Reynolds hardcore continuum event

[Tentative Andy]

Oooh, Simon's a lot angrier in print than in person isn't he? Probably not that uncommon, I guess.

 

[nomadthethird]

Go on then, have a go at this one...

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This one is very simple. I will have to sit down with it to write it out, and find some blank sheet music, but it is not at all difficult or complicated. Anyone with a year of formal training could write a song like this in 10 minutes. (Believe it or not Kabalevsky's got them beat on the stop-n-start "defy all time-signatures" thang by about three-quarters of a century)

The only "innovative" thing that I hear in jungle and similar subgenres is the beat, which sounds like if you asked an autistic person and an epileptic person to have a baby and teach it to make drum sequences-- my least favorite part of what I hear really. I do sometimes like that sort of fast breaky beat , but more on IDM than on anything that's supposed to be "danceable." Other than that, the vocals are ok, and I like the bass-heavy echo-y production values, but again, those are nothing entirely new or mind-blowingly innovative, far from it.

 

[nomadthethird]

no one said this, no one (at least the people we're talking about here) thinks this, it would be a ridiculous position to take which is why no one takes it. clearly you haven't read any of the slobbering paens SR wrote to Timabaland & Missy E back in the late 90s-early 00s back when Tim was at the peak of his lofty powers (making aboveground pop music if there was any). plus the whole point was that he wanted grime to achieve mainstream success & to smash the pop charts.





the notion that your opinion, informed by your vast knowledge of composition & theory & engineering, is more valid than that of a "15 yr old boy who knows nothing" is just ludicrous elitist shite, come on now.

meanwhile I'll thank you not to talk to me such condescending terms - I'm a drummer, I'm well aware of what the "technical" side of music is, if not such a theoretical genius as yourself.

no thanks on that writeup - I've no doubt you could write up every snare hit & every note of the bassline but you'd still be a thousand miles off. if you think innovation can only take place in terms that can be expressed in time signatures & keys then we very different ideas of what "innovation" is. especially for electronic music & doubly especially for ardkore & jungle & garage which are engineers' music (though the proper musicians sneak in sometimes as well).

in the sonics I mean the elements that move from music to music - I'm sorry to belabor this as they've been listed a thousand times - sped up chopped edited & processed breakbeats, the various endless permutations of bass heaviness, the use & recontextualization of diva vocals, ditto for ragga chanting, etc. though none of these things alone - fusing all these into something greater than the sum of its parts is a major part of the innovation.

listen as I said before if you know of another music that did this stuff first then lay it on me, I'd love to hear it.

*EDIT* - I just realized, I should ask - what exactly would you define "innovation" as? or perhaps more accurately, what would you consider to be "innovative music"?

Padraig, my whole fucking point is that NO ONE'S opinion is more 'RIGHT' when it comes to music. And "enthusiasm" doesn't make anyone more right.

Are you even reading what I'm saying or just having random emotional reactions to things you imagine that I'm saying?

 

[nomadthethird]

Yeah I winced when reynolds came out with that "fact" thing in the video.

More generally I think it would be interesting to see how the 'nuum holds up against more formal music theorising - not least because it seems blatantly obvious that it has been lashed together by fans and music journalists rather than musicologists (which is a good thing to my mind).

I'm very interested in a non-technical perspective on music, but the danger in it is that enthusiasm of the observer can sometimes tend to overstatement of just these sorts of "innovative" elements.

There were people writing in 6/4, 9/2, all sorts of weird time signatures waaaayyyy before jungle came around. There were people sampling vocals before jungle. There were people using purely digital mastering before jungle. There were people decontextualizing samples and letting them essentially "float" over the top of edgy urban dystopic "beats" before jungle (by about 15 years)...

Call me mean and cynical but as much as I may think it's a really cool distinctly British hybrid style of music, I just don't think jungle is the origin of all electronic innovation. That sort of thinking to my mind ignores too much important work from the 1950s onward. Maybe even some earlier stuff that's very important too.

 

[nomadthethird]

My comment wasn't directed at you Dan, I just think that the general level of hysteria and attacks on the 'nuum is acting as a magnifier for it's percieved importance.

