A kung fu fighter in a disco

I missed it being on Moggy's LJ! I will go seek.

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Have I talked about the cuntinuum symposium I went to the other week? It was very funny, k-spunk got murked repeatedly and went purple in the face. Am hoping Melissa B (http://melissabradshaw.net/) writes about it at some point as promised.

Don't plan to read whatever nonsense he's coming up with this time; whenever I've expressed frustration about him and SR, a frequent response is that they must be doing something right to get us all fixated on what they think. And I'm like, absolutely not - the reason I, and people I know, rant about them is because we constantly see things like this - people linking to them and talking about them and generally treating them as authorities, even under the guise of mockery or disagreement. I'd rather just ignore them at this point.

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Also, I've pimped this elsewhere already, but Cooly G's Fact mix (http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2507&Itemid=98) is a must-hear and probably single-handedly proves the carpers and moaners wrong. Joining the dots between abstract, dreamy beats and big-room diva house to incredible effect. (BTW: Cooly G is a single mother and semi-pro footballer /irrelevant backstory)

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it is amazing! but it doesn't go to disprove kpunk's thesis at all, alas - his thesis is undisprovable given that it rests on an impossible assumption.

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oh god it really is amazing. WHERE CAN I HEAR THIS WOMAN DJ?

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I don't know! I've never seen her play...surely she must be a future Night Slugs guest though.

'Dis Boy Pt 4' is so gorgeous - it's the murmured "he says he wants to run away" one - and I've had her new ones, 'Narst' and 'Love Dub', on loop all weekend...

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The difference here - and the reason it got my attention - is that I *didn't* come across this through people going "oh look at Keith and his great theories". I found it via the other half of my infostream - ad planners and comms people who I suspect have never dipped so much as a toe in the music blogosphere, going "fascinating article on cultural exhaustion in the New Statesman". So the authorityness has happened because of the channel it's in.

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theastronomymod.livejournal.com

This may be a stupid question but, link to Moggy's blog, pls? (Do you mean PirateMoggy - and do I have to be a friend to read this rebuttal piece?)

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nah it's unlocked - here you go (http://piratemoggy.livejournal.com/367782.html)! (ps i just remembered i didn't reply to your text yesterday - this is because i didn't recognise those lyrics...did you find out what they were in the end?)

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theastronomymod.livejournal.com

No, I never did find out. I think I have fallen in love with a new genre - Pound Shop Disco! It's even better than what they play in New Look. Sod Top Shop, I aspire to do a DJ set in the local Pound Shop.

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koganbot

Excuse the ignorant question. but whom do you mean by "Keith"? Are he and Mark K-Punk one and the same?

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boyofbadgers.livejournal.com

Sorry, yes, K-Punk = Keith Punk.

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1. yeah it's a pity how his claims for "an energy crisis in culture" are based on-- the feeling that dance music these days is too easy to relate back to dance music ten years ago (which is his stock in trade! "the fact that i can do what i always do means that culture is dead!!").
(I don't know much about northern soul, particularly, but was that part of an energy crisis in culture? cos as far as i'm aware that actually used records from the previous decade, rather than records that are not unimaginable given the sounds of the previous decade. but no-one talks about it as a crisis of creativity, as the loss of youth's energy)

2. there is a whole other rest of culture, mister punk! you could actually have *bolstered* your argument by talking about videogames in a grumpy-old-man way! (i mean really aren't most videogames just doing things we could have imagined them doing in the nineties?? is this because the youth have no-- imagination??)

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I think gaming & interactivity in general is the biggest counter-argument, given that his piece is all about detecting tech shift through textural rupture. But I don't really know anything about gaming.

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from what i've read i think gaming would be not a counter-argt but a definite backup!

petronia explains it a lot better than i could.

though maybe k-punk would be against gaming anyway as even the super interactive stuff is still pretty top-down (it's a lot harder to go out and make your own mmorpg! unless you do it the old-fashioned way).

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and by old-fashioned i mean 'retro': you can go out and make yr own text-adventure game or MOO very easily but it's a self-conscious act of revivalism, it's like making a typewriter-and-glue fanzine, or like making compilation tapes with actual c90s, it's not where the kids are at.

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petronia.livejournal.com

I have seen exactly this argument being made based on the fact that CG improvements to video games now feel incremental rather than disruptive, or rather have passed the threshhold where they change the experience appreciably as the 2D to 3D shift did. (Actually, I would argue even this - like FF7 introduced cinematic storytelling bits to RPGs, say, but it's just cinematic storytelling i.e. mini-movies. And gameplay-wise 2D has always faked the 3D experience rather passably when it wanted to, because Western civ has about 500 years of experience in that as well.) But obviously all that means is that improvements are coming from elsewhere, eg. Wired's idea of "crowdsourcing" puzzle games i.e. building in the concept of player-compiled online walkthroughs by introducing RL or geo-based keys, which is as it should be.

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that's a nice point about games and user-defined evolution of them online. these concepts are fascinating and do make up for what turned me off games generally some ten years ago.

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I also don't think it's true that "we can't hear technology any more" - we can even see it!

His CGI mention is pretty apposite: as CGI gets smoother and better, we become more capable of seeing old less-polished CGI. Watching the Matrix today feels like watching an Ed Wood movie. In situations where technology is getting smoother, our ability to perceive (older forms of) technology becomes refined, almost by accident. This wouldn't affect our immediate experience of every new thing if we experienced only new things, one after the other, in a cultural vaccuum: everything would seem as transparent as the previous thing. But... we don't! Every new book affects all previous books. Knowing new sounds, we listen to old sounds and are struck by how ragged their edges are, and we think 'cor that sounds awesome' or 'man how lame' and cherish or ignore accordingly.

