Morphing the munglists

Back to rave last week. Czuk and I landed in some stereotype nu jungle jump-off in ghetto rave venue/pubclub Goldsmiths Tavern, a night made palatable by an enthused local crowd even as the music made a standard out of its own bog. Yes the mood was better there than last time, what with laydeez free and the still-liberating deshackler of the madfast jungle, put on by Kings of the Nu School and with Skibadee representing the only known.

His name ensured an MC-led angle to it. Each tune sped past unremarkable by any other characteristic, this functionality emphasised by the treble seeming to be down on the record to give the chatter its space, siren and riff-free. Each time though the 100ish crowd helped to make each lick seem more vital, more edgy than perhaps either the present-day post-garage or four-beat variants. It’s surely time jungle as a music moved on from its psychedelic concrete heyday but this may be unlikely while the spirit changes it in half-death. Maybe it should roughen up the beats again and take a different reality, like these.

On a personalised and selfish note, because I blog like that, the night emphasised the unfulfilled futility of any nights out when the interdependables are back at home. So schooled now in the metaphorical boat-pushing out and barely able to resist the flow in any case, this was made painfully evident by the need to go relatively early, leaving the 171 bus and home as chief loci for the biscuitworkings. No point in going out if the deshackler can’t be accessed, but it was still a welcome few hours away from corpo-reality.

Geoff Barrow: Mark Ronson is to Soul Music...

... what Shakin Stevens is to Rock 'n Roll"
Saw this in Mojo over a man's shoulder while on the 8:30 to Sutton and had to laugh. Ten seconds looking at images of the Brit New Yorker funking his guitar off, or indeed walking back to Amy-Lily-Sadie-Kate's at 4am, and the rock-soul man's sheeny oeuvre begins to grate. You know how serious producers disdain to mix business with pleasure, Marky Mark. And apparently this little spat has a bit of history.
Given that this post was mainly a vehicle to upload the the rmx as outlined in the previous post, that could well make me what DJ Otzi is to house. Crinkle-christ!

Spiriting rave

I’m adding to the noise around the 20th anniversary of rave, the summer of 88 generally credited with its birth as a mass movement. Twenty years, that’s a lot of anthems. By going overground and then splintering into a million different if not mutually hostile factions, dance music was able to constantly regenerate and replicate, keep going without lapsing into a cult. Hip-hop may have lasted a lot longer but apart from a very few artists still flipping the script, that scene has long been unable to bring anything new and vital to the mainstream. The ‘I was there and this is my two pennorth’ articles will come thick and fast – avoid most if you can and concentrate on archival stuff like this on house in the US. The Guardian of course is so cool that it started this off a year earlier. Like, yah, I was bang into house in 86, it was so liberating back then.

Twenty years on, and if you say you’re going raving that’s still a statement of intent, of plausible difference. It doesn’t sound like a niche, nostalgic night out like, say, a northern soul or a mod night might, because it has never gone away, never been satisfied that the first emissions from Chicago and Detroit were the perfect template. In 1988, my older sister was going down the local town venue to listen to ‘acid house’ (dance as a close friend of pop has always been in and around the charts), I, still a year away from GCSES, was waiting for my moment.


Even the most enthusiastic heads will be sanguine about any revolutionary-transcendental effect it has had, and cynics will say that the dance music culture has just made societies more addictive, more in thrall to appetite and desire, chasing the chemical hit over any quotidian reality, falling thrall to narcosis. It’s a pity, because the music does sound better on drugs, the communal high of a rave or club puts other leisure options into the shade and invariably those who have been on the rave turnmill are politically more progressive than those who only left the public house to go to nightclubs and pull. And of course the great thing about the wide-scale diversity of the movement that a definitive history of rave is impossible, you may have stalwarts of one scene or one place but this was transnational and nobody’s been through all the scenes for that long. After the techno boom of 88-90, you had to choose one of many paths.

