http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1923&Itemid=105 - k-punk defends the 'nuum
Reynolds hardcore continuum event
- Thread starter heva
- Start date
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
haha, yeah, young producers are raging they can't satisfy manically depressed bloggers who don't actually go to raves with their tunes. What's the point of this article? to defend the validity of the continuum and at the same time beg for it to be completely cast aside for something new? There's been plenty of stuff that can't be fitted into the theory of the nuum, but it gets ignored cos it isn't nuum enoughare the contradictions here not staring him in the face? He's saying that "wonky" isn't good enough both because it's too like the 'nuum and yet not 'rude' or nuumish enough.
This is head-meltingly contradictory and practically renders the whole theory meaningless (it's not nuum but it is anyway, cos err i have to validate this retrospective reductionist theory somehow)
talk about tying yourself in knots. From what i've read from kpunk and Reynolds they seem determined to stay miserable, pure craic vacuums, forget em!
oh man I have to leave right now but I'll have a response for this later. not that I even disagree really but. plus just to toss it out there; funky - early 90s progressive house?
or early 00's even.
funky-goes-intelligent would essentially equal this: http://www.juno.co.uk/ppps/products/92963-01.htm
swears
preppy-kei
I am pretty stoked for tomorrow night, going with a chum who has never read any of Reynolds' stuff, but loves "nuum" music, so it'll be interesting to see what he thinks of it.
And for all the people who can't make it, here's a little clip of Simon Reynolds talking about hardcore:
And for all the people who can't make it, here's a little clip of Simon Reynolds talking about hardcore:
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
yeah actually I take it back. I just read the article and it's a hot mess. I was surprised by how much "not as good as it was back in the good old days" griping there was. there's even a call for a new Year Zero! I also like the supremely muddled bit about how if you played a 1988 raver a 1992 jungle they'd be absolutely bewildered but if you played them a 2008 wonky/funky tune they'd only be "mildly discomfited", b/c wonky funky & bassline "induce feelings of past shock".
and I defy anyone to make sense of this:
"the hoary old idea that dance music shouldn’t be theorised at all, only enjoyed; that its pleasures are self-evident, spoiled by too much critical reflection. This often finds support in an Anglo-American empiricist disdain for theory, which has entered into a kind of unholy alliance with a certain Deleuzean anti-theory celebrating flows and multiplicity, the two combining in a hostility towards any theoretical generalization"
Like a fair bit of kpunk's writing this sounds kinda cool but I'm suspicious that it doesn't really mean anything.
swears
preppy-kei
I think you have to read him for a while to get into him, check out his sources to a degree too. I don't always agree with him and his blog-posts can get very technical and dry when he gets into topics like phenomenology or marxism, but worth reading. He has a tendency to claim that it's all over for music/pop-culture which does grate for a young reader, certainly.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I have been reading him on & off for a while and I'm familiar with a fair #, if not all, of his sources. I quite like some of his writing - esp. when he writes about jungle, not the nuum but just jungle - but the (end of) pop culture stuff, ugh, no way. not only do I not care but there's just so much bullshit to wade through to find the gems. the upscale Marxist talk, ehh. I grew up on Crass & anarchopunk & I'm still well wary of Friends of Karl trying to hoodwink me with vast streams of obfuscatory jargon. clever salesmen for a product that doesn't work innit.
mos dan
fact music
shiels
_
See this is what riled me up to post that caffeine fuelled rant earlier, which i then stupidly deleted because i thought it was too insulting and waffly. but realised padraig there had quoted so it stays anyway. His writing is good because it's prickly, provocative like Nietzsche would be. but yeah that article is bullshit, he'll need to define what he means by wonky too before he goes dismissing it, there's all sorts of stuff getting lumped under that umbrella, from West coast hip-hop to the likes of Joker and Gemmy.
Its actually quite astonishing that there is so little worth engaging with directly in this article, its bizarre. I am a massive fan of k-punk but this was not good
But there are interesting issues to be discussed arising from all this.
One of the most interesting things to me is trying to understand the shift in values that has occurred since the 90s, and why what most now percieve as groundbreaking music is so different, and works to such different ideas and feelings, than the 'cutting edge' in the 90s.