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martinskidmore.livejournal.com

Besides the point that he is looking at the stuff that still seems familiar to him, this strikes me as the kind of moan we hear from middle-aged people all the time. The idea of periodic revolutions in music goes back a long way, and people are always wanting to know where the latest one is. This argument is usually constructed fairly lamely, and distorted to fit some kind of regular cycle: '56 rock 'n' roll, '66 psychedelia, '76 punk and so on. This considerably overstates, in my view, the importance of psychedelia, as well as being a bizarre date for the start of rock 'n' roll, and the usual timeline people construct on this omits hip hop, surely the most important development of recentish decades.

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rechabite.livejournal.com

the sociopolitical perspective of this is quite fascinating and it's a pity mark didn't look into it further, i.e. in times of crisis people look back to reassuring music from whatever perspective so just as country is now resurgent in the us, from rascal flatts to carolina liars, so is early nineties rave - once the plateau of unapologetic futurism - coming back to cushion uncertain uk citizens with prodigy as entirely logical status quo equivalent plus blindingly obvious-but-dammit they work things like tiny dancer.

the sticking point viz. tech rupture is that it is still clearly capable of happening despite/because of slick 2009 streamlining as anyone who's listened to the halfway point of "bonkers" will know. also fergie's PEOPLE IN THE PLAYYYCE coming on like techno-etna in the midst of boom boom pow (revenge for b/board stopping planet rock at #49 back in '82 despite selling 2m?) is up there with davey payne on rhythm stick, no really!

but like anything (and to get all constant lambert abt it) the best music tends to be about discovering new perspectives on the existing rather than forming new languages per se (since not everyone is stockhausen or bailey but wow what a consolidatory slipstream!) and at the moment pop/dubstep/hip hop/etc. seems to be doing that just fine.

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"in times of crisis people look back to reassuring music from whatever perspective so just as country is now resurgent in the us, from rascal flatts to carolina liars, so is early nineties rave - once the plateau of unapologetic futurism - coming back to cushion uncertain uk citizens with prodigy as entirely logical status quo equivalent plus blindingly obvious-but-dammit they work things like tiny dancer."

I can't tell if this is a joke or not. :(

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"Energy Flash was, of course, the title the critic Simon Reynolds gave to his compendious study of rave music and its progeny."

uh...has Mark Fisher actually heard the Beltram track itself? Not like SR plucked it out of thin air...

As ever I am in two minds about this argument. I have come to accept that as technological innovation isn't really a constant flow, the same can be said of creative invention esp. within something like pop music and commercial pressures. But big whoop, I still get entertainment out of it every year and I would say 'but less so than even 5 years ago' except I remember having this dreadful feeling that things were running on empty even then (looking back this seems daft or just not important - I think doing my Ultramix project helped me here tho).

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Back at University I remember an evening pontificating in the bar about how there could never be a 90s revival because it was itself all revivals do you see. Gratifyingly I was almost completely wrong.

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I pretty much said the same thing on Saturday tho! I don't really hear 'the 90s' in anything this decade, as opposed to a continuation or refinement of ideas that stretch back longer.

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I suppose what I really meant is that '90s revival' would mean too many different things to too many different people tho.

so yes there can be a 90s revival in the form of e.g. Zomby but the appeal is so niche and impact will be negligible. a lot of old skool ravers probably wouldn't be that interested in it. i'm only slightly interested myself (the original tracks are easy enough for me to access i don't feel the need for a pastiche or tribute that doesn't add something extra).

but what about '90s revivals' elsewhere? Britpop? probably, but how would you even tell? Hip-hop or black US pop in terms of production style? seems unlikely. And I'm not sure we ever stoppped having bands trying to sound like Nirvana. Hard to a see a return for boybands (either the NKOTB or Boyzone models) either.

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rechabite.livejournal.com

in terms of uk guitar muzik we seem to be at the 1991 third-on-the-bill-at-the-underworld thousand yard stare/mega city 4/senseless things cusp of revivalism. or, if you're gallows, the 25th of may (if anyone remembers THEM).

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

although i did like p*tr*dis's description of Gallows as "The Exploited, Lake and Palmer"...

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rechabite.livejournal.com

if only that were true!

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

but 90s is just starting to resurface from being the current "decade that taste forgot" now that the 80s is like the 70s was in the 90s, the shoegazing revival being the first little hint.

boybands will double deffo be back, once we're bored of talent shows (expected 2013 by current reckoning)

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perhaps Blackout Crew count as a boyband now...

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I suppose what I really meant is that '90s revival' would mean too many different things to too many different people tho.

I agree w/this, and would probably extend it to all sorts of other "revivals" - there are so many fragmented scenes and sub-scenes now that you'll inevitably find someone making music which takes its cues from some aspect of the 90s - whether consciously so or not. I mean...The-Dream's album is fairly explicitly an homage to R Kelly's 12 Play, in part, but no one's labelling it as part of a "90s revival". And there have been people taking their cues from the 90s...ever since it ended! Like, idk, TLC's 'I'm Good At Being Bad' being an obvious take on Janet's 'What About'. So if the 90s never went away - and neither did the 80s, or probably the 70s...then there can't be a revival.

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is that TLC track from '3D'? and re The-Dream/R Kelly connection - does that extend to the actual sound of the music itself (this would involve more guitar twangs and fat snare/claps instead of light synth hooks and 808 innit)? i will listen to Love vs Money tonight finally...

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