dj /rupture

(yay, for smugness - and hypocrisy!)

You might as well say that pursuing some kind of monocultural purism is inherently fascistic.

Or that putting as many big pop hooks together as possible is inherently pandering.

Sure, diasporism can be smug, usually when accompanied by pretentious rhetoric (DJ Spooky) or vapid cosmic overtones (er, remember when all the ambient people were doing musical travelogues).

But Rupture doesn't do either of these things. Nor does he bland all the musics out into mush. Nor does he pretend to any kind of "fusion." Quite the opposite. He lets everything clash against everything else, keeps the noise front and center, makes connections but never at the expense of the beat. Pretty much an ideal model for this sort of thing.

Need more coffee!

i dont buy the inherently smug thing either tho, cos i find that rupture mixes, much like perching on a pruned opinion like "fascist rap", to do nothing to increase the charm of what he uses, i'd allow like bugged out sez that he retains some vitality with the clash aesthetic but it seems a noisy grabby unsympathetic way of doing it. he seems like he thinks he's still weaving soemthing new, tearing off revealing some greater vertigo, but i find that destructive. destructive physiognomy. and no i dont find his use of more obv stuff like egyptian riddim/'light yr ass'/kelis suggests popness but a cheap eye for the most casually yeah "futuristic" blah blah. ok the german dancehall thing was a bit harsh (electric boogie riddim *retch*) but it seems indicative of something, a more peripheral rhetorical 2nd generation mutation circle

(It may well be that easier music access and a shuffle-play listening culture will make selling eclecticism increasingly difficult.)

i make absolutely no apology for this whatever. i get paid for *my* views *my* ideas *my* writing, not be or think about anyone else. my judgements are my judgements and when people know me, they either agree with me in the main and find my work useful or they think i'm a dick and don't. i don't see how this is a bad thing. re chumminess, it's not, it's just respect and a little civility. i'm not namedropping, then name's already been dropped!

Well, both really, but mainly the first one, which I was thinking might make this harder to find online. By which I mean shops, since I can't download at home and post from a cafe on my lunch break.

hey dave when i say selfcentred i mean the opinions coming distant second to your flirting. like a wise dude once said, "you only defend things cos u like em". cudgeled swine leave me be

oh to hell with it, it's evident you are either completely insane and thus i should just keep quiet, or an absolute comedy genius because this line, literally, made me bust out laughing in my office. glass houses etc.

Records speaking to eachother is not a concept I dislike actually, but I think it's more interesting when the conversation is unintentional or incidental or mercenary, and when the conversation is happening on a track to track basis, one word or sentence at a time. Something like GTT feels more like a staged play (which incidentally - and cos it supports my argument - Bakhtin says can *never* be dialogic!) with rupture as the director. Sorry Bugged Out but for me at least scenius *is* more interesting than genius. And maybe the problem for rupture is that scenes like dancehall already have the whole diaspora thingy so thoroughly on lockdown that his efforts sometimes strike me as simultaneously redundant and even crude, like someone explaining the meaning of the joke after the punchline.

That said I do enjoy his mixes so maybe I won't agree with all this tomorrow!

PS. Dave I still love you obv!

(never yours tim xx)

I stopped reading after this.

i think sometimes rupture is doing this; i don't find allowing a groove to roll to be inherently superior to setting one up only to fuck it up, or vice versa. to the first point, the first half of gold teeth thief seems to me to be completely danceable throughout, though you do have to shift the style a few times to keep up. i think on the larger level what rupture's better mixes are saying is that these extra-musical structures mirror the structure of dancing (or the dance-listener's activity) naturally; ie the crashy noisey jungly bits mirror when you hit a tune you can't help but keep turning up or the dj keeps amping things up at the crest of the night.

on the other hand i think rupture also knows and interacts with the fact that most people listening to his music are doing so while chained to their computers, driving around, sitting at home, etc; places where the implication of dance is pleasurable but the mind is also free to engage with the transitions, connections, and disconnections he creates.

that might be a bit of having it both ways but it's why i find him fascinating. the 'diaspora' stuff is a red herring, why shouldn't a dj reflect his own tastes?

on a musical note: that dabrye track is hot. it's a nice bite of dj quik's style with more bassy techno to it.