murkage

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I was gonna post this on my own LJ but it's a welcome counterpoint to that k-spunk article from yesterday, I think. The other week, I went to a symposium on the hardcore cuntinuum at the University of East London, which is WAY WAY WAY OUT EAST, Cyprus is so far out but I love the DLR so it was all good. I missed k-spunk's talk because I was interviewing Tori Amos (and tbh her academic babble is so much more preferable) but that didn't matter - I was there to support Dan Hancox and Joe Muggs and they were both excellent, v funny and incisive in debunking the cuntinuum. I don't think either has put their speech online but I was particularly pleased that Dan brought up the issue of dancing, which ~for some reason~ is rarely discussed despite the cuntinuum consisting of dance genres. ANYWAY, my friend Melissa Bradshaw (who is the kind of smart, knowledgeable writer who should be linked up all over the place, rather than fauxthorities like k-spunk and SR) was in the audience with me, murked k-spunk at one point and has now written about it, as well as comparing the symposium to the soca aerobics class she left early to go to, and a vg read it is too.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

no, it's not about intellectualising music, over- or otherwise. that's something SR has accused people of but it's so offbase - I mean, read Melissa's article and you can't say she's anti-academic! she IS one! - if anything the anti-cuntinuum folks are against it because it's wrong overall, it's not academically rigorous enough at the same time as being too ivory-tower in its refusal to engage w/the music at street level. it does such an disservice to anyone who's ever tried to theorise about music.

i'm not the expert here but joe was great at the symposium in explaining how offbase the cuntinuum was wrt the 90s - the way it excluded certain things because they didn't "fit" what the continuum was supposed to be, b/c they were too aspirational or classy or uncool. The acid jazz, Gilles Peterson end of things. Which isn't objectionable as such but it just paints an incomplete picture - and it's worth unpacking why certain values (aggressive, dangerous, discordant, masculine) have been privileged over others (smooth, soulful, laidback, feminine). What's objectionable now is that the cuntinuum, this wrong-headed theory which DOESN'T EXIST, is being used as a stick to beat young, up-and-coming producers with, from k-spunk slagging Joker off as "nothing new" at the symposium (which is what prompted Melissa's murkage) to SR getting it totally wrong w/the whole ketamine fiasco to the dissing of UK funky. It's just casting a really long shadow.

Plus, there's what Cis mentions below, of SR being establishment enough that he can carry other people away with him.

Commentators should at least be open to the idea of participating, to engaging with the artists and the scene at street level. I'm afraid I wouldn't really consider anyone an expert if they didn't do this. (Which obv doesn't preclude them being interesting critics if they stick to writing about the music, which unfortunately doesn't happen.)

I didn't realise until the symposium how anti-artist their stance was, actually: k-punk actually said the actual mind-boggling sentence that Goldie the person, with his jazz clubs and inconvenient tastes, was irrelevant to - I am not kidding - "Goldie the agent of the continuum". At that point we laughed VERY LOUDLY AND OSTENTATIOUSLY because seriously what the fuck.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i don't think i agree the continuum concept is wrong overall. but the only way i can explain this is to relate it to my personal history with dance music (tho i do also think that the ivory-tower scenario or perception is unavoidable under the circumstances).

when i first saw the term several years ago i felt i instantly knew what SR was getting at so i've always felt fairly comfortable with it as a thing. i had immersed myself in edgy (as well as charty) UK dance via magazines, radio and buying vinyl. i see it as little more than a recognition that a number of us (granted one problem is establishing how many) were able to use each previous production trend as a bridge to the next in terms of understanding and appreciating it's form and function - essentially "i like jungle because i liked ardkore" and a huge part of that being the sonic hallmarks they share (mainly the recurring samples, the "rude energy"). the appeal when each new sound or subgenre comes along is essentially "you've retained x but now you've introduced it with y to create z". 'Ardkore->Jungle/DnB->Speed Garage->2 Step->Grime&subsequent' remains for me a sequence in which a path based on appreciation of those hallmarks is reasonably clear - certainly up until 2 Step. I'm willing to concede things get a bit murkier thereafter (as decade-based fashion shifted, the palette of preferred recurring samples and sounds did change with Grime i think).

now i liked Acid Jazz and co. to some extent but i don't see why excluding it from that strand is remotely a problem! it really didn't have much at all to do with UK underground club culture as documented by Mixmag, Muzik and co. even tho there would be minor coverage. In crude terms, Acid Jazz felt more about a separate continuation of "real Soul" that felt in opposition to what the Rave->Garage chain was dealing with. I don't see this as a problem because I had some appreciation for both (tho clearly more for the latter) and the differences seemed stark enough. The HC picture is not meant to be 'complete' and encapsulate everything. I would expect artists like Goldie, 4Hero and even MJ Cole to have recognised this divide (without thinking of it as a good or useful thing, being as they were actual artists) even tho they could move from one side to the other with admirable ease over the years. so what kpunk said about these two sides of Goldie can make some sense (unless I'm mis-understanding your point). hear early Rufige Kru and hear 'Believe' from his second album and there's pretty much nothing connecting them - it's just the same artist exercising two very different ideas of equal importance to him. this doesn't render HC meaningless as a thing imo.

