wonky

[padraig (u.s.)]

i think there's a lot more of a global interaction aspect to this wave of producers - as mms says, the shared space of the internet, flylo's said before he's always on aim and stuff talking shit with a lot of them. jammin on a global scene. maybe that's the difference. it's certainly brought up a lot by artists...

...All these things that don’t necessarily make the music any better, but there’s more quantity, so naturally I guess the chances of more quality music and semi-similar styles being exposed are increased."

alright but I have to ask - how is this different from UK kids being influenced by acid house & Detroit, from East & West Coast hip hop playing off each other, from 2step producers copping Timbaland, from a dozen other "beatmaking movments"? if the answer's just that it's the internet & thus things happen faster & more tunes get made then alright but that doesn't strike me as some kind of radical change from what went before. I have to agree with dude who said that essentially if you make mountains of crap there's likely to a few more diamonds as well.

really tho most of this stuff I've heard (FlyLo/Scottish guys/Zomby/Joker/Ikonika - anyone else?) is pretty meh. most of the feeling I get is "oh look it's eclectic". again, a lot of style no substance. if other people enjoy tho fair play.

 

[mms]

'whining' you say? so if someone objects to an account that bears no relation to reality, that invents a connection between a nasty drug and a loosely assoicated bunch of emergent sounds/styles, no one should object ?

everyone else in the world of research, writing, journalism, whatever, has to answer to peer review and the standards of their own profession, why not him ?

i would hate to think that your paternalistic accusations of 'whining' are no more than the old guard circling the wagons to protect SR's mediocrity in this piece .

read what i said again will you?
course the article was bollox but look what a can of worms its opened up....

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

i would hate to think that your paternalistic accusations of 'whining' are no more than the old guard circling the wagons to protect SR's mediocrity in this piece .

nah the article was pants. I dunno about mms but I'm trying to figure out what it is that people are defending in the first place.

 

[whatever]

read what i said again will you?

okay , yes , i can do that , and have, i did re-read yr posts just now , but i'm still not seeing exactly what's annoyed u so much about people's responses here (honest)

above you ask people to ask themselves why this is such a big deal, to ask why they are whining , further above you say to test the idea , engage it, reverse it, accept it - i am paraphrasing but you seem to want people to get beyond the fictitious aspect of it and dig deeper . . . a sentiment i endorse .

but if the whole thing seems basically made up to begin with , i don't see what value there is to engage it ? . . . what in your opinion salvages this thing or remains there to be thought through ?

btw i don't doubt that u have something concrete in mind , and that i have missed it , but i'm not yet seeing it ( & i do want to see yr point of view , honestly ) .

( and i don't mean to put you on the spot , if you've already said all that you wanted to say on the topi c , then that's cool )
EDIT: ahh i see that u added the bit about bollox & can of worms - thank you for that, i think i see where ur coming from , so i am dropping this now

 

[Alfons]

alright but I have to ask - how is this different from UK kids being influenced by acid house & Detroit, from East & West Coast hip hop playing off each other, from 2step producers copping Timbaland, from a dozen other "beatmaking movments"? if the answer's just that it's the internet & thus things happen faster & more tunes get made then alright but that doesn't strike me as some kind of radical change from what went before. I have to agree with dude who said that essentially if you make mountains of crap there's likely to a few more diamonds as well.

I would say that the places you mentioned all had scene's of some sort, house was born in chicago in a local scene and techno in detroit and then they both came to the uk and a (different) local scene was born there (leading to the endless continuum debate). Where as this wonky thing, if I understand it correctly, has people from all over doing different stuff, being into and being inspired by different scenes (fly lo playing stateside hip hop stuff, joker being into grime, rustie hearing techno or whatever), but the internet is what ties these guys together and that makes it a "scene" even if there is no specific sonic element unifying them.

 

[heroesandvillains]

I would say that the places you mentioned all had scene's of some sort, house was born in chicago in a local scene and techno in detroit and then they both came to the uk and a (different) local scene was born there (leading to the endless continuum debate). Where as this wonky thing, if I understand it correctly, has people from all over doing different stuff, being into and being inspired by different scenes (fly lo playing stateside hip hop stuff, joker being into grime, rustie hearing techno or whatever), but the internet is what ties these guys together and that makes it a "scene" even if there is no specific sonic element unifying them.

Yeah it's MySpace Ba$$.

Fuck Ketamine, this music stems from a passionate love of bongs, blunts and beats.

Also, April 16th
@Love
Brainfeeder NYC pt. 1
Flying Lotus, Kode9, Mike Slott, Martyn, Zomby

sick

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I would say that the places you mentioned all had scene's of some sort, house was born in chicago in a local scene and techno in detroit and then they both came to the uk and a (different) local scene was born there (leading to the endless continuum debate). Where as this wonky thing, if I understand it correctly, has people from all over doing different stuff, being into and being inspired by different scenes (fly lo playing stateside hip hop stuff, joker being into grime, rustie hearing techno or whatever), but the internet is what ties these guys together and that makes it a "scene" even if there is no specific sonic element unifying them.