Further proof of rave’s vitality is seen by it’s feeding through to parasitic cultures wanting to take a bit of that spirit. The indie-rock scene is the obvious example, and not for the first time. For those still keeping check of the emissions from the corporate bedfellow, I find Marc Riley’s Brain Surgery by far the best, bullshit and hyperbole-free, constantly teaming up new quality with older selections. The last show I heard rave motifs were being appropriated in at least a couple of new tunes – Cheeky Cheeky & the Nosebleeds’ trying the best part of the Pacific State out on a guitar for their Slow Kids, XX Teens’ latest dependent on one of those queasy, uncanny 93-94 jungle riffs. Most bands, even defiant indie like the Courteeners (yes it’s Cortinas) are willing to put space into their tunes now, let the kickdrum do the work just like a four-four beat would. Even Semitic for his first remix has gone back to the avalonian Then for inspiration, remodelling Playing With Knives. It’s nearly done.

Depending where you look, indieboyband doyens are apparently having a whale of a time in their indie discos (ever since Sonic Mook and others they have been done properly). That scene has depended on a certain application of rave mores – in the primacy of the beat, the pushing up of the tempo, the losing one self, the never say sleep spirit and the drug taking. Don’t let that be your only port of call (patronising alert), kids! To be fair, arguably these have more connections to the electronic dance scenes, if the link-ups, diversity of nights and collaborations are anything to go by, than the rock-soul regression of Ronson, Winehouse, Duffy et al and the mainstream names of Killers-Coldplay-Editors (anyone up from Bloc Party). I dream of a radioshow which pays deference to the rave history, in the context of new output. This is still unlikely while the media owners still think rock (which died with punk) still rules and disco sucks.

A trip to Texas

(changes wanky headline, corrects beer jerky to beef jerky)
A week back from a work trip to Houston and San Antonio, Texas, and I've finally been able to blog the experience. This attempt at covering What I Saw during those four nights and five days is a dwarf in comparison with Nina’s regular, real-time and photo-supported travelogues.

With audio and video to hand and a bit of space on a half-empty plane, the 10-hour journey went as well as any flight can for someone with a fear of flying. For in-flight entertainment, I watched No Country for Old Men (providing a indication of geography perhaps with its New Mexico/West Texas backdrop, not to mention Javier Bardem’s controlled evil in pursuit of his pesos), and listened to Radiohead’s Rainbows and Mark Lamarr’s show. Personal media came in the form of an old Skream mix, it serving not only as dubstep manna but a UK cipher for the Americans and a qualification of difference from my older, wiser corporate Britpanions, if anyone were to hear or be interested. No, they’re all mature, fear-free and asleep. Then came Foals’ debut. I must admit I have been enjoying all the band’s propaganda about how good and how different swimmers they were to the rest of the bottomless indie-dance pool. That and an impressive performance on Shyter Later a few months back. All the stuff about the profound influence of proper dance on their sound was also entertaining but also proved to have negligible import – only one track took any programmed beat and made more out of the electronic flutters. That said, after time rarely invested in a full album play, there is something different about them, and it’s broadly located in a lack of rockism. There is no ‘I’m the star’ in the lead guy – indeed the vocals are set back in Sitek’s mix– and the two guitars likewise aren’t thrust centre stage but really do work to fuel the rhythm, real new wave catalysts. Time for another DVT-busting walk down to the lav.

Always lightheaded after completing a flight, this time my Brit swagger in the humid afternoon was definitely misplaced as by the time I reached customs I’d realised I’d left my CD players and batch of CDs on the plane. Cocky cock. Reflection on that in the Homeland Security queue. My first encounter with an American on his patch then came with the mild grilling and fingerprinting. It took two hours of driving in the hire car on highly elevated freeways before we found our corner of Houston, a basic chain hotel for the night. I went down the end of the block to pick up my usual essentials, carbonated piss, fatty crisps and other snacks – noticing that disarming service-centred staff attitude, coming across a 25-story condo jutting out of the sky. With the general scale so big, a pedestrian can’t really get a good perspective on even a small area of the place. We convened back at the bar and went off for a slap-up Mexican at the other end of the street, and a few last drinks in a Mexican bar on the way back, now feeling motion sickness.