I think a key concept, the meaning and relevance of which I think has changed massively, is the 'future'
Who believes in the future in the sense that jungle or detroit projected any more? When i listen to that stuff, I'm nostalgic... I think hauntology is the oft used term - nostalgic for a time that never was or never became, melancholy for a time when visions or dreams of the future could seem so uncertain or exciting. The feelings evoked by say that tipping point between hardcore, darkside jungle and dnb (Moving Shadown, Metalheadz etc) still seem fantastical but they can also seem quite quaint in a post-millenial world. The idea of the future which is current and prevalent seems so much more rooted in what we are now actually surrounded by. Perhaps it could be said that the degree to which technology now surrounds us and infiltrates every aspect of our lives reduces the scope for our imagination of a technological future... new technological futurism feels 'retro' whenever i hear or see it. its tenuous and perhaps an artificial distinction but dreams of the future in our era feel more political or social, rather than technological
All this is a tangent from what k-punk is saying, but its about the idea that values have changed... what we dream of is no longer what it was 10 years ago, and that is always going to have implications for developments and inter-generational perceptions
Obviously if the vague idea can be accepted there are many other levels of analysis and abstraction to involve
But there are interesting issues to be discussed arising from all this.
One of the most interesting things to me is trying to understand the shift in values that has occurred since the 90s, and why what most now percieve as groundbreaking music is so different, and works to such different ideas and feelings, than the 'cutting edge' in the 90s.
I think a key concept, the meaning and relevance of which I think has changed massively, is the 'future'
Who believes in the future in the sense that jungle or detroit projected any more? When i listen to that stuff, I'm nostalgic... I think hauntology is the oft used term - nostalgic for a time that never was or never became, melancholy for a time when visions or dreams of the future could seem so uncertain or exciting. The feelings evoked by say that tipping point between hardcore, darkside jungle and dnb (Moving Shadown, Metalheadz etc) still seem fantastical but they can also seem quite quaint in a post-millenial world. The idea of the future which is current and prevalent seems so much more rooted in what we are now actually surrounded by. Perhaps it could be said that the degree to which technology now surrounds us and infiltrates every aspect of our lives reduces the scope for our imagination of a technological future... new technological futurism feels 'retro' whenever i hear or see it. its tenuous and perhaps an artificial distinction but dreams of the future in our era feel more political or social, rather than technological
All this is a tangent from what k-punk is saying, but its about the idea that values have changed... what we dream of is no longer what it was 10 years ago, and that is always going to have implications for developments and inter-generational perceptions
Obviously if the vague idea can be accepted there are many other levels of analysis and abstraction to involve
Last edited:
D
droid
Guest
I can actually kinda relate to this. I can still pick out jungle/hardcore tunes and be shocked at how demented, how brimming with bizarre ideas, how alien they still sound, wheras some wonky/dubstep (less so funky) sounds 'pre' jungle to me... bleep n bass being a prime touchstone for dubstep in particular.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
now see if kpunk had written an article with some of these ideas....i was half taking the piss anyway, I was just befuddled by how grumpy and old rock critic it sounded...
well this is the future isn't it? the science fiction future I mean, the realistic sci-fi future if that makes sense or at least on the cusp of it. I dunno if it so much stifles the imagination as it makes technological futurism irrelevant because this the technological future is now, by default. I was listening to Spiral Tribe - "Forward the Revolution" the other day and the refrain is one of those so dumb its great lines "you might stop the party but you can't stop the future". I was kind of taken aback, not just the lost E dream of Rave, but no one did stop the Future and the future sucks. which I guess is true for jungle as well.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
no I agree actually. nothing sounds like old jungle, not even new jungle (except for Soundmurderer & SK-1). the only other music that ever gave/gives me the kind of breath-taking, jaw dropping moments that jungle does is early grime. my main point was more that that just seemed like entirely the wrong way to judge the worth of wonky/funky/dubstep etc.
swears
preppy-kei
So yeah, this was ace. Reynolds and K-Punk for seven quid. It ended up lasting two hours and they had to chuck us out 'cause a film was about to start! Quite scholarly, contemplative musings from SR punctuated by the tunes booming out over the soundsystem to illustrate points. A little Q and A, would've asked something but I couldn't think of anything in the end, been nice to have had a bit more time to hear from the audience. You might be glad to hear that someone was filming this, so it might turn up on the web...
