Just uploaded on mixcloud my latest mix, Endless Dubstep which can be found here
http://www.mixcloud.com/Griff01/endless-dubstep/
the end was cut off by mixcloud (cheers...) but most of what makes it is in there. Ideas for my next one will be junglist, and probably have some thing to do with the riots down in london. Enjoy this in the mean time. I've had chance to listen to my new cds I mentioned so I'll get reviews on those ASAP
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Monday, 1 August 2011
Cratedigging coming up
Because of the taxman I have less money to throw around this month, so I won't be cratedigging this month but instead I've ordered myself Unreleased Dubs 1994-1996 by Remarc and Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space! by Scientist. These will be more reviews rather just saying what I've discovered, though the unreleased dubs should give a few nice surprises
Sunday, 24 July 2011
Japan
Reading Simon Reynold's Retromania (not trying to plug his book, honest!), there's a chapter, with the basic gist looking at how Japan, rather than take on a music style and add their own twist to it, actually it copy the music to a tee. This isn't just the music itself they copy, but the entire subculture, case point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJh6vH6V_to
I mean, on one level, impressive. They've learnt the moves and for people with no jamaican influence on a national level, and I can't imagine there are too many Japanese people with Jamaican heritage knocking about, this is impressive. Hell, those who go the length will speak better patois than me, the one with jamaican family. My main gripes go to culture and musical production.
The problem with copying a culture like this is twofold. 1st, there's a balance problem with actually living a culture and how its represented. Yes, people from other cultures latch on to those that don't inherently relate to their own, that's how cultures spread. But these guys copy a culture meticulously. Could you imagine anybody in this club, coming from a deferential place such as Japan, coping with ruffneck Jamaica? This goes for any culture they manage to copy. This is a personal gripe though, and doesn't matter as much as the fact that the Japanese never add anything to the musical culture they take on.
Take Britain, our history is to take American forms, make it our own, and give it back to the Americans. Metal for example was bastardized RnB, the Americans have since changed it for their own purposes, and a culture for this strand of music has grown over the decades. There would have been those in those days that copied the RnB to a tee, but it's been those kinds of groups and people who take a known form, fuck around with it and make something new. There seems to be no room for this in Japanese culture, which is a shame when you consider that Japan is a nation that with everything else is seen as one of the best for adding its own touches. For technology, adding their own twists to new things, anime that invariably has Western themes told in a Japanese style, so why can't their music scene do this?
The last point links to the musical which affects everyone who just copies without adding their own quirks. The Japanese artists can make the music to a tee...which means by a paradox the music sounds wooden, like they are trying too hard to get everything right. Here's one example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVzFwDoG8D0
This is Sleep Walker's Wind a bought a while back. The singing seems nice, the playing is tight, everything is right...too right. I mean, there's is nothing about this track that, or this band, that's stands out to me, its just a nice, jazz band. As I say the Japanese aren't the only ones who suffer this, but they seem to be the only ones who suffer for carbon copying as a nation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJh6vH6V_to
I mean, on one level, impressive. They've learnt the moves and for people with no jamaican influence on a national level, and I can't imagine there are too many Japanese people with Jamaican heritage knocking about, this is impressive. Hell, those who go the length will speak better patois than me, the one with jamaican family. My main gripes go to culture and musical production.
The problem with copying a culture like this is twofold. 1st, there's a balance problem with actually living a culture and how its represented. Yes, people from other cultures latch on to those that don't inherently relate to their own, that's how cultures spread. But these guys copy a culture meticulously. Could you imagine anybody in this club, coming from a deferential place such as Japan, coping with ruffneck Jamaica? This goes for any culture they manage to copy. This is a personal gripe though, and doesn't matter as much as the fact that the Japanese never add anything to the musical culture they take on.
Take Britain, our history is to take American forms, make it our own, and give it back to the Americans. Metal for example was bastardized RnB, the Americans have since changed it for their own purposes, and a culture for this strand of music has grown over the decades. There would have been those in those days that copied the RnB to a tee, but it's been those kinds of groups and people who take a known form, fuck around with it and make something new. There seems to be no room for this in Japanese culture, which is a shame when you consider that Japan is a nation that with everything else is seen as one of the best for adding its own touches. For technology, adding their own twists to new things, anime that invariably has Western themes told in a Japanese style, so why can't their music scene do this?