The following day’s editorial shindig in a much slicker and smarter hotel a few miles away went well – weirdly I didn’t get the nerves when I did my turn but this did leave me to miss out some important information, and this left a few hours for seeing the US consumerist square in the face – at a shopping mall. No option here, we were waiting on our ride to "San Antone", and not surprisingly the experience didn’t go well. Lots of bewildering walking up and down the levels, trying to make up reasons to go into shops, lots of puzzling why people were walking so slowly (because this is their livez, motherfucker), lots of pretty Latinos headed into a wedding in an adjacent hotel, no little despond after I got through to my wife and heard City had lost. In the wait outside the dropoff point we also got a great show of all the latest massive cars (the Cadillac Escalade being the blingy jaw-dropper), and the seeming pride taken by the obese as they get dropped off to walk the five yards into the centre. Lately developed oil and petrochemical centre Houston is more pro car than other cities, but this little lifestyle snapshot was indicative of unsustainable lifestyles across the world.

We then did our bit for pre-driving season activity by riding down to San Antonio, with any guilt assuaged by the fact four of us were in one car obviated by the editor’s wife following on behind solo. Stopped off in the tiny town of Colombus near this stretch of the Colorado river, the woman in front of me expressing surprise at the flood of people into the gas station. That was our sole stop in the three-hour trip, and soon we were off the freeway and into San Antonio, home of the Alamo and therefore integral to the hegemonic vision of the US, making it more than appropriate for cheerleading conferences of US-led sectors of the economy. I would have no time for a trip round the mostly rebuilt Alamo fort area, where Americans resolutely held out (for a while) against Mexicans seeking to reclaim the state. It was lucky then that I was in a fifth floor room of the historic Menger hotel opposite, where Roosevelt, maybe Crockett and others rounded up willing and violent Americans for the fight. Ironic now that Mexicans are the absolute economic backbone of this state, as they likely are for many others.

A bit of a tourist haven for its pretty riverwalk, even balmier weather than Houston and erstwhile triumphalist history, Saint Antoine was an immediate relief from Houston because it’s a compact centre where walkers are encouraged to walk (although it’s more populous than Dallas), and a few nice buildings from the 19th century and early 20th such as the Dillard department storefront and the Morgan hotel, as well as some public rooms in the Menger. Out shortly after we all checked in to our respective hotels, horrid consensus took us to the drinking and music place of my worst nightmares – Coyote Ugly, the NYC-originated chain bar that inspired the film, where waitresses serve as bar-top dancers and also have to do perform lewd acts with fat fucks who like country rock and tequila. A load of brit squaddies were right in there lapping up the action. Pretty unedifying stuff making me feel all European. Then we left.

For the main tranche of my stay here, the trip took on the nocturnal characteristics of a med holiday, with a posse barhopping and meeting various people, each leaving it to their own judgement as to how pissed they got. One night I was last of my crowd to stay out, enjoying the hospitality of our American office counterparts if not the sound of New Order, Smiths and co being DJed through a bad 80s hi-fi system in a Latino bar ( i think this 'Latino' term is feeling slightly seedy and i'll drop it). The next I found myself actually trying to get into corporate bashes in fenced-off hotel rooms using aliases. Is this how far I’d come? I want to go all the way back. In truth, that’s where all the others had headed and I didn’t want to Billy it round the town before skulking back for an earlier-than-planned CNN feed. Plus all the drinks were free – well up to a point where others would question your dignity (yah-blah, this is work, etc).

This was played off and probably justified (“I need a drink”) by two hard days in the back of our corporate suite, editing, subbing and churning out stories for the real-time service. Yeah, basically this is what I do at home but the changed environment and unforgiving strip lights and aircon seemed to make it more demanding. This slug/slog was alleviated in the first day by free food as they were hosting a reception but no such luck in the subsequent day and a half. But it wasn’t that difficult, and even better innovation (well for them) was going on right there in front of our faces – we were hosting video and audio files as soon as we got them from the edit. Which everybody was pleased about. Generally, there were a few managisers there who at last saw the value of what it is that I do (basically turn round stories to a decent level of accuracy and speed, and keep going) by dint of being much closer to it than normal, so the trip had a personal benefit. Good to have all the issues come out in the Houston meeting too. Nevertheless, while I was in close and regular proximity to a particular bunch of people and talking to them on a relatively frank level, this was mostly functional and I kept my professional distance. You give out as much as you need to in these scenarios, live the life in parallax.

