Rolling Dance Partisans 2012

Have you ever played at Sub:stance?

No!

You think that wouldn’t work either?

Scuba is not… I’m waiting for a offer! He’s not asking me [all laugh]. I have to talk to him. I would love to play there.

Well he recently played as SCB at Panorama Bar, and based on the recording I imagine it’s what you might sound like DJing.

I don’t like it at all. This SCB. Some dubstep guys can’t make techno music. It’s impossible. And here’s an example. It’s not very good. The same way when house producers want to make dubstep, it’s impossible.

Guess he's still waiting for that offer

listening to DVA clips, forgot i already heard and like 'madness' and 'where i belong'. digging all the triplet feels. points off for calling your 5/4 for song "the big five" though.

Scuba is not… I’m waiting for a offer! He’s not asking me [all laugh]. I have to talk to him.

i inferred from this sentence that the antipathy predated the interview, which is why everyone laughed

moratorium on tweaked vocal samples please

― the late great, Friday, March 9, 2012 6:13 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was re: "dance 4 me"

I agree with this general principle but (a) I think the track is about 2 years old actually (lol uk funky rips being even more of an outdated move for post-dubstep types than R&B cut-ups); and (b) what it does with the vocal really reflects that, it's coming from (aping?) a slightly different tradition.

i was really disappointed with the DVA album, had always been a big fan of his stuff (and his general aesthetic) but the album didn't seem to reflect it in any compelling way. i suspect people who care about complex rhythms might like it but i got bored. if you're gonna get vocalists that's a good move but maybe think of some hooks for them to sing.

It's never just about "complex rhythms" though. The problem with the DVA album is he misunderstands this, thinks making things as contorted as possible (less rhythmically than melodically, actually) is a noble end in itself. As a result there is no real tension to the grooves.

What are you both talking about? If you actually think its particularly rhythmically or melodically complex in a detracting way, then you are listening to another record. What is great about this record is the fact that the dissonance or diff time signatures never interfere with the functionality of the tracks at all.

And Lex, there are loads of hooks in the vocals. Perhaps not the pop ones you might like, but its clearly not aiming at that, is it?

It doesn't get much vocal hookier than 'What You Do' if that's what you're after. The rest don't rely purely on a repeated chorus to be hooky. I find myself singing along to the verses of Eye Know and the Zaki track as much as the chorus. I assume that is not a crime? Of the dancefloor tracks, there is none where it's rhythmically awkward, unless you are a rusty robot, or like metronomes. I think all the vocal tracks with the dissonant synths actually work really well. Its a really poised bitter/sweet balance. But if this is your idea of 'making things as contorted as possible' then there is probably no point discussing this any further, as we are on different aesthetic planets. Half of the DVA album probably belongs in that psych r&b thread.

The Zaki track is possibly my favourite. I actually quite like several of the tracks but as an album it seems like DVA has taken his starting polemic ("pretty ugly") and become so wrapped up in it that he loses sight of how and why complexity / dissonance etc. can work - which is that they imply the sense of order and functionalism that they don't exhibit openly. The problem is not that the rhythms / melodies / etc are "too difficult", it's that they're so impressed with their deviation from the norm that they only-occasionally invest any energy in thinking about how those deviations nonetheless can hit targets (i.e. actually grooving, for one). In fact the actual uk funky rhythms on the album aren't terribly complex (though I'm not saying they're too simple - they just don't feel like the focus). The exception that proves the rule is the excellent beat on "33rd Degree".

The fact that the album sounds so much like a broken beat album (DKD being closest I think) updated with Dilla/Flying Louts/Floating Point synths just underscores this, I think; my above argument is, if anything, even more true (or more obviously so) for broken beat than for funky. I'd love if the album had a more energetic tune that was as charming as "Future Rage".

"Why You Do" may have hooks but it's incredibly slight (deliberately so, I suspect). Though its lyrics are kind of lol in the way they literalise the album's sonic and thematic concerns.

I agree that the record owes more to broken beat side of uk funky than anything else, although I do think the idea that some of the tracks "are so impressed with their deviation" is a projection on your part that I don't hear in the music at all. Its strength it seems to me is that it exactly doesn't share that "impressed with itself"-ness of broken beat. I think he hits a great balance on the songs of teasing the vocals with the synths while not detracting from them. I agree 'Why You Do' is lol, but the chorus is totally infectious, even if the music itself isn't. My least favourite tracks are the more upbeat ones that don't hit as hard as some of his singles.

hahah well of course these are "projections" on my part, it's my interpretation of the music.

I'm not pretending i've got stone tablets from mount sinai with all this written on them.

Teeth - Vibrate

http://soundcloud.com/sgnlf/teeth-vibrate

Is coming out: http://www.sonicrouter.com/2012/03/signal-life-on-the-lookout-for-some-unorthodox-shit/

Been waiting a while for that one.

^ I like that a lot

"flying louts"

i like the kick/snare conversation on those signal life tracks, but the way the vocal samples are deployed seems kinda corny? it gives me an '80s electro vibe, maybe they're going for that.

---------
hahah well of course these are "projections" on my part, it's my interpretation of the music.

I'm not pretending i've got stone tablets from mount sinai with all this written on them.

― Tim F, Saturday, March 10, 2012 11:11 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
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I know, what I meant was that you were projecting your own self-impressedness with your own interpretation onto to his music.

That allegation makes sense if you're saying I'm a habitually self-impressed person who assumes everyone else is like me. Is that what you're saying?

That allegation makes sense if you're saying I'm a habitually self-impressed person who assumes everyone else is like me

well, you do write music reviews and post to ILM

j/k

well, you do write music reviews and post to ILM

― the late great, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 9:18 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

It wasn't an allegation Tim. We're not in court. Just thought you were wrong, and over-injecting your own baggage.

xpost no quite seriously it's both the most logical and potentially-correct spin I can put on it.