The last point links to the musical which affects everyone who just copies without adding their own quirks. The Japanese artists can make the music to a tee...which means by a paradox the music sounds wooden, like they are trying too hard to get everything right. Here's one example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVzFwDoG8D0
This is Sleep Walker's Wind a bought a while back. The singing seems nice, the playing is tight, everything is right...too right. I mean, there's is nothing about this track that, or this band, that's stands out to me, its just a nice, jazz band. As I say the Japanese aren't the only ones who suffer this, but they seem to be the only ones who suffer for carbon copying as a nation
Cratedigging #2
A trip to town today (24/07)saw me pick up a couple of singles i've been hankering for, and a nice surprise:
Ding Dong-Bad Man Forward Badman Pull Up (The Bug and Flowdan Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfxN3zEkBAw&feature=BFa&list=PL3ED0374DEA13BC5F&index=2
Definitely Greensleeves thing to push ragga influenced and bass heavy dubstep, kinda needed when both the underground and mainstream is being dominated by the 'filthy' stuff. Comes with Dub version
Progression- 150BPM/Lost in the Jungle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyvNc7jqSLc
Classic banger from '92 from Ibiza Records
And this editions surprise:
Dance Squad- Yu-A Raggamuffin/ Ganjaman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hflQG5OUsEE
Was actually looking for something else and stumbled across this. the ragga names did the trick
Ding Dong-Bad Man Forward Badman Pull Up (The Bug and Flowdan Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfxN3zEkBAw&feature=BFa&list=PL3ED0374DEA13BC5F&index=2
Definitely Greensleeves thing to push ragga influenced and bass heavy dubstep, kinda needed when both the underground and mainstream is being dominated by the 'filthy' stuff. Comes with Dub version
Progression- 150BPM/Lost in the Jungle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyvNc7jqSLc
Classic banger from '92 from Ibiza Records
And this editions surprise:
Dance Squad- Yu-A Raggamuffin/ Ganjaman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hflQG5OUsEE
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Coming up Next
A taster on what to expect on this blog in the next week or 2:
Japan:- My views on the Japanese taking on Western musics and subcultures
Turkish germans:- Little side project on how the Turks, Germany's biggest minority, have influenced the German music scene
Cratedigging: As I get paid at the end of the month, I take a trip, definitely to Vinyl Exchange, probably Eastern Bloc as well, to see what I come across
Japan:- My views on the Japanese taking on Western musics and subcultures
Turkish germans:- Little side project on how the Turks, Germany's biggest minority, have influenced the German music scene
Cratedigging: As I get paid at the end of the month, I take a trip, definitely to Vinyl Exchange, probably Eastern Bloc as well, to see what I come across
Sunday, 10 July 2011
Cratedigging
After going for some vinyl in vinyl exchange and realising the vinyl i wanted wasn't up to scratch, I discovered their crate section of £1 vinyl for DnB, worth a listen from dons:
Pascal: Johnny 2003
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34XjG4CJD5k
Roni Size: out of breath ( Roni Size for a pound? Bargin!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttaExv4SIjQ
and yippee I actually found some bassline, in Manchester on vinyl!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKUD_MPk7Ik
video, tacky? a bit
Pascal: Johnny 2003
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34XjG4CJD5k
Roni Size: out of breath ( Roni Size for a pound? Bargin!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttaExv4SIjQ
and yippee I actually found some bassline, in Manchester on vinyl!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKUD_MPk7Ik
video, tacky? a bit
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Bands today
This blog has usually looked at underground electronic musics, and usually black-orientated ones (that's my thing) and if memory serves me right I've tapped into a little bit of today's bands. Well today I have another go hacking into bands of today.
The inspiration for this comes from me and a pal starting to jam together, em on bass, him on guitar. I got into bass originally because of post-punk (Joy Division, PiL, Talking Heads etc, look em up), before getting into hip hop, soul, funk and reggae properly (as opposed to being household background music). I eventually moved on from those musics to British urban, for want of a better word, and picked up the decks and getting onto radio for a time, at the time of writing. My pal on the other hand got majorly into hip hop, before slipping out of that and now bases his guitar playing on blues, old style RnB and Hendrix-esque playing styles.