D
droid
Guest
Oh the usual... Nuum heads are all sad old men with no idea of what the kids are up to today.
Some good points, but surprisingly bitter in tone...
Some good points, but surprisingly bitter in tone...
swears
preppy-kei
I don't see producers like Joker or Zomby as being part of the 'nuum, at all. But rather outside of it and seeing it as another strand of music they can take influence and ideas from, along with hip-hop or techno or IDM or whatever...
The fact that Zomby made an album called "Where were you in '92?" shows that he's quite knowing and self aware about it, nobody close or part of the HCC would make a move like that, imo. It's more akin to the warp records fellas taking ideas from genres like Jungle or Techno.
The fact that Zomby made an album called "Where were you in '92?" shows that he's quite knowing and self aware about it, nobody close or part of the HCC would make a move like that, imo. It's more akin to the warp records fellas taking ideas from genres like Jungle or Techno.
"I'm not normally one to be so dismissive, but isn't the hardcore continuum just a way for older guys to relate to these off-the-wall kids making totally new original stuff that, aesthetically at least, bears little resemblance to the genres that the 'Nuum designates as their supposed predecessors? Imagine talking about the hardcore continuum with Oddz & Eastwood. I don't know if it would hold a lot of water for them (or whether they would even care)." - Alex Sushon, 10/01/08
"There is perhaps an element of generational resentment too: a generation younger than Reynolds is frustrated that it has yet to produce a music which can't be comfortably fitted inside a theoretical framework generated nearly two decades ago. It's a measure of the robustness of the hardcore continuum (and its theorization) that it should still be holding on after twenty years. Yet it's also a sign of the slowing of the rate of innovation in popular music." K-Punk 09/02/09
On Wednesday of this week Simon Reynolds spoke on the hardcore continuum in Liverpool, accompanied by K-Punk/Mark Fisher, author of the 'defence of the hardcore continuum' quoted above. Sadly I couldn't make it to along to put this case in person, so let me explain why these recent events have provoked a flurry of rolled-eyes and creative swear-words from 'my generation' of bloggers in the general direction of our elders.
Procrustes' Bed
The hardcore continuum is an interesting idea whose time has passed. It was formulated in 1999, looking from 2-step garage back to 90s rave and jungle. The theory's decreasing utility shouldn't be surprising: it's wildly problematic to take observed historical trends and then project them forwards, not least because your willingness to make it 'fit' compromises your perception of real, live events. This is something Lenin knew, writing in a letter to his wife Krupskaya in 1917, in the midst of a revolutionary ferment that can stand in for the current UK club scene:
"We would be committing a great mistake if we attempted to force the complex, urgent, rapidly developing practical tasks of the revolution into the Procrustean bed of narrowly conceived 'theory'."
Procrustes was a villainous landlord in Greek mythology, a nasty piece of work with an iron bed as his weapon. He would stretch people out who were too short for it, and amputate those who were too tall - and no-one would ever fit in the bed, because it was secretly adjustable. The point is not to attack theory per se, but to be aware of its outliers, contortions and amputations, and not to be bound by a theory that has outlived its use.
I don't think it puts me out on a limb to opine that Ikonika, Joker and Zomby made some - possibly most - of the best tunes that came out of the UK last year, while the second half of the year saw funky's harder, percussive side go into creative overdrive. Yet K-Punk dismisses them all in favour of a successful but too often monotonous bassline scene, simply because it displays an abstract sense of the hardcore spirit, "a rude energy". The donk scene has a certain 'rude energy' if you squint, but I'm not moved to call it the most exciting club music in Britain.