So it's ok for one of the most highly visible, widely read, very probably highest paid and best known music writers in the world to attack phantom "Deleuzian" American music critics who are blasting his work (I can't think of a single one), but no one is supposed to be suspicious of this notion on a message board?

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Call me mean and cynical but as much as I may think it's a really cool distinctly British hybrid style of music, I just don't think jungle is the origin of all electronic innovation.

Did anyone ACTUALLY claim this to be the case? Or are you just having random emotional reactions to things you imagine that people are saying?

 

[nomadthethird]

it didn't seem opaque to me, that bit

but anyways, 94 percent of that talk could hardly have been more clear, starkly laid out or concrete.

while i'm here can i just say to the bloke who knows his physics (and who posts on a thread about jungle/etc musics despite despising the music!), i'm obviously not using "continuum" in the physics sense -- in fact i was unaware it had that meaning. Continuum has a sort of common parlance usage to describe a bunch of things that are linked historically, a thread running through time. The word seemed more attractive to me than "tradition", because tradition sounds a bit stuffy and static, whereas the whole point of the h-core lineage is that it keeps moving, it's always pushing forward.

That's the paradox that has kept me enthralled for so long -- a tradition that keeps moving forward, changing,. Also the balancing act of being open to outside influences yet remaining "relatively self-contained" (whoever said that --padraig? dominic? -- hit the nail on the head).

Sorry, I guess I must have mistakenly assumed that someone using a term straight out of physics/mathematics must have meant to use it metaphorically referring to the concept out of physics/mathematics. I wasn't aware that there was a common use sense of this term that referred to a historically linked thread...

But either way, don't all genres (and their subgenres) remain "relatively self-contained"? I can see how all music works very generally this way, but I don't quite see the value in isolating one genre/set of subgenres as a continuum...

 

[nomadthethird]

Did anyone ACTUALLY claim this to be the case? Or are you just having random emotional reactions to things you imagine that people are saying?

Did you watch the presentation or read Kpunk's FACT article? Because I did, and both CLEARLY and EMPHATICALLY state that ALL INNOVATION IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC for the PAST 20 YEARS is thanks only to JUNGLE and the HARDCORE CONTINUUM.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Did you watch the presentation or read Kpunk's FACT article? Because I did, and both CLEARLY and EMPHATICALLY state that ALL INNOVATION IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC for the PAST 20 YEARS is thanks only to JUNGLE and the HARDCORE CONTINUUM.

FWIW (and i know that it ain't much in the context of this discussion) this sounds like utter bollox to me! Are you sure he says this? You haven't misinterpreted or exaggerated the claim?

 

[whatever]

Did you watch the presentation or read Kpunk's FACT article? Because I did, and both CLEARLY and EMPHATICALLY state that ALL INNOVATION IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC for the PAST 20 YEARS is thanks only to JUNGLE and the HARDCORE CONTINUUM.

i donut hv the FACT article linky to hand, cld u maybe give us the aktual quote here on tehsensus ? where one of them clearly & emphatically says all innovation for past twenty years is thanks only to jungle and hardkorez continuem ? ta

 

[nomadthethird]

I can't isolate clips from the FACT speech, so you're just going to have to watch it.

But here's what Kpunk says:

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, with British dance music, once so furiously inventive, now falling prey to the conditions of entropy which have long prevailed elsewhere. If only there could be a shattering break that would definitively relegate the hardcore continuum to the past…

 

[whatever]

mister boshambala we posted @ xactly teh same time JINX u r it , you can't post til i call your name but i wil call it now , MR BOSHAMBLES , u can post now haha jus playin' , great mindz tink alike o.b.v. :blows kisses 2 shmoshamblerz:

 

[Mr BoShambles]

But here's what Kpunk says:

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, with British dance music, once so furiously inventive, now falling prey to the conditions of entropy which have long prevailed elsewhere. If only there could be a shattering break that would definitively relegate the hardcore continuum to the past…

And this equates to a CLEAR and EMPHATIC statement "that ALL INNOVATION IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC for the PAST 20 YEARS is thanks only to JUNGLE and the HARDCORE CONTINUUM" ??

Hmm. Don't seem that way to me Nomad.

 

[Tentative Andy]

I'm very interested in a non-technical perspective on music, but the danger in it is that enthusiasm of the observer can sometimes tend to overstatement of just these sorts of "innovative" elements.