So by lunchtime on Tuesday we were done with the staring into the PC, and I had just a few moments to get the kids some stuff before we prepared for the off. At the Menger, and to return to the sizeist theme, I saw an American problem in microcosm when I asked to get my bags back from the concierge on at the time, and the very large, early 20-something must have taken 10 minutes to waddle 30 yards down the corridor and return with them.

More observation was possible on the return drive back, the odd nodding donkey, the general fertile, non-arid landscape, the repeated signs to stop off for beef jerky, the picturesque rivers traversing under the highway, the German/Dutch heritage in the names of the towns, the subprime foreclosure effect of white Americans begging for help at road junctions, the sheer size of Houston, the sheer size of Houston’s churches, business parks, gated communities, even, at its airport, its rental car zone (they probably call it Hire City or something). An hour-delay held up my journey back, but it didn’t matter what time we were flying as I wouldn’t be sleeping, especially with the often-present turbulence. Cue a film-fest of Hosseini’s Kite Runner (tears were jerked although you can read it equally as a lament for a non-invaded, non-Islamicised Kabul), The Counterfeiter and some generic NYC drugs mafia shit, this time involving the Russians. Elation again on touchdown, but overall happy to have gone even for a piecemeal experience of southern Americana.

Real music by humans

The sonic truth is that while I piss around in digital jetsam as the Djkeyll or analysing techno timbres, it’s my wife who is in the studio as I type. Well it’s not a studio but some film soundtrack guy has brought down his machines to record her accordion playing, and hopefully it will make the cut. MP3s of the tracks or at least her Citano riffing inna eastern European roma style to hopefully follow.
It remains to be seen whether I’ll add some ‘colossal beats’ down over it.

Top end theory: in praise of the empha-tick

***Warning – this discussion of the components of sonic architecture may not be for naturalist music lovers, who like to see a song as a miraculous whole pumped direct from Mark Ronson’s muse to live stage, where brass, guitars, voice and real drums work in perfect harmony
I have probably used this anecdote before but one of my mates once said he didn’t like dance music because it was all ‘tick-tick rubbish’. Did that draw me deeper into my appreciation of the top end of tunes, or was I always a tick-tick freak?
The empha-tick took sound engineers away from the closed loops of early breakbeat tunes – where a crude hi-hat knicked off a JB loop would be added, and would diverge from jungle, where the manipulation of closed Amen loops relied on the interplay between the drum and bass, that sound pressure allowing little space or need for the linear legwork offered by the techno ticker.
In garage and house, of course, that tick is a vital signal of the funky swing inherent in the genres, and producers would spend a lot of time on crucial variations, with extra sophistication sourceable from a good Lonnie Liston Smith triangle line. Joy Div and New Order sticksman Stephen Morris’s amphetamine skittling can also be seen as an inspiration for getting a good top end right. Nowadays of course the top end is many people’s entry point into the latest tunage, via the ever helpful broadcasts of trebley tin by young scrotes on the bus.
Here’s a few whose tick-tock-ticking really drove the tune, rather than just filled in the gaps on the repetitive rhythm.

Mantronix – Bassline
An early entry, El-Khaleel’s bank of machines goes off in near chaos - the rhythms almost breaking free from the programming of this simple-but-effective paean to electro sounds. Era-defining use of the old electronic handclaps too. No-one need explaining how the neu electro of Aux 88, Banks and all relied on a good, uptight tick too.

LFO – LFO
As eulogised in Simon’s Best of Bleep in smelly ‘zine Fact (I like that smell, but apparently it puts some people off – I’ve seen people on the train turn their noses up and away), LFO is an undoubted classic but it’s not acknowledged too much that the top end really pulls this track along, as well as the space bleeps and the subs. Altogether now: Titter-tis titter-tis titter-titter-tis-titter-tis!

