orthodoxy.

what struck me about this tune from your list was that it manages to tick both boxes. being both a sound collage and pop song. that's the ideal really

https://youtu.be/q4hApTQLa08

Well that's why i like Si, for his writing, for his sci-fi neologisms, for the explosive prose.

but in terms of *learning stuff* a 2 liner discogs review can tell me more.

the thing is, for Turks in LDN the nuum doesn't exist. i don't think most of them even know what hardcore-jungle is. garage we do, very much so, but so do Pakistanis, all that 90s asian garage hype.

That in itself is interesting because it means I find myself in a double bind. On one hand I'm looking at this stuff like a true believer would, but on the other hand I'm a brown chatterbox nerd who should have been listening to fantasy fm in 1990, something, most probably i would have had abso-lutely no fucking idea of had i migrated to london in 86-87 and been working a crappy factory job whilst being taunted by NF thugs and the like.

That in itself is a weird asyncronic aspect.

 

[luka]

When you talk about learning stuff what do you mean? Facts sort of thing? Like names, places, pressing plants, engineers, studios?

 

[thirdform]

When you talk about learning stuff what do you mean? Facts sort of thing? Like names, places, pressing plants, engineers, studios?

that but also internal scene politics. Si is good on the politics but it's more a bourgeois academic marxish thing. like one of the main things he talks about is black people leaving jungle for garage in 97. it's a slight half truth, it's more that people couldn't break into jungle, and UK garage had space for them because there was money and as a scene it was still pretty slavish to new york.

Like web esh was talking about how mans are gonna be all turning point of UK music was when Drake endorsed us but it's kind of self-evident to the thing isn't it? Wiley, dizzee, etc etc were not hip hop heads, much less rappers. Slimzee was not a garage (as in bump and house) dj.

They found themselves in this ambiguous position (im not interested in whether they liked it or not im sure many had great great passion) of being divorced from the actual culture that nurtured them. thisis why ultimately they ended up defaulting to America. that's the exacerbation about America. It's actually that our industry is full of loads of hacks who know absolutely nothing about black music and build hierarchical walls around themselves.

 

[Leo]

i perhaps naively thought this thread would generate the same amount of rapid fire discussion as either dematerialisation or culture as advertising.

It hasn't so far though.

I see it differently: it's more a matter of us not wanting to interrupt your flow. and then when it was done, we were all pretty awestruck and reduced to saying "wow, amazing thread!"

I'd be on top of the world if I created a masterwork like this.

 

[luka]

Well for producers and DJs yeah there was an economic push factor in that drum and bass, like most of these things, had become a closed industry to some degree but that doesn't explain why the audiences crossed over, why the listeners and dancers went to garage. From my perspective as a listener at that time drum and bass had been a car crash for ages, totally unlistenable, and I was just waiting for something, anything, to fill a void. As I've said before I couldn't jump on the garage wagon in the tuff jam days really, not fully, I had to wait for the 2-step timbaland takeover before I could fall in love. That's from my perspective as a listener.

 

[luka]

But yeah, once of the things that interested me about the list is what Barty was saying and I assumed that the ableist remark you made was linked to this kind of pop bias that me and him and blissbollocks share.

 

[thirdform]

the thing is there was a culture of black geezers making hardcore - hardcore hip hop. 88-93. hardnoise, hijack, gunshot etc etc.

For various reasons some of these people found themselves in rave and others just went back to the grind. the UK subcultural capitalists were not ready for the assault on middle class values, they had to get that from America.

Things still haven't really changed in that regard. It's easy to listen to black power songs from the states than in the UK. Black and brown people are not supposed to protest in this country unless it's about internal psychodrama. Actually that Dave - psychodrama is one of the worst albums i have ever heard and its getting glowing reviews from all right thinking people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFL...gooTOo2VFirFtYGL70dJ0qAHdc7yMMcv-Tw2Gm2HeLtGU

 

[thirdform]

Well for producers and DJs yeah there was an economic push factor in that drum and bass, like most of these things, had become a closed industry to some degree but that doesn't explain why the audiences crossed over, why the listeners and dancers went to garage. From my perspective as a listener at that time drum and bass had been a car crash for ages, totally unlistenable, and I was just waiting for something, anything, to fill a void. As I've said before I couldn't jump on the garage wagon in the tuff jam days really, not fully, I had to wait for the 2-step timbaland takeover before I could fall in love. That's from my perspective as a listener.

it does though, there was a black garage scene in london as early as 92. paul trouble anderson loft, norman jay bass chronicles etc etc.