There were people writing in 6/4, 9/2, all sorts of weird time signatures waaaayyyy before jungle came around. There were people sampling vocals before jungle. There were people using purely digital mastering before jungle. There were people decontextualizing samples and letting them essentially "float" over the top of edgy urban dystopic "beats" before jungle (by about 15 years)...

Call me mean and cynical but as much as I may think it's a really cool distinctly British hybrid style of music, I just don't think jungle is the origin of all electronic innovation. That sort of thinking to my mind ignores too much important work from the 1950s onward. Maybe even some earlier stuff that's very important too.

Too tired to do a proper response right now, might do in the morning, but the short reply would be that you have to see jungle and the claims made about it in context. Put it this way, more complex or experimental rhythms might have been put together before then, but you would never have had them playing out on dancefloors with huge numbers of people going mental to them. That was new.

Not meaning this to have a go btw, as everything you've been saying in this thread has been reasonable and well-argued. Just trying to go some way to explaining why some of us get so excited about this music.

 

[nomadthethird]

And this equates to a CLEAR and EMPHATIC statement "that ALL INNOVATION IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC for the PAST 20 YEARS is thanks only to JUNGLE and the HARDCORE CONTINUUM" ??

Hmm. Don't seem that way to me Nomad.

Uh, yes.

There has been "no other music" that couldn't be fitted into the hardcore continuum even 20 years later?

HUH?

You really agree with that statement?

 

[nomadthethird]

Too tired to do a proper response right now, might do in the morning, but the short reply would be that you have to see jungle and the claims made about it in context. Put it this way, more complex or experimental rhythms might have been put together before then, but you would never have had them playing out on dancefloors with huge numbers of people going mental to them. That was new.

Not meaning this to have a go btw, as everything you've been saying in this thread has been reasonable and well-argued. Just trying to go some way to explaining why some of us get so excited about this music.

Yeah, but saying 'this is the first time x has been big on the dancefloor' and this is 'the origin of all electronic music innovation for the next twenty years' are two entirely different claims.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

I find the idea that jungle and the hardcore continuum have been the sole source(s) of innovation in electronic music over the last 20 years to be highly dubious. But i am as yet unconvinced that this is being argued by anyone - Kpunk included.

 

[Tentative Andy]

Yeah, but saying 'this is the first time x has been big on the dancefloor' and this is 'the origin of all electronic music innovation for the next twenty years' are two entirely different claims.

Yeah, fair enough. If people have been making those latter claims, then it can only be put down to music journalists getting overexcited, which is just a professional hazard I think.
However, I think it's fair to say that the innovations of that overlapping period of breakbeat hardcore and early jungle have been the originary influence for most of the electronic music made in London (and regional scenes that connect/identify closely with London) since then. That's the basic claim of the continuum 'theory', if it ammounts to one, and it's one that I think holds. And given the ammount and the quality of this subsequent music, it's clearly a chunk of culture worth giving some respect.

 

[nomadthethird]

I find the idea that jungle and the hardcore continuum have been the sole source(s) of innovation in electronic music over the last 20 years to be highly dubious. But i am as yet unconvinced that this is being argued by anyone - Kpunk included.

Why don't you, say, watch the damn presentation before you comment? I did.

 

[nomadthethird]

Yeah, fair enough. If people have been making those latter claims, then it can only be put down to music journalists getting overexcited, which is just a professional hazard I think.
However, I think it's fair to say that the innovations of that overlapping period of breakbeat hardcore and early jungle have been the originary influence for most of the electronic music made in London (and regional scenes that connect/identify closely with London) since then. That's the basic claim of the continuum 'theory', if it ammounts to one, and it's one that I think holds. And given the ammount and the quality of this subsequent music, it's clearly a chunk of culture worth giving some respect.

I don't see any problems with people saying, "in the UK this is probably the most seminal music" or whatever, fine, a little boring, but fine. The problem is when you drag in strawmen and imaginary enemies who are trying to take away your write to theorize continua who live in America, where most people haven't even heard of jungle and definitely are not writing their own music in response to jungle's innovations. And where most people are epically clueless about post-structuralism (they'd probably think it was what happens when you get done with a couch from Ikea) let alone Deleuze.