Reynolds hardcore continuum event

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Proposal for tag-line:

Speculative Realism - It's not boring!




... Anyway, should say that I thought the whole talk was excellent, Reynolds' points all made sense, if that is precisely what the continuum ammounts to then I don't see how I can have any objections to. Also, any potential smugness associated with him appears to go out of the window when he talks in person.
 

heva

Wild Horses
Proposal for tag-line:
... Anyway, should say that I thought the whole talk was excellent, Reynolds' points all made sense, if that is precisely what the continuum ammounts to then I don't see how I can have any objections to. Also, any potential smugness associated with him appears to go out of the window when he talks in person.

see thats why i wanted to do this event - surely there is so much out there associated with the continuum that the man himself never said or meant to imply.

anyway i also wanted to do it so people could ask questions to him directly and have a (heated) discussion rather than an internet flamewar :) so, like i said in that other thread, in case you missed it, video here:

http://fact.tv/videos/watch/518

& because we didn't have a lot of time for Q&A, Simon has agreed to answer a few questions that people might have in response to this talk. We'll either do it on his blog or ours, but I'll moderate it by collecting questions here or in the comments of the video itself on FACT TV. I reckon we'll stick to questions that are a direct response to this video. so, ask away!
 

elgato

I just dont know
art isn't so much totally creative, as much as a process of finding possibilites that are kind of eternally there to be used in new ways. Like the idea that the statue is already there in the marble, or when jazz musicians talk about "finding" music that's already out there in the universe... There are infinite possibilites waiting to be unleashed by new forces, while there are, at the same time, certain primary creative elements that continue to be the main stuff of every new art form, that never fade away. This shit ain't over, even if a more accelerated futurism, in its recognizable forms, probably is.

But yeah the possibilites aren't created, they're more like an expressive diametric reflection of the forces accessing them; found through a dynamic of projection and reflection that brings forth intentional and accidental permutations alike.

its been a while since i read a theoretical exposition that lifted me up as much as this!
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Making some links...the hyper-on experience set i am listening to (it was on a hardkore blog few months ago, can up...) has that baby goblin death rattle/laughter sound like terror danjah's trademark sound...
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Making some links...the hyper-on experience set i am listening to (it was on a hardkore blog few months ago, can up...) has that baby goblin death rattle/laughter sound like terror danjah's trademark sound...

I've been listening to that set 3 or 4 times a week for a couple of months now...fuckin' amazin'. it's still up: here.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Yeah it's wicked isn't it, just relentless up-front beats.

completely - to think that a lot of it is stuff they didn't even release, it just boggles the mind. makes quite a strong case for Hyper-On E as the greatest ardkore producers, against some stiff competition too.
 

heva

Wild Horses
Oh also he defends the 'grime is dead' claim that people brought up earlier in this thread:

People often tick me off for declaring grime is dead, which is not what I said, not really… I said my own massive emotional investment in it shriveled when the genre itself seemed to shrivel, psychologically-speaking...

...and so on, its in that link :) ^^
 

mos dan

fact music
Oh also he defends the 'grime is dead' claim that people brought up earlier in this thread:
People often tick me off for declaring grime is dead, which is not what I said, not really… I said my own massive emotional investment in it shriveled when the genre itself seemed to shrivel, psychologically-speaking...

...and so on, its in that link :) ^^

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006/09/its-not-london-thing-martin-clark.html
Never before have I de-cathected from a beloved genre so abruptly, swiftly, completely. It happened a little less than a year ago, and ever since the interest level has stayed level--hovering just north of nil.

Just back from a fortnight’s hols in London, and, what with one thing and another, I never managed to get around to checking out the basements of Blackmarket and Uptown (although I went past D’Arblay Street twice). No hefty swag of overpriced whites in my overhead locker this time round (just as well with the hand baggage restrictions). And I never once tuned into the pirates, partly because the first week we were in a hotel, the second house-sitting for friends who don't own a radio. But, whereas once I'd have gone out of my way to get hold of a wireless of some sort, I just never felt the urge.

sure, so simon said he stopped paying attention, not that it was dead.. (though the implication is strong enough).

(a) it's his loss that he couldn't be bothered to find a radio.
(b) it rather undermines his credibility on the genre that he actively and deliberately stopped paying attention, doesn't it?
 

whatever

Well-known member
(b) it rather undermines his credibility on the genre that he actively and deliberately stopped paying attention, doesn't it?
yup, undermines in every way

furthermore his blogpost provides Exhibit A for 'hipsterism,' down to the last detail

(a term that is stupid and worthless in criticism, but which i use here b/c he does so frequently -- one almost thinks without the strawman 'hipster' to argue against he'd have even less to write about than he already does)
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
I'm just watching this now, and I'm still on the Simon Reynolds part... what's interesting is that he does give me a better sense here of exactly why he wants to retain the "continuum" language than I've probably heard or read from him before, but what I find a little strange is a) the appeal to empiricism (which, even if we grant him this, continua seem to apply to many different musical genres: jazz, hip-hop, etc.), and b) the way he starts talking about "rivers" coming off the "continuum" and completely mixing the metaphor.

The thing about continua in physics is that they're entirely self-contained systems, i.e. there are no "rivers" flowing out of them. So this alone seems to sort of suggest that it's a limited metaphor even to the extent that it works.
 

whatever

Well-known member
i enjoyed his presentation, who could deny that there is a 'hardcore' continuum/tradition/stylistic continuity there ?. it seems right on, and i'm glad that he has written about it for years .

( echoing monadthesecond i did find the repeated assertion of "facts" a litttttle hamfisted tho, tsk tsk NOT VERY THEORETICALLY ORTHODOX THERE , sir, most english department grad students will slap yr hand if u talk about bare facts !!! )

he also said exactly what i said above : there is nothing especially 'theoretical' at all about the basic outline of genre-development he skteched from hardcore to ( fill in blank here with your genre of choice ) . it's description, not theory .

why peeple keep calling him a 'theorist' , thoughh ,has never, ever made sense to me
 
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nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Ha, I like how derisively he talks about the people who criticize his model--they've usually read Deleuze and Guattari, or Sadie Plant (whoever that is?).

He completely misunderstands what a rhizome is, which IS a root system, a root system that happens to grow outward laterally instead of upward in an ARBORESCENT manner. The point of the "rhizome" is not that there can't be genres, but that all music shares a root system, and grows outward instead of upward in a linear, hierarchical manner.

A continuum in physics is an entirely continuous phenomenon, no breaks, no rivulets of energy flowing outward, no discontinuities. Which isn't even consistent with his own description of the hardcore continuum. What it seems he's really talking about instead is localized musics, which is actually much more consistent with--wait for it-- the rhizome, which begins somewhere (like, say, London in 1993) and slowly spreads, grows, outward in all directions around the center, sharing a common root system for nourishment (the original root structure in London in 1993) that can sometimes take up roots elsewhere along its growth pattern (say, those cities outside London where hardcore spread).
 
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