You answered your question, you couldn't really fully commit to the tuff jam era. the shift happened when aspiring jungle producers got involved. do you see what i mean? those moves before to garage were already happening, 92-93, 95 etc. they were happening in significant amounts but they don't reflect on the orthodox nuum historiography.

 

[luka]

it does though, there was a black garage scene in london as early as 92. paul trouble anderson loft, norman jay bass chronicles etc etc.

You answered your question, you couldn't really fully commit to the tuff jam era. the shift happened when aspiring jungle producers got involved. do you see what i mean? those moves before to garage were already happening, 92-93, 95 etc. they were happening in significant amounts but they don't reflect on the orthodox nuum historiography.

No, I don't follow. What is your point?

 

[luka]

What is orthodox nuum historiography? Why should anyone care about such a thing even if it actually exists? One of the things your list does it is helps draw attention to just how contradictory and omniverous hardcore really was. You can map a hundred different paths through it and amplify multiple different aspects. I've said to you before we had someone on here years ago, mms, who had a real bee in his bonnet about Begian hardcore. He felt Belgian hardcore had been unfairly marginalised in, to coin a phrase, orthodox nuum historiography. And it's true, it had been. And you can foreground that if you choose to, if that influence is most important to you.

You can draw out the parallels with industrial, or with britcore, or with Detroit, or whatever. It's big enough and complex enough that all these narratives will hold together. You can contextualise it in any number of ways.

Simon isnt obliged to tell the story from every angle possible and it's not his fault that no one else has been compelling enough of a writer to win an audience. He's done his job, you can't ask him to do everyone else's for them too. You can always go back to the music itself and listen and make your own mind up.

 

[luka]

I thought the whole point of our place,
The whole point of what we do here, is that we make our own discourse? We don't shake our fists impotently at our overlords. We are the authorities. We don't wait for approval. We don't acknowledge what happens upstairs. We do it ourselves.

 

[thirdform]

master of ceremonies

alright two things.

No, I'm not having a dig at Simon saying he's all wrong. he's much more right than many. I never thought of my list as going against simon's in any shape or form, just constructively expanding on it and maybe emphasising other aspects.
As crowley can tell you the orthodoxy isn't something we come up with here, it's more people outside of this forum these days. you look at someone like blackdown and he'll bang on and on and on about how urban music like timbaland influenced dubstep, how keysound is attuned to urban music trends and the like. but you go back on fucking dubstepforum and some pretty prominent producers at the time were like 'what does that guy [re timbo] know about the underground he makes shitty pop music.'

the orthodoxies (again not those of si) in the dance music industry obscure the much more base mechanics of the industry. look there's no real difference between grime and dnb rhythmically, it's just a case of shifting the kick snare pattern. which is kind of why i found barty's ambivalence to terror d quite strange, if anyone tried to shift grime away from dnbs rhythmic template it was him with all his stop-start syncopations and what he called abstracty sounds (funnily enough as a failed dnb producer!)

secondly this brings me onto the fact that you can't rap (as in rap in the American/hip hop sense) to breakbeat driven jungle. you can be a master of ceremonies, you can do jamaican ragga chat but you can't pharoahe monch over clattering breaks at 160. it's not possible. jump up, ironically, is much more conducive to rap rhythmically.

jungle you can't rap to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XthbbqroZ0I

a jump up tune conducive to rapping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwAG-Kug4tM

 

[luka]

I'm going to bed. I can't work out what conversation we're having!

 

[thirdform]

am i making more sense now? do my anti-orthodoxy pronouncements feel less directed to people on here and less confrontational but just matter of fact statements? because i've never said anyone here is wrong.

 

[thirdform]

I'm going to bed. I can't work out what conversation we're having!

the conversation is this: whilst dance music is populist but not pop, in most cases it actually functions more like the anti-democratic and scripted nature of 'pop' music.

This is what crowl meant when he talked about grime being rockist. because a lot of pop music is rockist.

I don't know hardly anyone in dance music who can shake the commitment to a genre. we all try here but i don't think any of us (most definitely myself included) can escape defaulting to certain aesthetic periods and genres rather than analysing thigs either A) in their moment or B) relevant to certain time periods.

in terms of the migration, i agree that 97 was a watershed. it registered as a mass conscious thing. but it was not really a reclamation of 95 jungle. garage was innovative when dem 2 and very few others got hold of the template and made it hickup microrhythms. what barty says I'm into called hyperatomisation.