OTOH I'm not sure how it accounts for all the times I've been quite self-impressed with my take on something and not projected it onto the music at hand.

At any rate my use of the word "impressed" was maybe misleading anyway. It's not so much that the DVA album sounds smug or self-satisfied to me (if anything, DVA as an artist strikes me as restless, impatient, quick to grow bored with his past ideas - perhaps too much so, even); more that several of its "targets" are targets which I think have been improperly framed - as if these songs are the correct answers to the wrong questions.

Josephine said upthread that "Half of the DVA album probably belongs in that psych r&b thread." I agree with this obv and I wonder if people's reactions to the stuff on that thread provide a good guide to their likely reactions to this album and vice versa; when I think of the avant-R&B stuff that I like most (Kings, Me'Shell, Quadron, etc.) it's stuff that doesn't really go to great lengths to emphasise its unusualness or "avant"-ness or etc but instead uses its disparate sonic influences and ideas as yet another means of expressing more typical notions of beauty, groove, lushness etc. etc. - similar to how, say, Timbaland's classic work may have been startling and engrossing but rarely difficult-to-love. I guess I like stuff to sound a little bit effortless, even if it's clear that a lot of skill and accomplishment has gone into it. Whereas the DVA album sounds to me like it's tense-with-effort.

And (sigh) as usual my curiosity re what someone is trying to say is portrayed as hyper-defensive, hyper-pendantic, hyper-legalistic... This grates a bit, because I think I tend to react to personal jabs quite reasonably. But whatever.

i don't really understand the difference between a pop hook and a non-pop hook.

Phrased as an "either/or", I'd agree.

However, I think it's not too controversial to say that different things register as "hooks" in different contexts - like, to use an extreme example, a hook in a gabba track might be the kind of thing you'd never deploy in a pop song (though in a post-Guetta world even that may no longer be true).

More subtly, e.g, certain tricks in an R&B tune "work" better if you approach with an R&B frame of reference rather than a pop one. But it's not like as listeners we really consciously change hats in this fashion very often. It's more easily discerned in e.g. how many popjustice types consistently fail to get certain R&B. Their problem, obv.

In the case of DVA, I personally don't think saying the hooks are non-pop really explains away their lack of purchase - the Vikter Duplaix track, for example, works like a Vikter Duplaix track, but doesn't hit me nearly so hard as "Manhood" or "Messages" or "Looking For Love". It's not really the case that those tunes have "pop" hooks whereas "Madness" has another kind of hook; they're just better songs, is all.

a hook is a hook

in lots of pop songs the real hook is an instrumental thing or a sound

this thread is getting about as dry as a hessle comp.

Sounding a little exasperated, DVA continues: "I just needed a change, bruv – I mean, six years of something is long. Imagine you’re with a girl for six years. You know what I mean? You’d probably split up! It just gets boring. Not that the show got boring, but six years of anything is long, so you’ve got to change up your life".

haha. IMAGINE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjJui88Zq2Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLgeqX-Tjvk

loving this new paul woolford thing

http://soundcloud.com/platform/special-request-alone

So shit...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q5SdAFlk_Q

baby boy loose this track, baby boy loose this track.

in other news.

I really didn't see myself being a Paul Woolford fan after so many years of well dad house but damn he's finding a vibe the last few years.

LHF album? opinions?

i've been enjoying woolford for awhile now, feel like the turning point was actually around 2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-sh8mi0cio

also really like this recent one, "can't do without"

although it definitely doesn't need to be 8:27 long

and then right after that obv he killed it with "erotic discourse"

not sure how that could every qualify as dad-house

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahlHAMP-TIo

Royal T's refix of I Luv U is inasane.

this is a 2011 track but it looks like nobody ever talked about it on ILM?

i heard it's not going to get a release, fucking crazy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR2lKUvN_BI

loved pearson sound rewinding this on boiler room #47

http://soundcloud.com/platform/br-47-pearson-sound?page=3

starts coming in at 32:30

'This is killing me: the song featured in last week's Dusk & Blackdown Rinse mix that samples The Breakfast Club - "Well, if you say you haven't, you're a prude. If you say you have you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to but you can't, and when you do you wish you didn't, right?" Anybody? Thanks.

― viborg, Saturday, 3 March 2012 17:37 (1 month ago) Permalink'

Oh yeah sorry this is 'Kook' by Presk out now on Fourth Wave.

http://www.sonicrouter.com/2012/03/sr-mix-125-presk-fourth-wave/

^ Big fan of that Presk tune.

Yeah it's now stuck in my head and probably will be all week.

Also, Jimmy Edgar 'For the Children'. Maybe that's more bobbins? I don't fully understand the difference.

loving this new paul woolford thing

http://soundcloud.com/platform/special-request-alone

― lukas, Saturday, March 24, 2012 4:20 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

Alone is pretty good but I like this one even better (Lolita)

http://soundcloud.com/specialrequest/special-request-1-2-lolita

Vessel is on one at the moment:

http://soundcloud.com/left_blank/b1-merge-preview

The Panther Modern record is ace too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyLw0oaW4ok

is this the thread where you all talk about more beatmaker-y shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB2KqNtcrzs

into this song even tho it sounds like something I prob was into like 10 years ago or something

Hey, this Distal album I'm listening to is nice!!

is this the thread where you all talk about more beatmaker-y shit

yes please

"kook" is pretty good, what w/ a great sample, epic synth vibe and creepy "presk" vocal clip, but i still prefer "sweat" (presk & cinnaman)

presk IS killing it though, four for four on dope EPs