to criticise the perceived "masculine/feminine" or edgy/smooth values split is different really, but when it comes to understand what the HC is about (as I understand it), the clue is in the name!

that's why to me it's not wrong-headed as a theory. that's why it makes some sense from a critical pov, and jeez if nothing else joining the dots is supposed to be fun.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Isn't the problem that the HC as an explanatory thing slips over the line of describing a particular strand within club culture and becomes a stand in for a description of club culture in general? In which case exclusions are important.

I don't really mind it as a shorthand for "what Simon, Mark, etc. value within dance music" - it's kind of like the dance equivalent of "power pop" really.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

"Isn't the problem that the HC as an explanatory thing slips over the line of describing a particular strand within club culture and becomes a stand in for a description of club culture in general?"

I'm not sure who is taking it as a description of club culture in general tho. You'd only half to look at the charts from the time to realise it's only half the story.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

You'd only have to look at the charts, or go to clubs, or read interviews with the artists and producers...except I wouldn't assume that people did any of these things at the time, and certainly not now! I mean, that's the point of documenting these scenes, so that people who don't have the time/inclination/ability to go to the primary sources can still have an idea of what was going on. And this is where the idea of the HC falls down - as you say, it's more like several continua overlapping and influencing each other concurrently. But the ones which aren't "convenient" have been excluded.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

The exclusion of certain styles is understandable. I think of it as to identify the production trends and subsequent scenes in 90s dance which best represented the following things in roughly equal measures:

1) underground
2) innovation (relative to technology and dancing/rhythmic form, but also culturally i.e. attempts to develop dance genres unique/native to the UK)
3) ruffness in production terms - interpret this as rude energy, the appeal of someone creating so much with so little (ghetto/bedroom producer culture), amateurishness (punk ethos) probably

but chiefly (tho it's difficult to describe and obv a generalisation)

4) latest soundtrack by/for/of (many) black urban youths (fetishised by those who aren't all of those things)

The fourth condition is mainly what excludes IDM, Big Beat, Breaks, (Northern) Hard House and remaining dance genres seen as both British and white. And combined with the other three it also excludes the "tasteful" UK soul, jazz and funk movements of the 90s (which I think of as being as mixed race-wise as DnB), these probably owing too much to their original US counterparts (same goes for UK rap, ragga and dancehall to an extent, but these genres are always seen as separate from the Dance Music umbrella anyway).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

yes I know that's what it's meant to be - the point I've been making, and which Joe made far more eloquently and expertly at the symposium, is that 4) contains within it the opposites of 1) to 3) as well, and excluding the tastefulness and the smoothness and the aspiration is a dishonest misrepresentation of 4). Hopefully Joe will put his paper online at some point, and when he does I'll link to it.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

OK to put it better we're talking about 4 ONLY as it relates to 1-3. This is NOT a dishonest mispresentation, it is merely a selective preference or focus point and one that's been made by both producers and listeners alike.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Well, then it's incomplete and exclusionary, and there's no reason to privilege or pedestalise this particular preference as the HC has been. Though it's worth asking a) why those preferences - what does it say that aggressive, masculine traits are deemed OK and smooth, feminine ones not? that's worth unpacking; and b) for a phrase which has been in use for a decade plus, how come it hasn't trickled down to being used by fans and producers? Surely if its validity was so obvious this would have happened? Maybe it's because for your average fan, it's not something which matches up with your quotidian experience of the music at all...

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

If people are taking it as something that encapsulates a comprehensive representation of UK dance then they are obviously missing the point. I don't who is doing this or why. It's clear from the 'hardcore' qualifier that exclusivity is evident (and necessary).

I don't really like this "masculine/feminine" thing at all but it's fine to say you prefer rough to smooth and vice versa. Are we all supposed to appreciate both qualities equally? Anyone who does think HC material is so great BECAUSE it's anti-smoothness or somehow anti-feminine is stupid. It's great for what it is pro.

"for a phrase which has been in use for a decade plus, how come it hasn't trickled down to being used by fans and producers?"
- might you not ask the same about 'hauntology' or whatever other terms are applied by critics? there is no real need for fans or producers to use these terms - what would they gain from it? this is not a problem as far as i can see.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

'Hauntology' is an even more rubbish term than 'hardcore continuum'!

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

both infinitely superior to 'electrodribble' as a term

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Well, the trouble is that they're the ones who are presenting it as an accurate history - they're writing the books and the articles, the secondary sources which people will (and do) take as gospel.