'Watch me confuse the dance…'
So this generation of producers that are 'slowing innovation'; what's making them slow? The problem is apparently that they are bombarded with too many influences, adrift without the Nuum to tether them. "Glutted musicians make clotted music" Simon Reynolds wrote in The Wire. Only recently, FACT's Tom Lea explored Joker's latest horrifying rupture of the continuum - new tracks that sound like G-Funk, "remodelled for a generation that thirsts for bassweight and 140BPM, but still remembers caning Death Row records at school."
Unfortunately for the 'Nuum Generals' (great nomenclature courtesy of Joe Muggs in The Wire), the internet has happened, and it's too late to turn it off now. So this 'resentful' generation of producers and bloggers alike, say we are all glutted? When the UK club scene is reverberating to a diverse mess of influences and new releases, do you think any of us mind? One of the lyrical motifs of KIG Family's 'is it grime? Is it funky?' hit-to-be, 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' is "watch me confuse the dance". The dance is not clotted but confused: deliriously so.
And it really is confusing out there. A friend asked me this week why someone had told her that 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' was "funky, NOT house", and then the YouTube clip described it as 'funky house'. Meanwhile some people want to banish 'wonky' from the UK house scene , which is exactly the same kind of grimey house that other people are calling 'funky'. But this 'wonky' is not the same 'wonky' that Joker and Rustie make, which in any case some people call 'aquacrunk'. All this brings to mind current 'wonky' don Zomby becoming hilariously worked up on Dissensus a year or two back, repeatedly clarifying the difference between 'bassline house' and 'niche'. Taxonomy, like taxidermy, should be treated tentatively and with a sense of humour.
Generational resentment
"In a profound sense, underneath two decades of relentless sonic mutation, this is the same music, the same culture. What's also endured has been the scene's economic infrastructure: pirate radio stations, independent record shops (often in out-of-the-way urban areas), white labels and dubplates, specific rave promoters and clubs (again often in the less glitzy, non-central areas of cities)." - Simon Reynolds, 28/01/09
This is from Reynolds's introduction to his series of excellent articles for The Wire on 'Nuum sounds' 1992-2005. The economic infrastructure he mentions provides some tangible signifiers we could use to test the theory's ongoing relevance, and I'm afraid it doesn't look good. A club like FWD>> may embody its own continuum of UK club sounds, but they're not the same ones the Nuum dictates. Meanwhile pirate radio is being supplanted by internet radio, mp3s and podcasts, independent record shops are closing, and white label dubplates replaced by leaked wav files, or the perennial web query, '320?', as in 'do you have the tune in question at 320kpbs, so I can play it in a rave?'.
I can't think of a way to ask this that doesn't sound petty, so I'm just going to apologise and ask: how much time do the proponents of the hardcore continuum actually spend in raves these days? It can't be a coincidence that the most vocal critics of the Nuum are the same people I see in raves every week, hearing these sounds mutating, evolving, and igniting, chatting to the producers and DJs, and working it out with their feet as well as with a pencil. It's all very well saying funky is unrelated to the hardcore continuum genres, as K-Punk does, but was he one of the 100 odd people in a snow-capped FWD>> last week to see Jammer, who produced grime classic 'Destruction', gingerly spitting bars on funky records, played by Maximum, who is to date primarily a grime DJ? Or does this little mini-continuum make funky 'okay now'?
We know there are some common threads to the last 20 years of UK club music. I acknowledged in my FACT review of Zomby's Where Were U In 92? that there is great passion among this 'resentful generation' for our rave predecessors. But that question Zomby asks in his album title: that's not a plaintive cry for a bygone era, a halcyon time when rigid formulae dictated our youth, that's a very stoned, very talented producer taking the piss out of his antecedents, even as he pays homage to them. And when he finished that side-project he got on with the business of making 'Silver Rizla', 'Be Reasonable, Expect The Impossible', 'Dipset Birdcall', and a whole bag of extraordinary, twisted-steel sci-fi anthems that defy genrefication, and defy the continuum.
Ultimately my question to the Nuum Generals is this: what purpose does it serve to continue to blithely abstract something whose tangible realities are so dazzling? The urgent, rapidly-unfolding tasks of the revolution are happening now, and it would be a mistake to confine them to Procrustes' bed.