Yeah it's MySpace Ba$$.
Fuck Ketamine, this music stems from a passionate love of bongs, blunts and beats.

this still means nothing really, these kinds of in between non-scenes have always sprung up in the empty spaces between actual scenes. & the producers who make this stuff have always come from different scenes, 10 yrs ago it was illbient and/or earlier breakcore where some of the dudes were junglists, some from gabba, some industrial heads, some IDM-ish techno guys. nowadays the producers are just internet friends with each other - you'll forgive me if I don't find that very exciting.

don't get me wrong if ppl enjoy it then hell yeah go for it (& let's drop the K thing - I'm not talking about SR's article here). I just find most of it to quite tedious - the idea is almost always better than the actual music. "there's no there there" so to speak. it's like trying to get excited about Bill Laswell or Squarepusher.

 

[heroesandvillains]

this still means nothing really, these kinds of in between non-scenes have always sprung up in the empty spaces between actual scenes. & the producers who make this stuff have always come from different scenes, 10 yrs ago it was illbient and/or earlier breakcore where some of the dudes were junglists, some from gabba, some industrial heads, some IDM-ish techno guys. nowadays the producers are just internet friends with each other - you'll forgive me if I don't find that very exciting.

don't get me wrong if ppl enjoy it then hell yeah go for it (& let's drop the K thing - I'm not talking about SR's article here). I just find most of it to quite tedious - the idea is almost always better than the actual music. "there's no there there" so to speak. it's like trying to get excited about Bill Laswell or Squarepusher.

Who ever said any of this meant anything?

Let's just drop the whole wonKy thing all together, what a stupid fucking word.

Wonky means nothing, this is true.

There's plenty of music pointing in the right direction right now though(what ever direction that ends up being)

Hyperdub has transformed into quite a beast. Black Sun/2 Far Gone is ice cold madness; but of course Kode 9's not...*****

 

[Alfons]

Who ever said any of this meant anything?

This.

Happen to quite like some of it and I reckon a lot of it sounds fresh (will probably sound horribly dated in a few years too). My post above was more about explaining the "scene" as I see it and not proclaiming that this was the first time in music history that a non-geographically centered and loosely defined scene had come to be.

 

[Tentative Andy]

Okay, I'd like to retract most of what I said before: as is often the case, I was being an ignorant twat. After further investigation, mostly of British flavours that have been associated with the w-word, not only is a lot of this stuff good but the majority I've heard so far is perfectly danceable. It's defininetly not a single, coherent thing though.

Wonky lame-to-fame - this Rustie photo was taken 5 minutes down the road from where I live:


http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/ind...ndID=44625842&albumID=25506&imageID=29382065#

 

[mms]

i'm backing out of all of this as it needs to be thrashed out somewhere else rather than this forum tbh.

maybe just let it all take it's course.

 

[Ory]

whatever you want to say about scenes, surely the flylo-kode9-zomby-joker-rustie connection makes a lot more sense than associating any of them with rusko-caspa-ntype.

 

[Tactics]

I'm not at fan of this Reynolds dude

but his last two paragraphs were a post I was gonna make

its easy to make a beat off key and other bits so way to many people are getting let through. to get the swing and funk right is what is so hard and that's just the beat. ppl can't do the originals like the originals or do J like J which is why he's always gonna be a badman to the fullest. big up Madlib too

also wonky is a s*** name. isn't Blackdown responsible again for doing something like this?

padraig what is your point man? ain't you kinda opposed to this stuff already - it makes your comments biased from the start

 

[Sick Boy]

also wonky is a s*** name. isn't Blackdown responsible again for doing something like this?

I think I've asked this question twice on this board now and no one ever answers me.

 

[gumdrops]

no one ever likes uk genre names. thats just how it goes. people need to stop being so bothered about the names being ascribed and just get on with making music that disproves the name if they hate it so much.

 

[Tactics]

but its like...

no one ever likes uk genre names. thats just how it goes. people need to stop being so bothered about the names being ascribed and just get on with making music that disproves the name if they hate it so much.

at least put effort into the name. sometimes the name helps to dead off the music

 

[Sick Boy]

at least put effort into the name. sometimes the name helps to dead off the music

Or it is established and flash floods the press and the genre caves under the weight of a name it wasn't ready for - like hyphy.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

its easy to make a beat off key and other bits so way to many people are getting let through. to get the swing and funk right is what is so hard and that's just the beat. ppl can't do the originals like the originals or do J like J which is why he's always gonna be a badman to the fullest. big up Madlib too...

padraig what is your point man? ain't you kinda opposed to this stuff already - it makes your comments biased from the start

nah I'm not "opposed" to anything - where did you get that idea? saying you're not into something isn't "opposing" it, that's ridiculous. not to mention, how can you be opposed to something if it's so poorly defined that no one can describe it? allso I wouldn't deny that these guys have had their moments - mostly from Joker (who uncoincidentally seems most tied to an actual scene/sound), a couple from Zomby, frankly mostly of the Scottish stuff has left me cold as has most of FlyLo's output.

my point is - what do ppl actually find interesting about this, sonically? as you say yourself, a lot of it sounds like a bunch of cool stuff - bit of J, crunk, dubstep proper, some Drexciya perhaps, some classic acid, 80s funk, etc etc. - slapped together in mostly uninteresting ways. the main selling point seems to be eclecticism which always makes me dubious.

if no one can explain what they actually like about it then that's fair, man should enjoy anything they want.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

also sure it's a stupid name & I also seem to recall Blackdown coming up with it (though the alternatives floating around were just as awful - "aquacrunk" & such). that's what journalists do tho, they come up with stupid genre names. someone come up with something better.

 

[optimum]

Yeah Blackdown came up with it first: http://pitchfork.com/features/grime-dubstep/6840-grime-dubstep/

Although he seems to have retracted it and calling it w*nky now too