Cosmic Baby – The Space Track
Liquid pre-commercial trance? Ja bitte. Var prima! In Harold Bluchel’s hands, the tick was integral in highlighting the blissful grace of early trance rather than the low-end bump of more UK developments. Bluchel is the Saint of Keyboard Tick as he once said he could listen to the rhythms on a Casio preset all day – and I am the same. Well for a long while anyway.

Dave Clarke – Red 2
The original rhythm fetishist, Clarkey refined his drum tracks to obsessive levels, and this is a classic of the art of meaningful tick, the future jazz storm actually made to play off the Detroit pads and generally work harder and be higher up in the mix then the pulse beat. Also, it’s selectively deployed for greater emphasis. One the flip the top end gets hydraulic; the anoraks just got more excited. Partly inspired loads of Ed Rush style techstep, where a battling quasi metal symbal sound was layered over the two-step, dragging you deeper down the stygian depths. I’ve overlooked techstep’s also standard use of the generic tick, au Rush’s Raven and most others.

Sandals – Feet (Slam remix)
An early indication of the Glaswegian’s penchant for faithful and skillful homages to their early techno favourites. This stripped out almost everything of the stoned acid jazzer’s sideways wobble to major on a pummelling, paranoid track reliant for impetus on the interplay between the relentless tickle and percussive use of snares.
More adept producers soon started to realise that the high end did not need to be one simple metronome marking time. Laurent Garnier’s Bout de Souffle being a prime example of where producers start using several drum machines to fire off several layers of lysergic emissions.

The Gossip – Standing at the Edge of Control
Indie regulars might think the high hats were EQd too high, but that brittle percussion and kick drum are emblematic both of the band’s fondness of electronic dance music and the emotion of the song’s title. Head’s in bits but still seeing patterns.

Allez Allez: Allez-y encore!

I wouldn’t have picked a cold night in New Cross among the students to be my best night out in years (I’m not quite old enough to be their father etc) but then picking implies prior arrangement and pre-ordained nights aren’t usually the best either.

The Allez Allez DJs have been nicely building up their reputation and their night at the refixed Amersham Arms has also been developing a following. The template is electro-disco-house and some outer, rockier movements at opportune times. We turned up early, meeting Rachel and her flatmate and it was filling it out nicely, so we grabbed a place and, for the non-narking dads, got drinking. Buoying up the old boys.

Saturday night’s star turn was Kompakt man Axel Willner aka The Field, who has been turning modern house heads. It’s like a clubby Ulrich Schnauss. People have called it shoegaze techno for the way he extends and repeats the usual house riffs into droney blankets of sound as opposed to the usually distinct musical passages of minimal techno. It wasn’t clear from my side of the floor whether the Swede was PA-ing off a PC or DJ-ing, but it didn’t really matter as this would be an auteur set anyway.

The first 15 minutes of his set he was trading on goodwill and the energy of the crowd. Thought vs Action revels in not-quite-built rhythms, and insubstantial iteration of Abba riffs and voices. Where before his set the crowd had got moving to tunes such as Laidback’s Don’t Ride the White Horse, Bumblebee Unltd’s Ladybug and a canny dub of Curtis’ Pusherman - direct expressions of musical devotion, no filter from inspiration to production to transmission, here it seems as though he was playing with a crowd now bent on partying, acknowledging the decades of dance history by putting distance between his musical sources. Haunted, post-modern house.

But eventually the filtered proggy twists, occasional acid lines and, yes, trance penchant make sense and hit home, giving the crowd further peaks. Over the Ice moods it out and Love vs Distance bangs harder than on the Kompakt version, the looped peaks and troughs coming and going to dizzying effect. Packed and perspiring, by now the security have given up keeping the crowd off the stage and up there it’s a joyous mass. I remember the guy who looked like a 70s Brooklyn Jewish wide guy and someone who had taken his crappy 80s Foster-type jumper off leading the crowd. Many others too. Willner finished around half one, and the crowd were well up for seeing the 90 minutes out.

They probably know because they keep getting told by NME and Time Out among other media, but the Goldsmith and other local students are dead lucky having nights like this on the doorstep. Hopefully, I’ll be popping down again soon.