The thing is, and you're not gonna like this, most clubbers still to this day just find jungle too difficult to dance to.

jungle was a sonic revolution.

garage was a sonic reform.

 

[thirdform]

What is orthodox nuum historiography? Why should anyone care about such a thing even if it actually exists? One of the things your list does it is helps draw attention to just how contradictory and omniverous hardcore really was. You can map a hundred different paths through it and amplify multiple different aspects. I've said to you before we had someone on here years ago, mms, who had a real bee in his bonnet about Begian hardcore. He felt Belgian hardcore had been unfairly marginalised in, to coin a phrase, orthodox nuum historiography. And it's true, it had been. And you can foreground that if you choose to, if that influence is most important to you.

You can draw out the parallels with industrial, or with britcore, or with Detroit, or whatever. It's big enough and complex enough that all these narratives will hold together. You can contextualise it in any number of ways.

Simon isnt obliged to tell the story from every angle possible and it's not his fault that no one else has been compelling enough of a writer to win an audience. He's done his job, you can't ask him to do everyone else's for them too. You can always go back to the music itself and listen and make your own mind up.

i agree with nearly all of this. let me try and put it a bit more in concrete terms: our culture in Britain really has a problem with year 0. every incremental change or shift in music is a year 0. this comes from the white punk narritive, ditto Logan Sama.

this obscures the actual year 0s and doesn't allow us to keep up artists careers unless they go bonkers.

 

[thirdform]

sometimes u have to be patient with me i am not the best at explaining how music works or commonalities between different scenes in technical terms. barty has the language for it, the technical terminology. im more like a robert johnson type character, fumbling my way towards drawing out those commonalities. but i don't go here's a tresillo and there's another etc etc.

 

[thirdform]

you can see here wiley and riko really haven't found their voices.

you can see here wiley and riko really haven't found their voices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26jo6EA_tkU

 

[pattycakes_]

Would love nothing more than to get stuck in and listen to this list and then talk about it because while I'm pretty sure there's plenty of music that I like which you probably wouldn't, from what I see you talk about in other threads I think I like pretty much everything you do. You have a knowledge of the underground I only wish I could have. But you grew up with it all happening around you, and yeah sure there are people on here with even deeper, older knowledge, I just think we both lean in a certain direction when it comes to sonic aesthetics, meanings in messages and vibes. Very similar frequencies. I always admire your takes on shit. Partly because you're so abrasive and unapologetic when in the moment of putting your point across, which to me demonstrates a passion, or maybe even a need for music to hit a certain spot in you and I think we share that same thing, even though I don't really show this too much on here. Anyway enough smoke blowing.

Currently I'm in a situ that makes giving dissensus the attention it deserves (and jesus christ have there been some great threads on here lately) has been a bit tough. It's the one forum I know of (I made that 'your regular sites' thread to try and find others) that stimulate me the way this one does. No-one else talks about the shit I'm into at the level of depth and with huge dollops of hilarity to go with it as you cunts on here do. I don't have all the communication skills to keep up, but I like to think I have bits to add here n there. Mostly I just like reading the knowledge and enjoying the lols.

Now what I wanna know is what brought you to your particular perspective on music. If there's even an answer to that. How did you find so many great underground obscurities? Was there a turning point in your life where you discovered one artist who led you in this direction or maybe met some knowledgeable person or what?

Because as I said before, on skimming this thread I see a parallel with my own tastes but somehow you managed to get way down deep to the bones of the matter and idk I guess I'm saying this is the list I wish I had the knowledge to make myself. Wait, I said enough smoke.

Anyway, aside from that, have you ever had experiences with seeing much or any of this shit being played out live? If so, where, who and how was it? I think if I were to dj a semi open minded place in the.near future I'd be pillaging the fuck out of this thread.

I might have more questions later but for now I'll leave it there. I'd definitely like to talk more in this thread.

 

[craner]

I also wonder how much this is a new grand narrative or conceptual framework, or an incredible collection of one-offs and exceptions. I only say this, because:

1) you quoted me as positioning this as hcultural statement, but that's because I thought you were making one, not because I knew exactly what it was, and:

2) for example, is that gabba track a one-off piece of extremism, or is the point that there is lots of gabba exactly like this which we all ignore but shouldn't because it's important and fits in with this and that?