The point of this background? Not to delve into how these might be looking too much in the past (I've moaned about that already, and Simon Reynolds book Retromania has a stab at that notion as well) but to give a flavour of how these styles might gel together. My pal is the one with the ideas bustling inside him, it would be hard to de-rail him. He wants a raw style, that he argues isn't currently in modern bands. I see a lack of vibe in a lot of modern electronic styles too, music I'd rather listen to at home than a club (garage is the biggest criminal of this, clearly not having a catalyst to take it out of the garage frame altogether). I for one have little interest in modern bands, that's probably more down to taste. As far as my bass playing style goes, I want a groove to it, hence the styles I mentioned. Now it's early days, but essentially a melding of complicated grooving basslines with a raw rhythm guitar could the scenes own catalyst, creating a new vibe for the 2010s.
There was a time where bands did this kind of melding and re-interpretation. Bands like the Stones and Beatles had their own take on RnB (my pals current period) and the psot punk bands mixed the energy of punk with abrasive guitars and funky bass (how I picked up the bass). Nobody these days seems willing to do this. The alternative scene is mainly white dominated, fair enough. The problem is now it's pretty incestuous, there's little exploring outside of 'white' playing styles. There's almost no touching of modern technology, the new taboo that would somehow ruin the authenticity of the music. Strictly guitar-bass-drums on both sides of the Atlantic.
There have been some examples of bands going to the unknown, such as the Reverand of the Reverand and the Makers going for his 'dancehall' album. I'm a bit sceptical of this, sounds like he's trying to do a modern version of doing what the Clash and John Lydon did in their time rather than anything groundbreaking. More importantly, this isn't likely to be incorporating dancehall into his own, but his interpretation of it, and it's unlikely to be a similar result a la the Beatles.
My message for bands of the day, of whatever style, but mainly of indie/alternative fame, break out of doing just the one style, It doesn't have to be black music you look at, but understand that part of the reason people will look back at eras with bands with bigger legacies is because they though outside the box
The inspiration for this comes from me and a pal starting to jam together, em on bass, him on guitar. I got into bass originally because of post-punk (Joy Division, PiL, Talking Heads etc, look em up), before getting into hip hop, soul, funk and reggae properly (as opposed to being household background music). I eventually moved on from those musics to British urban, for want of a better word, and picked up the decks and getting onto radio for a time, at the time of writing. My pal on the other hand got majorly into hip hop, before slipping out of that and now bases his guitar playing on blues, old style RnB and Hendrix-esque playing styles.
The point of this background? Not to delve into how these might be looking too much in the past (I've moaned about that already, and Simon Reynolds book Retromania has a stab at that notion as well) but to give a flavour of how these styles might gel together. My pal is the one with the ideas bustling inside him, it would be hard to de-rail him. He wants a raw style, that he argues isn't currently in modern bands. I see a lack of vibe in a lot of modern electronic styles too, music I'd rather listen to at home than a club (garage is the biggest criminal of this, clearly not having a catalyst to take it out of the garage frame altogether). I for one have little interest in modern bands, that's probably more down to taste. As far as my bass playing style goes, I want a groove to it, hence the styles I mentioned. Now it's early days, but essentially a melding of complicated grooving basslines with a raw rhythm guitar could the scenes own catalyst, creating a new vibe for the 2010s.
There was a time where bands did this kind of melding and re-interpretation. Bands like the Stones and Beatles had their own take on RnB (my pals current period) and the psot punk bands mixed the energy of punk with abrasive guitars and funky bass (how I picked up the bass). Nobody these days seems willing to do this. The alternative scene is mainly white dominated, fair enough. The problem is now it's pretty incestuous, there's little exploring outside of 'white' playing styles. There's almost no touching of modern technology, the new taboo that would somehow ruin the authenticity of the music. Strictly guitar-bass-drums on both sides of the Atlantic.
There have been some examples of bands going to the unknown, such as the Reverand of the Reverand and the Makers going for his 'dancehall' album. I'm a bit sceptical of this, sounds like he's trying to do a modern version of doing what the Clash and John Lydon did in their time rather than anything groundbreaking. More importantly, this isn't likely to be incorporating dancehall into his own, but his interpretation of it, and it's unlikely to be a similar result a la the Beatles.
My message for bands of the day, of whatever style, but mainly of indie/alternative fame, break out of doing just the one style, It doesn't have to be black music you look at, but understand that part of the reason people will look back at eras with bands with bigger legacies is because they though outside the box
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